Quest to Transform Southeast Asia } 199
earlier trade links. European rule over many of the lands of Southeast Asia
encouraged the migration of ethnic Chinese to the new colonies for pur-
poses of economic development. The formation of substantial communities
of ethnic Chinese in almost all the lands of Southeast Asia further deepened
commercial relations and the transmission of Chinese ways. By the time the
People’s Republic of China appeared on the scene, ethnic Chinese constituted
about one-quarter of Malaysia’s population, 15 percent of Brunei’s, 8 percent
of Thailand’s, and about 3 percent of Indonesia’s. In most cases, those ethnic
Chinese communities controlled a hugely disproportionate share of the local
economy, often serving as intermediaries between rural farmers and the
urban colonial elites.
As nationalist ideologies began washing across Asia in the twentieth cen-
tury, the ethnic Chinese communities of Southeast Asia had to think through
where their motherland lay. Many identified with China. The revolutionary
movement led by the KMT garnered much support from Southeast Asian
Chinese. So too did China’s long and bitter war of resistance against Japan.
A sharply anti-Chinese edge to Japanese racialist thinking in that era fur-
ther encouraged support for China’s anti-Japan struggle. The KMT and the
CCP set up organizations in Southeast Asia to court support among those
communities—a competition that continues today.
Outspoken identity with China and contribution to China’s various polit-
ical and economic efforts exacerbated suspicions by the non-Chinese native
populations of Southeast Asian countries about the loyalties of local Chinese.
Were they loyal to China or to the countries where they were born (in most
cases) and lived? China’s revolutionary activism in Southeast Asia over a
period of several decades exacerbated these local apprehensions. During the
Bandung period, Beijing sought to reassure Southeast Asian governments
that China had no claim on the loyalties of local ethnic Chinese. With the
revolutionary thrust of the 1960s and 1970s, however, Chinese policy shifted
sharply, with ethnic Chinese communities being mobilized for revolutionary
struggle. After Deng Xiaoping ended the era of revolutionary activism,
Chinese policy shifted again. In the 1980s, Beijing would once again look to
Southeast Asia’s Chinese businessmen to help jump-start China’s opening to
the world economy.
China’s several-decade-long revolutionary thrust in Southeast Asia can
be seen as an attempt to undo the “humiliation” inflicted on China during
the Century of National Humiliation. Prior to the European intrusion in the
nineteenth century, China had been the paramount power in this vast region.
China had been toppled from that region by aggressive Western imperialism.
But now China was rising, was strong once again, and was moving to re-
store its rightful position of regional dominance. But this effort took political
forms of the twentieth century.