In the last 25 years, there has been no lack of materials published on the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. The rise of China on the global stage has occasioned studies of ethnic Chinese in various parts of the world, as evidenced by the activities of the International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas (ISSCO).
For the Philippines, the work of tracing the history and analysing the impact and future of the Chinese in the country has been pursued by scholars such as Teresita Ang-See and groups like Kaisa Para sa Kaunlaran (Unity for Progress), among others. In 1995, the latter even managed to open a museum of the Chinese in Philippine life, followed by a full-colour hardcover coffee-table book in Reference Ang-See2005.
Now comes Caroline Hau's The Chinese Question, which brings the scholarship to a new level. While others focused on the Spanish period and the early twentieth century, Hau takes up the story of the Chinese in the Philippines and Southeast Asia after the Second World War. She defines the “Chinese question” as “the idea that ‘Chinese’ migrants and their descendants constitute a ‘foreign’ group who pose political, economic, cultural, and social ‘problems’ for the post-colonial Philippine nation-state” (p. 6). The book documents transformations in these areas brought on by economic and geopolitical developments, and the onset of globalisation.
Building on her earlier work (the chapters are revisions of previously published articles), Hau situates the Chinese question in contemporary discussions of what it means to be ‘Filipino’, a topic with an increased sense of urgency given the reality of millions of Filipinos working outside the homeland and rethinking their sense of citizenship and nationhood. This book maps the changing perspectives on Chineseness as reflected in issues of citizenship, race, class, nationalism, and regionalism.
The book is valuable for highlighting the significance of the wider ‘region’ in understanding the contemporary dynamics of the Chinese in the Philippines and beyond. That Hokkien trading networks have been in place for ten centuries, and that revolutionary cooperation to support Sun Yat-sen transcended national boundaries in the early twentieth century, are identified by Hau as important intra-Asia links that provided the conditions for the Euro-American engagement with Asia. Many studies have previously focused on the Chinese question within nation-states, but Hau, from her vantage point in Japan, considers questions of hybridity, nationalism, and transnationalism, making the case that these are interrelated categories with textures that have changed with the geopolitical rise of China.
The myth of a universal sense of Chineseness shared by Chinese people across the globe, an idea that often prevails in popular culture but has long been debunked by scholars, is further demystified by Hau's references to the particular circumstances and wider contexts of the Chinese in different parts of Southeast Asia (p. 241).
Coming back to the Philippine context, Hau is probably the only scholar who has seriously analysed the Chinese question from the perspective of literature and film. Her comprehensive approach to the question of Chinese identity and citizenship in short stories, novels, and films, reveals a sea change in the understanding and place of the Chinese in the national imaginary. Once portrayed as a drooling Chinaman, the Chinese Filipino is now perceived as a wealthy capitalist, but Hau also shows why these perceptions are inadequate. Chinese identity is always negotiated, and context, more than a romantic view of Chinese culture, is the decisive element.
For a book that draws on diverse perspectives, little attention is given to Chinese who see themselves as ‘pure blooded’ as against the hybridity of the mestizos. The book can give the impression that very few Chinese Filipinos still speak Hokkien or observe Chinese customs and traditions, as when Hau refers to the day-long celebration of All Souls’ Day in November and traditional rituals like engagements and weddings (p. 162). She marks the disappearance or artificial observance of these rituals, but my own recent experience of such practices would challenge the picture suggested by Hau of a traditional culture that is carried forward only by new migrants. The coffee-table book Chinese Filipinos would be a helpful reference in this regard. Also, Teresita Ang-See's edited popular volume Tsinoy: The story of the Chinese in Philippine life has chapters on the post-war Chinese that are further helpful in understanding the contemporary period.
While it is already commonplace among scholars that there is no single way of understanding Chineseness or Chinese culture, there are insightful works that draw on historical factors that led to the idea of a shared culture among Chinese people. Chee-Beng Tan (Reference Tan, Armstrong, Armstrong and Mulliner2001) and Gungwu Wang (Reference Wang and Kin2006) have published articles about this, but sadly they are not cited in Hau's work. These are but small pointers to lead the reader to other available materials. In the end, Hau's work deepens the consideration and expands the study of the Chinese question in and beyond the Philippines. For this we must be grateful.
