ISSCO conference takes up what Chinese living overseas face today

By Patrick Brown
December 23, 2024
Some of the participants at ISSCO’s 14th regional conference Nov. 8 in Bandung, Indonesia.Discussion was underpinned by China’s increased economic, military weight in Southeast Asia.
Some of the participants at ISSCO’s 14th regional conference Nov. 8 in Bandung, Indonesia.Discussion was underpinned by China’s increased economic, military weight in Southeast Asia.

BANDUNG, Indonesia — The impact on overseas Chinese communities of Beijing’s increased economic and military weight in Southeast Asia underpinned discussions at the 14th regional conference of the International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas held here Nov. 7-8. 

Since 1992 ISSCO has organized conferences, from Southeast Asia to North America, to promote the study of the history of Chinese living overseas, including their struggles against prejudice and discrimination. 

In the opening speech, professor Leo Suryadinata from Singapore said Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative — a multibillion-dollar network of loans and construction projects in over 70 countries — “reflects China’s rising power.” 

For its part, Washington has sought to aggressively counter Beijing’s challenge by expanding military collaboration with governments in the region, including those of Japan, Australia, South Korea and the Philippines. 

Overseas Chinese communities increasingly find themselves caught in the middle of these conflicts. 

One example is the frame-up of Philip Chan Man Ping, a businessman from Singapore. Suryadinata said that after observing a parliamentary session in China, Chan was designated by officials in Singapore as a “politically significant person” under the country’s Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act. Chan now has to give an annual account of his political activities to authorities. Penalties for breaching the act include up to 14 years in prison. 

‘Fifth column’ accusations

In the discussion at the second plenary session, Steve Penner, a leader of the Communist League in Canada, pointed to Suryadinata’s description of the prosecution of Chan in Singapore. 

“The Foreign Interference Act sounds familiar to me,” Penner said, since the Canadian government has introduced a new law with a similar purpose, establishing a registry of “foreign agents” and making it a crime to act on behalf of another government. 

“In Canada, as in the United States,” Penner said, “Chinese academics have effectively been accused of being ‘fifth columnists’ whose loyalty is to China, simply on the basis of their nationality and sometimes their collaboration with other academics and scientists in China. This is supposed to make them a security threat.” 

Long history of migration

Driven out of southern China by poverty and war in the 19th and 20th centuries, working people settled in many countries around the globe, professor Danny Wong Tze Ken from Malaysia told the conference. Generations of this diaspora faced brutal working and living conditions. 

In another feature presentation, Thung Ju Lan of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences addressed how these challenges were experienced in Indonesia. From the 17th century, Chinese immigrants worked in slave-like conditions in Dutch colonial plantations and mines on Java and Kalimantan. Legal restrictions on housing and interracial marriage, among other measures, reinforced discrimination. 

After a decadeslong independence struggle forced the Dutch colonial rulers out of Indonesia, the bourgeois nationalist government of Sukarno came to power in 1945. It maintained discrimination against the Chinese. 

This deepened under the regime of Gen. Suharto, established after the military-led massacre of hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants and its crushing of the Maoist Communist Party of Indonesia in 1965. 

Suharto’s regime forced Chinese Indonesians to carry special identification and adopt Indonesian names. It  banned cultural displays, like the celebration of the Lunar New Year. Chinese-language schools were closed. 

Suharto resigned in 1998 after protests by hundreds of thousands of workers and students. The worst of his anti-Chinese edicts were abolished. However, as Ju Lan said, prejudice and discrimination are alive and well. Today Chinese companies in Indonesia and the workers from China they bring with them are often blamed for worsening economic conditions. 

One of the panels took up efforts to revive Chinese language and culture in post-Suharto Indonesia. Dimas Krisna Aditya described attempts today to popularize Wayang shadow puppet performances that combine both Javanese and Chinese cultural elements, which were outlawed under Suharto. 

At another panel speakers from the Philippines discussed the blight of the Asian opium trade spread by the British imperialists in Asia in the 19th century. It caused “large-scale opium addiction in China, and the Chinese in the Philippines were not exempt,” said Teresita Ang See of the Kaisa Heritage Center in Manila. 

Volunteers from Australia, New Zealand and Canada set up a table of Pathfinder books, which feature titles by Socialist Workers Party leaders, Cuban revolutionaries and others, alongside those of other book vendors and displays of art, crafts and batik clothing.

Our History Is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese Cuban Generals in the Cuban Revolution was the Pathfinder table’s most popular title. It describes their participation in the country’s socialist revolution that brought an end to the decades of discrimination Chinese Cubans faced. 

The Malaya University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, will host the 2025 gathering, the 12th international conference, Nov. 4-6. 

Linda Harris and Steve Penner contributed to this article.