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Overseas Chinese: How powerful are
they?
By Phar Kim Beng
HONG
KONG - In any discussion about overseas Chinese, direct
reference to their wealth cannot be avoided. Nor can one
help wonder about their capacity to "capture the state",
since overseas Chinese are spread throughout East Asia.
At a little less than 60 million people,
overseas Chinese form a far-flung diaspora that extends
from San Francisco to Singapore. With an estimated
wealth of more than US$1.5 trillion, they constitute
what could arguably be called the third-largest economy
in the world after the gross national products (GNPs) of
the United States and Japan. The sprawling overseas
Chinese community of East Asia alone (including Hong
Kong and Taiwan) wields considerable economic reach.
Writing in Harvard Business Review, John Kao
alluded to the eventual emergence of a "Chinese
Commonwealth".
But does the wealth of overseas
Chinese necessarily translate into political power
across East Asia? More important, can the wealth of
overseas Chinese be used to "capture the state"?
While there exist no definitive studies on the
political power of overseas Chinese, several authors
have written approvingly of the above prospect. The
wealthy overseas-Chinese network has been separately
christened "Lords of the (Pacific) Rim", "The New Asian
Emperors" and the "Offshore Economic Empire" in various
books.
On all counts, these regal designations
hint clearly at the power of overseas Chinese to control
the economic and political fate of their domiciles. In
other words, many authors and analysts presuppose a link
between the economic plenty of overseas Chinese and
their ability to influence the political process of
their respective countries and beyond.
Murray
Weidenbaum, the first chairman of former US president
Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors, even went
so far as to claim that the emergence of Greater China -
comprising mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan - is the
"most important development in the post-Cold War era".
Why? Because it is funding the growth of mainland China
as a future superpower. He referred to this productive
and profitable arrangement as the "bamboo network" -
something that will never break.
Be that as it
may, neither the scenario of a powerful overseas Chinese
network nor one that is strategically useful to China is
at all convincing at this stage. In fact, both notions
are empirically and historically problematic.
An
instructive lesson begins with the Batavia Fury of 1740.
In an attempt to suppress Chinese competition in Batavia
(now Jakarta), the Dutch East India Company used its
considerable political power to label them "smugglers".
All Chinese who were unable to prove that they were
suitably employed in Batavia were summarily deported to
Sri Lanka - as slaves. When they objected and rose in
rebellion, they were immediately crushed. Consequently,
some 10,000 Chinese were massacred, and their thriving
commercial networks taken over by the Dutch and the
native Javanese almost overnight.
If one were to
fast-forward from the helplessness of the overseas
Chinese to May 1998, we see the same results. Despite
having a large share of Indonesia's gross domestic
product, estimated by some at 75 percent, the Indonesian
citizens of Chinese descent were unable to prevent their
ethnic brethren from being killed in the unrest. In
spite of their economic contribution to Indonesia for
over three decades, the livelihood and basic security of
the Indonesian Chinese were totally ignored by the
Indonesian army.
In other words, not only did
the ethnic Chinese fail to "capture" the Indonesian
state, they were in fact at the mercy of the unruly mob.
The above demonstrates two crucial points.
First, while overseas Chinese may be well endowed
financially, their considerable wealth often evokes
unwanted attention and jealousy. As it is, overseas
Chinese are frequently the target of envy and scorn.
Instead of being a boon, wealth paradoxically became the
bane of overseas Chinese in their respective countries.
It is only after an arduous process of nation-building
that overseas Chinese are integrated with the local
community.
Second, economic monopoly does not
necessarily create any immunity for overseas Chinese.
Nor can they expect the protection and backing of the
state when the entire nation is in crisis. As a result
of pressure by the masses to break the monopoly of the
Chinese, attempts may even be made to distribute their
wealth forcefully - or, as in the case of Indonesia,
permit the mob to lash out at Chinese shops, homes and
families. Overseas Chinese are thus made the scapegoat
for the corruption and ineptitude of the state.
Invariably, the economic and political history
of overseas Chinese has been constantly marked by
various attempts, both legal and extrajudicial, to
nationalize their wealth. It is for this reason that
overseas Chinese tend to hide their wealth abroad, or
keep a low profile in their respective countries. The
latter does not help their efforts to be identified as a
part of the community.
Within the past 30 years
alone, overseas Chinese have been at the receiving end
of both the state and non-Chinese society. Indeed, in
all but one - Singapore - of the 10 countries forming
the present-day Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN), overseas Chinese have been sporadically
discriminated against and victimized.
This
statistic disproves the notion that economic wealth
necessarily extends into some form of political power.
The pattern of victimization in ASEAN, from 1969-99, for
instance, occurred in spite of the fact that overseas
Chinese were, by and large, rich and in control of the
economic resources of their respective countries. Thus,
from the 1969 racial riots in Malaysia to the
anti-Chinese murder spree in Indonesia, wealth had
simultaneously been a source of succor and worry to the
overall well-being of overseas Chinese.
As such,
when one discusses the wealth of overseas Chinese as a
natural trajectory of political power, one must
recognize that it is based on three untested
assumptions. First, the overseas Chinese nouveau
riche had successfully co-opted the state, thereby
blurring the distinction between family-corporate
interest and national ones. Second, both the state and
army are willing to accept the co-option. And third, the
non-Chinese segment of the society will allow corporate
and state co-option to take place. Yet such assumptions
are far too fanciful to be true.
As the Asian
financial crisis has shown, non-Chinese will not take
lightly to their economic interests being undermined and
usurped by a small cluster of cronies. Indeed, within
East Asia's political landscape, only Chinese in
Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong have seen their legal,
economic and even military status progressively
improved. But then such power is gained within the
framework of the nation-state - not without.
In
the case of Singapore and Taiwan, their economic and
political power increased because they were assiduously
cultivated and enhanced by the state, internally. The
goal of the Singapore and Taiwan governments, not least,
is to address concerns arising from threats to national
security. In Singapore's case, power was thus cultivated
to counter Malaysia, which lies at the city-state's
hinterland. As for Taiwan, its economic fortune
blossomed because the state was trying to build an
entity that was sufficiently rigorous to balance
mainland China.
Ethnic Chinese thrive
politically and economically in Singapore and Taiwan
because it would have been strategically disastrous to
discriminate against them in the first place.
To
be sure, in attempting to speak of overseas Chinese as a
conglomerate of financial cum political power perhaps
even eclipsing the United States and Japan, many
analysts have confused their own projection with factual
reality.
The simple fact is that the mere
aggregation of wealth or assets cannot be equated,
pound-for-pound, with absolute political clout across
the region. Indeed, if wealth, as had been shown
earlier, cannot prevent discrimination within one's
borders, how then does it translate into real power
abroad? Moreover, if wealth cannot prevent anti-Chinese
massacres, how then can it be employed for the higher
purpose of superseding others in an economic and
political race? These are two important questions that
have hardly been addressed by those who believe in the
power of overseas Chinese.
For this reason,
anyone proclaiming overseas Chinese to be the future
political ringmaster of the Asia-Pacific region should
temper their exuberance. Furthermore, attempts of
overseas Chinese to invest in China are also not
risk-free. The more they do so, the more vulnerable they
become to accusations of being ardent loyalist of
Beijing, instead of their respective government. Such
accusations can instantly be seen as an act of treachery
in their own countries.
Thus, one often finds
overseas Chinese espousing no overt political cause
except the maximization of profits. Naturally, by
concentrating their energy on wealth-creation, this
endeavor also makes overseas Chinese ever more
vulnerable to internal rivalry and intra-competition.
Stories of rich Chinese tycoons unable to agree on
various political and economic issues are in fact a dime
a dozen.
In an article published in Survival,
David Goodman, a prominent Australian scholar, wrote:
"The integration of China with Taiwan and the ethnic
Chinese of Southeast Asia is unlikely to develop further
in the longer term. Beyond a general - and sometimes
excessively vague - common ancestral background, there
is little uniting the region's Chinese, and the concept
of a community of ethnic Chinese in East and Southeast
Asia all but disappears on closer examination. To the
extent that ethnic-Chinese activity can be identified,
it is in the business world, and in that context the
ethnic Chinese are more divided by their differences
than united by their apparent Chineseness." (Survival,
Winter 1997-98, page 141)
To expect overseas
Chinese, both in Southeast Asia and Taiwan, to foster
the growth of mainland China is to assume that both have
common cause by virtue of their ethnic similarity - and
that their corporate interests will convert into shared
political goals. Yet the fact is, they can't. This is
because overseas Chinese are often divided on many
issues. Perennial questions over market access and
control are enough to knock alleged Chinese commercial
unity to the wayside.
Even if there are
multitudes of overseas-Chinese corporate entities
operating in mainland China or across the entire East
Asian region, their prime motivation is profit-making.
Political involvement only occurs as a matter of
convenience, not conviction based on any sense of
Chineseness.
While referring to overseas Chinese
as "Lords of the (Pacific) Rim", as author Sterling
Seagrave has done, it is thus useful to keep in mind
that wealth does not automatically mean power, any more
than power can be gained by economic means alone.
Professor Wang Gung Wu, who is the leading
authority on the study of overseas Chinese, even called
it "eunuch wealth". By this he meant wealth that cannot
translate naturally into political power, for two
reasons. One, because wealth of overseas Chinese is
gained in an environment without legal and institutional
guarantees. Therefore, just as wealth can be easily made
with the right political connection, it can be taken
away by the state just as quickly. Second, because
overseas Chinese are constantly under the suspicion of
having pro-Beijing allegiances.
To avoid
accusations of being pro-China, overseas Chinese often
do their utmost to respect the wishes of their local
government first. Very rarely do they invest in mainland
China for ethnically inspired reasons.
In short,
anyone assessing the true "power" of the overseas
Chinese must resist the commonsensical, nonetheless
flawed, notion that power means adding material
possessions up. More important, scholars should also
understand that while blood may be thicker than water,
ethnic kinship does not easily convert into an
all-powerful political network.
(©2002 Asia
Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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