In the 1950s and 1960s, the Chinese community in the Philippines became a battleground in the extension overseas of China's political conflict, and many of its members fell victim to the rivalry between the Kuomintang and pro-leftist elements. That period is darker in the history of the Chinese in the Philippines than even the Japanese occupation during the Second World War. Darker, because the pain of betrayal is greater when it is not by foreign invaders but by your own people, the lanlang (as we Chinese in the Philippines call ourselves), the Taiwan government (which had jurisdiction over the community) and our own (Philippine) government, which allowed it to happen because of sheer ignorance and total disregard of the community.
During this Cold War debacle, Chinese people shunned or turned against fellow Chinese. With help from an inept government, we allowed the paranoid Kuomintang in Taiwan to influence our minds through education in the Philippines’ Chinese schools and, beyond the school ground, through our lives. We enabled the KMT to spirit away good citizens for “re-education” in Taiwan based on trumped-up charges of subversion.
Chien-Wen Kung's book Diasporic Cold Warriors is rich in details that only a painstaking search through hitherto sealed or “closed” sources could provide. Its author has expertly mined the KMT files that started being unsealed in early 2000. From his findings, he has given us a coherent narrative that throws light onto events during this period.
The book enables us to understand better the trilogy of forces – the KMT, as a political party, became a de facto “government” within the Philippine government to manage the leaders of the community (whether pro-left or pro-right) – that interacted and intersected with one another, impacting the lives of the Philippine-Chinese during that period and beyond. Indeed, as Kung emphasizes, “The KMT's diasporic networks, its collaboration with the Philippine state, and the intra-Asian anticommunist ecumene that it constituted had profound consequences for the Philippine Chinese” (p. 12).
I cite in particular the accounts of the jinqiao an affair, a tortuous chapter (1950 to 1960) that marked the peak of the KMT vs CCP Cold War rivalry – in what Kung calls the “anticommunist,” “Sinophobic” political and social environment of the post-colonial Philippines. The jinqiao an saw more than 300 people arrested, detained, tortured, some tried for more than four years, and nearly all found innocent of the charges of sedition and treason.
Many of the events described – and the deep-seated trauma that the failed anti-communist witch-hunt inflicted on the community – have long been buried and are rarely spoken of, much less written about. We heard or read about stories of those who suffered or were victims of the jinqiao an. Snippets of the jinqiao an slip through self-imposed silence to be published from time to time (some in the form of victims’ letters and memoirs) by the more intrepid. I've heard stories of businessmen who were ostracized and lost their businesses because community members feared being red-tagged through association with them. Some of them were not in the original list submitted by Koa Chian (true name Yang Renlun) to the military, which is extensively discussed by Kung. Some were betrayed by business rivals due to personal vendettas. Fuller personal vignettes of the people who were among those arrested are missing in the book.
Kung's sources, although extensive, are understandably one-sided, coming as they do only from the KMT or the Philippine military; he could have gathered stories that go beyond the Koa Chian list, to balance these sources. I appreciate the account of the Cebu Reading Club, which comes to better light for the first time. I agree with Kung that it was unfair to brand these students outright as “communist ideologues.” They were young, naïve and enthusiastic at the time of their arrests; they barricaded themselves with knives and metal rods, ready to die fighting the military and not to commit suicide as has been depicted.
Kung's account of the “white terror” fiasco demonstrates why “military intelligence” is a conundrum. The Philippine government knew very little about the minority in its midst, a weakness exacerbated by the language barrier. In the guise of an anti-communist campaign, evidence was planted in offices or residences of businessmen or rivals to extort money. Unaware of the many ways Chinese names were spelled, the military could not locate many of the names on the Koa Chian list, so they indiscriminately picked people whose names were similar. Most ridiculous were the Taiwan propaganda materials the military presented as evidence of subversive communist materials.
The book is an excellent resource material in the history and political dynamics of how an entire community, which struggled to be a “model minority,” fell victim to KMT leaders who acted as the Philippine government's surrogate in administering the Chinese community affairs.
As Kung suggests, the Philippines was the last bastion of KMT influence in South-East Asia. They ruled over all aspects of the ethnic Chinese community's life: among them, the affairs of the Grand Family Association, the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce (FFCCCII) and the General Association of Chinese Schools. The account of the foundation of the FFCCCII, beyond the excuse of the Retail Trade Nationalization Law, is a concrete example of the extent of KMT political control in the community. Many leaders of the original Chinese Chamber of Commerce were not KMT members nor “nationalistic party ideologues,” and the KMT had to ease them out by forming the FFCCCII to strengthen their hold on the Philippine-Chinese community.
The KMT influence lasted at least two decades after diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China were established in 1975. The FFCCCII and other key organizations avoided important visitors from China, including the new PRC leaders, until the mid-1990s. New pro-China groups like the Chinese Amity Club and later the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Associations were formed to meet such leaders and plan important China events. The pro-China and pro-Taiwan groups competed to attract the most guests to their national day banquets.
Education was one area where the KMT exerted its power and the state relinquished its responsibility, delegating the supervision of Chinese-language schools to the KMT, which it considered its effective partner in the anti-communism security strategy. This continued until 1973 when Chinese-language schools were forced to “Filipinize” under the new Constitution, and from 1976, no Chinese schools were allowed to operate. The KMT poured resources into revising the Chinese-language textbooks to fit the Filipinized curriculum. The rushed job resulted in ridiculous mistakes and rendered many textbooks obsolete, although they were used until the 1990s.
The jinqiao an experience was repeated in the affair of the Yuyitung brothers. The two editors-in-chief of the Chinese Commercial News were accused of subversion, and, in the middle of trial, arrested and summarily deported to Taiwan. Not knowing Chinese, the courts depended on the KMT to translate supposedly subversive materials and branded them as anti-Philippine government. Knowing that the evidence was weak, and to stop adverse public opinion, the Philippine military connived with the KMT to arrest the brothers while the trial was ongoing and deport them for re-education in Taiwan, despite protests from the international community. The brothers’ names are inscribed among Marcos's martial law victims in the Bantayog ng mga Bayani (Heroes Monument). The jinqiao an and the Yuyitung brothers’ affair demonstrate how the Philippine state allowed the KMT to work as a government within the government. In fact, the existence of a foreign political party in the Philippines was exposed only during the Yuyitung trial, and the local KMT was forced to change its name into the Filipino-Chinese Cultural and Economic Association.
Diasporic Cold Warriors deals with more than the “cold war or the dialectical struggle between the Kuomintang and the pro-Beijing forces in the Philippines.” The use of the words “diasporic” and “cold warriors” brings me discomfort. I read the book as a reflection of the role and status of the Chinese Filipinos in mainstream Philippine society, and the socio-political environment that shaped this status through several stages of its evolution. It was a community run by leaders who believed at that time that their fate and fortune were tied to China (or Taiwan precisely). The vulnerability of the community to political manoeuvring by the KMT and the Philippine military, and the inability of Chinese organizations to speak up and champion the causes of the oppressed, is indeed a sad chapter in the ethnic Chinese community history.
The book's greatest value in bringing this dark chapter to light is to emphasize the truth that the fate of the Chinese Filipinos is always tied to their home, the Philippines, and not to China, the homeland of their ancestors. Towards the conclusion, Kung mentions the “third force” of young, integrationist, local-born Chinese Filipinos (Tsinoys) who know only of the Philippines as home and would fight for their rightful place in the Philippine sun. The accounts spotlight the sharp contrast in the evolution of the Chinese-Filipino community from more than a half century ago to what it is today, one that is rooted in Philippine soil and will not tolerate being pawns in political rivalries outside the Philippine government.
