Nationalist China in the Postcolonial Philippines: Diasporic Anticommunism, Shared Sovereignty, and Ideological Chineseness, 1945-1970S
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Nationalist China in the Postcolonial Philippines: Diasporic Anticommunism, Shared Sovereignty, and Ideological Chineseness, 1945-1970s Chien Wen Kung Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2018 © 2018 Chien Wen Kung All rights reserved ABSTRACT Nationalist China in the Postcolonial Philippines: Diasporic Anticommunism, Shared Sovereignty, and Ideological Chineseness, 1945-1970s Chien Wen Kung This dissertation explains how the Republic of China (ROC), overseas Chinese (huaqiao), and the Philippines, sometimes but not always working with each other, produced and opposed the threat of Chinese communism from the end of World War II to the mid-1970s. It is not a history of US- led anticommunist efforts with respect to the Chinese diaspora, but rather an intra-Asian social and cultural history of anticommunism and nation-building that liberates two close US allies from US- centric historiographies and juxtaposes them with each other and the huaqiao community that they claimed. Three principal arguments flow from this focus on intra-Asian anticommunism. First, I challenge narrowly territorialized understandings of Chinese nationalism by arguing that Taiwan engaged in diasporic nation-building in the Philippines. Whether by helping the Philippine military identify Chinese communists or by mobilizing Philippine huaqiao in support of Taiwan, the ROC carved out a semi-sovereign sphere of influence for itself within a foreign country. It did so through institutions such as schools, the Kuomintang (KMT), and the Philippine-Chinese Anti-Communist League, which functioned transnationally and locally to embed the ROC into Chinese society and connect huaqiao to Taiwan. Through these groups, the ROC shaped the experiences of a national community beyond its territorial boundaries and represented itself as the legitimate “China” in the world. Second, drawing upon political theory, I argue that the anticommunist relationship between the ROC, the Philippines, and the Philippine Chinese constituted a form of what I call shared, non- territorial sovereignty. Nationalist China did not secure influence over Chinese in the Philippines by exerting military or economic pressure, as a neocolonial regime might. Vast disparities in power did not obtain between Manila and Taipei, as they did between them and Washington. Rather, for reasons of law, culture, linguistic incapacity, and ideology, the Philippines selectively outsourced the management of its Chinese residents to the ROC. In turn, both depended on the Chinese being able to govern themselves with state support, coercive and otherwise. The Philippine Chinese, as in colonial times, were thus semi-autonomous actors who participated in the construction of shared sovereignty after World War II by forging ties with states to advance their anticommunist agenda. This three-way relationship provides a framework for thinking about postcolonial sovereignty in East Asia that focuses on relations of relative equality between states and the relative autonomy of the Chinese as a minority population, rather than between dominant and dominated or in terms of territory. Nationalist China and the Philippines’ nation-building projects had profound consequences for the Philippine Chinese. While these peoples were in many respects acted upon by the ROC and Philippine states through legal and coercive means, they by no means lacked agency. Rather, they performed their agency as consensual participants in making anticommunism. In focusing on them, the dissertation shifts from international and transnational history to social and cultural history and the history of civic life. Existing scholarship, whether in the social sciences or Sinophone Studies, largely depicts the postcolonial hua subject as a non-ideological businessman or cultural producer. I argue, by contrast, that the overseas Chinese could be eminently ideological and politically active. From informing on suspected Chinese communists to the ROC and Philippine states to proclaiming their loyalties to the ROC and Chiang Kai-shek, anticommunist social practices enabled Philippine huaqiao to come to terms with being legally disadvantaged and ideologically suspect minorities in their country of residence. Unlike racial and cultural Chineseness, which they could or would not give up, they could and did choose to behave ideologically; and in doing so, they legitimized their community to the Philippine state and Filipino society. Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 The Making of Shared Sovereignty: Chinese Intracommunal Conflict and 39 the Rise of the KMT in the Early Postwar Philippines Chapter 2 In the Name of Anticommunism: Chinese Practices of Ideological 80 Accommodation in the Early Cold War Philippines Chapter 3 Making Communists: Mass Arrests, Disinformation, and the Politics of 118 Anticommunism in the Philippines and Taiwan, 1952-1961 Chapter 4 Networking Ideology: Anticommunism and the Restructuring of 164 Philippine-Chinese Society in the 1950s Chapter 5 Experiencing the Nation-State: Philippine-Chinese Visits to Taiwan and 212 the Politics of Transnationalism, 1958-1971 Chapter 6 A Government Within a Government: Nationalist China, the Philippine 255 Military, and the Yuyitungs, 1950-1970 Chapter 7 A Humane Sovereignty: Nationalist China’s Public Relations Campaign in 299 Response to the Yuyitung Affair, 1970-1972 Conclusion 340 Bibliography 350 i Acknowledgements I could not have completed graduate school and this dissertation without the support of so many people, both at Columbia and elsewhere. Adam McKeown was instrumental in bringing me to Columbia and shepherding me through my first year in the Ph.D. program at a time when I had a vague notion about studying transnational anticommunism, but few ideas on how to do so. That I have anchored the project in Chinese diasporic history owes much to his scholarship and to our final conversation in the fall of 2013. Rest in peace, Adam; you are missed. Other Columbia faculty stepped into the breach. Charles Armstrong has encouraged me to think beyond conventional Cold War history and embrace an intra-Asian approach to the broader East Asian region after 1945. Eugenia Lean’s colloquium on modern China in the spring of 2013 transformed how I think about the (Chinese) past. Despite her many other commitments (and Ph.D. students), she found the time to provide detailed and critical feedback on my work and even serve as my joint advisor. If I am no longer doing “old-fashioned diplomatic history” (I hope I am not!) and have come to identify – partially – as a modern Chinese historian, it is because of her. I also want to thank Hang Nguyen for enthusiastically coming on board the committee at a late stage and Matt Connelly and Betsy Blackmar for their suggestions during the initial stages of the project. Research and writing are solitary pursuits; life at Columbia has been anything but. I have been privileged to be surrounded by brilliant and wonderful friends and colleagues in History and East Asian Languages and Cultures who have kept me sane, happy, and intellectually stimulated, including but not limited to: John Chen, Ulug Kuzuoglu, Chris Chang, Clay Eaton, James Gerien- Chen, Colin Jones, Jack Neubauer, John Thompson, Kyoungjin Bae, Victor Petrov, Harun Buljina, Sean O’Neill, Eunsung Cho, Kumhee Cho, Chloe Estep, Allison Bernard, Sayantani Mukherjee, Nataly Shahaf, Ian Shin, Tyler Walker, Dongxin Zou, Manuel Bautista, Adrien Zakar, Yijun Wang, ii Nolan Bensen, Josh Schlachet, Hannah Elmer, and the other members of the entering History Ph.D. cohort of 2011. I wish that I could thank each of you individually, but this list will have to suffice for now. Beyond Columbia, Mike Montesano has been an intellectual mentor since we met over a decade ago in Singapore and I declared my intention then to pursue a Ph.D. in History. Over email, coffee, and meals, he familiarized me with the professional study of Southeast Asia, supported my research since before this project was conceived, and opened more doors for me than I can count. Very early on in my research, Mike introduced me to Carol Hau. She knows my dissertation better than anyone else does as one of the few specialists in the world on the Chinese in the Philippines, and having read and provided perceptive and timely feedback on multiple drafts of all my chapters. I am still astounded at how quickly she returned these drafts to me with comments. In mentioning her, I must also thank Michael Szonyi for agreeing to serve as the second external member of the committee despite his many administrative responsibilities and the two of us having met for only a few minutes at the Association for Asian Studies meeting in 2017. Others from far and wide have commented on different aspects of the dissertation over the last seven years, including Wen-Qing Ngoei, Clark Alejandrino, James Lin, Leow Wei Yi, Masuda Hajimu, Richard Chu, Taomo Zhou, Donald Nonini, Dominic Yang, Julia Strauss, Chu Hong-yuan, Evan Dawley, Kornel Chang, Eric Tagliacozzo, Jojo Abinales, Bill Rowe, Alvin Camba, Yunchen Tian, Henry Chan, Wang Gungwu, Teresita Ang-See, Go Bon Juan, and Benito Lim. Research funding was provided by the History Department at Columbia, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Sasakawa Young Leaders’ Fellowship Fund, Association for Asian Studies’ China and Inner Asia Council, and Confucius China Studies Program. Writeup fellowships from