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Re-Conceptualising Notions of Chinese-ness in a Southeast Asian Context. From Diasporic Networking to Grounded Cosmopolitanism

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Abstract

This paper explores the role of the Chinese in a Southeast Asian business cum societal context; from different approaches towards Chinese-ness via different notions of intra- and inter-ethnic relation towards a critique of the idea of a Chinese diaspora in a Southeast Asian context. The article argues that a culturalist reading of Southeast Asian Chinese modes of engaging in capitalist practices and societal entrenchments constitutes a deception that produces a variety of stereotypes of Chinese-ness, thus disregarding the complexity and dynamic developments within the ethnic Chinese community region-wise. Finally, in relation to Chinese business practices in a Southeast Asian context the paper suggests that cultural notions of guanxi and xinyong do not form a basis for doing business the Chinese way, but only options; that intra-ethnic relations do not play an important role in transnational Chinese linkages, and that contemporary conceptions of Chinese identity are always negotiated with the dominant ‘other’ so as to secure the construction of an economic ‘room’ or space from where business can be conducted in an overall societally acceptable manner.

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Notes

  1. Aiwah Ong and Donald Nonini, Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism (New York: Routledge, 1997); Gordon Redding, “Weak Organisations and Strong Linkages. Managerial Ideology and Chinese Family Business Networks,” in Gary Hamilton, ed., Asian Business Networks (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1996); Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Random House, 1995).

  2. Souchou Yao, Confucian Capitalism. Discourse, Practice and the Myth of Chinese Enterprise (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002).

  3. A short-hand definition of guanxi is that it constitutes a form of social exchange based on sentiments and emotions and is marked by a mutual belief in reciprocity and loyalty.

  4. See also Vivienne Wee, “A Cultural Economy of Ethnicity and Capitalism in the Regionalisation of China and Southeast Asia,” NIASNytt: Asia Insights 3 (2004), 5–7; and Edmund Terence Gomez, “De-Essentialising Capitalism: Chinese Networks and Family Firms in Malaysia,” NIASNytt: Asia Insights 3 (2004), 8–10.

  5. Fred Riggs, “Glocalization, Diaspora and Area Studies,” http://www2.hawaii.edu/∼fredr/glocal.htm (2001), 1–4. I owe this particular insight to Arif Dirlik, personal communication September 2004.

  6. Arjuna Appadurai, “Global Ethnoscapes. Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology,” in Richard G. Fox, ed., Recapturing Anthropology. Working in the Present (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1991), 191–210.

  7. Murray Weidenbaum and Samuel Hughes, The Bamboo Network. How Expatriate Chinese Entrepreneurs Are Creating a New Economic Superpower in Asia (London: The Free Press, 1996).

  8. Y. Luo, Guanxi and Business (Singapore: World Scientific, 2000).

  9. Mayfair Mei-Hui Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets: the Art of Social Relationships in China (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994).

  10. Murray Weidenbaum and Samuel Hughes, The Bamboo Network. How Expatriate Chinese Entrepreneurs Are Creating a New Economic Superpower in Asia (London: The Free Press, 1996).

  11. Henry Wai-chung Yeung, “Under Siege? Economic Globalisation and Chinese Business in Southeast Asia,” PROSEA Occasional Paper No. 21, June 1998.

  12. Adam McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, Hawaii, 1900-1936 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001); Paul J. Bolt, China and Southeast Asia’s Ethnic Chinese: State and Diaspora in Contemporary Asia (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2000); Joel Kotkin, Tribes: How Race, Religion, and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy (New York: Random House, 1992); William A. Callahan, “Diaspora, Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism: Overseas Chinese and Neo-nationalism in China and Thailand” (Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong, Southeast Asia Research Centre, Working Paper Series no. 35, 2002).

  13. Souchou Yao, “Guanxi: Sentiment, Performance and the Trading of Words,” in Thomas Menkhoff and Solvay Gerke, eds., Chinese Entrepreneurship and Asian Business Networks (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002), 233–254.

  14. John Wong, “Southeast Asian Ethnic Chinese Investing in China” (USA: Columbia University, East Asian Institute, Working Paper No. 15, 1998).

  15. Edmound Terence Gomez, “De-Essentialising Capitalism: Chinese Networks and Family Firms in Malaysia,” NIASNytt: Asia Insights 3 (2004), 8–10.

  16. Edmund Terence Gomez and Michael Hsiao, eds., Chinese Business in Southeast Asia: Contesting Cultural Explanations, Researching Entrepreneurship (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2001).

  17. Michael Jacobsen, “De-linking the Chinese Diaspora. On Manadonese Chinese Entrepreneurship in North Sulawesi,” (Hong Kong: Southeast Asia Research Centre. City University of Hong Kong, Working Paper Series no. 60, 2004).

  18. Edmound Terence Gomez, “De-Essentialising Capitalism: Chinese Networks and Family Firms in Malaysia,” NIASNytt: Asia Insights 3 (2004), 8–10.

  19. Robert Cribb, “Political Structures and Chinese Business Connections in the Malay World: A Historical Perspective,” in Chan Kwok Bun, ed., Chinese Business Networks. State, Economy and Culture (Singapore: Prentice Hall, 2000), 176–192.

  20. See also Ji Li and Philip C. Wright, The Issue of Guanxi: Discrepancies, Reality and Implications (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Baptist University, School of Business, Business Research Centre, 1999).

  21. Arif Dirlik, “Critical Reflections on ‘Chinese Capitalism’ as Paradigm,” in Ampalavanar Brown, ed., Chinese Business Enterprise, vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 1996), 17–38.

  22. Fred Riggs, “Glocalization, Diaspora and Area Studies,” http://www2.hawaii.edu/∼fredr/glocal.htm (2001), 1.

  23. Gabriel Sheffer, ed., Modern Diasporas in International Politics (Croom Helm, Sydney, 1986).

  24. William Safran, “Diaspora in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return,” Diaspora 1:1 (1991), 83–93.

  25. James Clifford, “Diasporas,” Cultural Anthropology 9:3 (1994), 302–338.

  26. Judith Shuval, “Diaspora Migrations: Definitional Ambiguities and a Theoretical Paradigm,” International Migration 38:5 (2000), 43.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Tan Chee Beng, “Comments on ‘Ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia: Overseas Chinese, Chinese Overseas or Southeast Asians?’” in Leo Suryadinata, ed., Ethnic Chinese as Southeast Asians (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1997), 25, 29.

  29. Mely G. Tan, “The Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia: Issues of Identity,” in Leo Suryadinata, ed., Ethnic Chinese as Southeast Asians (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1997), 33–65.

  30. James Chin Kong, “Multiple Identities among the Returned Overseas Chinese in Hong Kong,” in Michael W. Charney, Brenda S.A. Yeoh and Tong Chee Kiong, eds, Chinese Migrants Abroad. Cultural, Educational, and Social Dimensions of the Chinese Diaspora (Singapore, London, Hong Kong: Singapore University Press, 2003), 63–82.

  31. Ien Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese. Living Between Asia and the West (London: Routledge, 2001), 12–13.

  32. I have discussed the fluidity and thus political expediency of ethnic identity extensively in Michael Jacobsen, “On the Question of Contemporary Identity in Minahasa, North Sulawesi Province, Indonesia,” Asian Anthropology 1 (2002), 31–58 and Michael Jacobsen, “Factionalism and Secession in North Sulawesi Province, Indonesia,” Asian Journal of Political Science, 12:1 (2004), 65–94.

  33. Allen Chun, “Who Wants to be Diasporic?” (Hong Kong: Working Paper Series no. 50. Southeast Asia Research Centre. City University of Hong Kong, 2003).

  34. Ibid., 2, 3.

  35. Wang Gungwu, “The Study of Chinese Identities in Southeast Asia,” in Jennifer Wayne and Wang Gungwu, eds., Changing Identities of the Southeast Asian Chinese Since World War II (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1989), 1–21.

  36. Wang Gungwu, “Among Non-Chinese,” Daedalus 20:2 (1991), 139.

  37. Allen Chun, “Who Wants to be Diasporic?” (Hong Kong: Working Paper Series no. 50. Southeast Asia Research Centre. City University of Hong Kong, 2003), 8–9.

  38. Michael Jacobsen, “De-linking the Chinese Diaspora. On Manadonese Chinese Entrepreneurship in North Sulawesi,” (Hong Kong: Southeast Asia Research Centre. City University of Hong Kong, Working Paper Series no. 60, 2004).

  39. Mak Lau-Fong and Kung I-Chun, “The Overseas Chinese Network: Forms and Practices in Southeast Asia,” (PROSEA Occasional Paper 26, 1999).

  40. Ibid.

  41. Ibid., 4–5, 9.

  42. Ibid., 7–9,15.

  43. For discussions of contemporary theories of cosmopolitanism, see Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen, eds., Conceiving Cosmopolitanism. Theory, Context and Practice (New York: Oxford University Press and Breckenridge Breckenridge, 2002); Carol A. Pollock, Bhabha Sheldon, K. Homi and Dipesh Chakrabarty, eds., Cosmopolitanism (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002).

  44. Joel S. Kahn, “Introduction: Identities, Nations and Cosmopolitan Practice,” in Joel S. Kahn, ed., Ethnicities, Diasporas and ‘Grounded’ Cosmopolitanism in Asia (Singapore: Asia Research Institute: Monograph Series, 2004), 3.

  45. Ibid.

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  1. Asia Research Centre, Copenhagen Business School, Porcelænshaven 24, 2000, Frederiksberg, Denmark

    Michael Jacobsen

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Correspondence to Michael Jacobsen.

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Jacobsen, M. Re-Conceptualising Notions of Chinese-ness in a Southeast Asian Context. From Diasporic Networking to Grounded Cosmopolitanism. East Asia 24, 213–227 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-007-9015-y

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