Los Angeles Language Schools and Competing Chinese Nationalisms

Los Angeles language schools and competing Chinese nationalisms

Calvin N. Ho Department of Sociology University of California, Los Angeles [email protected]

October 2014

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The author would like to thank Rogers Brubaker, Rubén Hernández- León, Ching Kwan Lee, and Roger Waldinger for their valuable comments on previous drafts.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. DGE-1144087.

1 Introduction

Among the first things that a visitor to Zhongshan Chinese School sees are the flags flying at the school gate. This weekend and after-school language institute in Los Angeles’ Chinatown flies the United States flag and the flag of the Republic of China (ROC) at equal height. The two flags are also displayed in the school’s auditorium, where they flank the two sides of the stage; behind the flags are large painted characters for a slogan from ROC leader Chiang Kai-shek’s anti-communist New Life Movement. Decorations, computers, and other objects inside the building are labelled with plaques or stickers indicating that they were donations from the ROC government’s diaspora commission. The school’s apparent loyalty to the ROC is enacted in administrative- and classroom- level practices as well as being visually displayed through symbols like these. At assemblies in the auditorium, students sing the ROC national anthem and bow in the direction of the ROC flag. School administrators invite ROC officials passing by the neighbourhood to give speeches, and volunteer students and parents for interviews on state television programs about the successes of the ROC’s diaspora language programs. While Zhongshan’s prominent displays of ROC symbols and active engagement with the ROC government suggest strong ties to the state and an unequivocal belief that the ROC is the legitimate homeland, observations inside the classroom and conversations with teachers, administrators, parents, and students suggest otherwise. Indeed, the rival People’s Republic of China (PRC) features far more prominently in their lived experiences. Most of the adults involved in the school are recent immigrants from the PRC, and most of the students have family members living in the PRC. The school uses politically charged textbooks from PRC state presses and teaches the PRC’s official writing system. Upper-level administrators have even visited the PRC as guests of the state. Given the ROC and PRC’s history of conflict and mutual non-recognition of the other’s claim to sovereignty, how can Zhongshan continue to receive ROC support while making significant overtures to the PRC? How are other ROC-affiliated language schools in Los Angeles managing the existence of ‘two Chinas’, and how has that changed over time with evolving geopolitical and demographic conditions? Theories of diaspora engagement suggest that diaspora organizations and homeland states are constantly negotiating about the position of the diasporic groups with respect to the homeland (Cohen 2011; Lainer-Vos 2010). This negotiation becomes more complicated in a case like this one, where there are multiple states that can claim to be the state of the homeland. Drawing from documentary sources and ethnographic fieldwork, I trace the relationship between the ROC, PRC, and Los Angeles-area Chinese language schools since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. I contend that the presence of an alternative homeland state acts as an external constraint on the relationship between the ROC and the language schools affiliated with it. While the schools may be symbolically and materially dependent on the ROC, the ROC does not control them. The schools’ structural position vis-à-vis the ROC and PRC creates opportunities to change the power dynamic between homeland state and diaspora organization. The schools can use the PRC’s claim to being the legitimate homeland state of Chinese people as leverage to cede concessions from the ROC.

Theoretical Framework

Following Brubaker (2005), the use of the term ‘diaspora’ in this paper refers to populations that are dispersed across states, oriented towards a territorially-defined homeland, and that have maintained distinct boundaries between themselves and the host population(s). Diasporas are very often fragmented along political, ethnic, linguistic, regional, or socioeconomic lines (Gabaccia 2000). Diaspora engagement projects are state-led initiatives to

2 encourage populations living abroad to act in the interest of the homeland. While much of the diaspora engagement literature focuses on economic projects (e.g. remittances), diaspora engagement also includes lobbying receiving country governments, fomenting long distance nationalism, and other forms of political participation (Østergaard-Nielsen 2003a; Sherman 1999; Bauböck 2003). Political diaspora engagement is broadly structured by the homeland state's domestic politics, its position in the international system, and its diaspora’s ability to engage in transnational politics (Smith 2003). Political diaspora engagement projects led by homeland states have potential implications for geopolitical change. This type of engagement puts migrants and other diasporans at the heart of relations between states. Some countries wish to take advantage of diasporans’ presence abroad by encouraging them to advocate for the homeland in their political practice, much as the Jewish American lobby for Israel has done (Østergaard-Nielsen 2003b). Building diasporic nationalist consciousness is often a prerequisite for creating this lobby, and states have tried to stoke the nationalist fire by involving themselves in diasporic organizations, media, and education (Choate 2007; Şenay 2012). The world is primarily organized along territorial boundaries by states that claim a monopoly on legitimate violence within these bounds (Weber 2013; Ragazzi 2009; Agnew 2005). States generally do not have the institutional capacity to coerce organizations outside of their territory, and thus must build relationships with organizations to engage with diaspora populations. Resource dependency theory proposes that all organizations depend on outside resources for survival. They obtain these resources through negotiations with other organizations. An organization that controls a particular resource thus enters a relationship of dominance over an organization that requires this resource (Casciaro and Piskorski 2005; Rao, Brown, and Perkins 2007; Pfeffer and Salancik 1978). To reduce risk in resource acquisition, the subordinate party may attempt to restructure the nature of the dependency through co- optation, merger, or other tactics (Casciaro and Piskorski 2005). One potential tactic to restructure dependency is through two-step leverage, in which the dependent party forms a relationship with a third party that may constrain the controlling party. Thus, the dependent party is able to use the relationship with the third party as leverage against the party that controls the resources it requires (Gargiulo 1993).

Case Selection

The case of the ROC and the Chinese diaspora is particularly useful for the development of theories of diaspora engagement because of the long history of institutionalized state- diaspora organization relations and because of the existence of ‘two Chinas’ since 1949. The ROC's Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission (OCAC), formally established in 1926, was among the earliest systematic efforts by migrant sending states to insert themselves in the concerns of overseas subjects. OCAC's involvement in Chinese diaspora affairs has persisted throughout all of the internal upheaval that the ROC has experienced since the early years of the Republic: the loss of the Chinese Civil War to the Communists and the subsequent retreat to Taiwan in 1949; military dictatorship on Taiwan from 1949-1987; and democratization and the rise of the Taiwan independencei movement since 1987. Since 1949, both the PRC and the ROC have claimed to be the legitimate government of all of China's historical territory and to be the homeland state of all Chinese people. However, until the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the PRC had largely retreated from diaspora affairs, leaving the ROC to drum up diaspora organizations' support for its claim to China in the polarized Cold War context. The PRC began to reach out to the diaspora again after the Cultural Revolution. For diaspora organizations, this meant that since 1976 there have been two homeland governments vying for their attention and loyalty, a possibility that is generally not accounted for in theorizations of diaspora-state relations.

3 Language schools have been a central part of Chinese diaspora policy since the early 1900s (Lai 2000a, 2001; Liang 2000; Lai 2000b, 2006). Successive Chinese governments have treated language schools as spaces for the creation of Overseas Chinese diasporic subjects. Language schools are important sites for socialization with coethnics and for the building of social and cultural capital (Zhou and Li 2003; Zhou and Kim 2006; Nieto 2007). They bring migrants and their children together for explicit cultural and ideological instruction, guided by textbooks provided by the state.

Method

This paper draws from primary and secondary documentary sources, one and a half years of participant observation in Los Angeles, and in-depth, semi-structured interviews in Los Angeles and Taipei. Documentary sources included OCAC publications, ROC legislative records, and the schools’ publications, records, and web sites. From January 2012 to July 2013, I was a participant observer at three non-profit, ROC-affiliated Chinese language schools in the Los Angeles area. I worked in Chinatown at Zhongshan Chinese School, the oldest Chinese language school in the region, from January 2012 to February 2013. During the same time frame, I also worked at Pacific Beach Chinese Academy, the second oldest Los Angeles Chinese school. From March to July 2013, I worked at Las Palmas Chinese School, a newer school in an affluent Los Angeles suburb run by an OCAC employee. At all of the schools, I started off as an observer and volunteer. Zhongshan hired me in the summer as the principal's assistant and substitute teacher. Las Palmas also eventually hired me as a substitute teacher. At all of the schools I was able to observe classes, student assemblies, and class meetings, and also engage administrators, teachers, and parents in semi-structured interviews. In addition to the fieldwork at the school, I attended language school-related seminars and meetings organized by the de facto ROC consulates in Southern California and interviewed OCAC bureaucrats in Los Angeles and Taipei.ii

The ROC, the PRC, and the diaspora since 1949

The ROC’s diaspora engagement has been framed by the ROC-PRC conflict for most of the ROC’s history. Even when the PRC was closed off to the diaspora and did not involve itself in Overseas Chinese affairs, ROC diaspora engagement was fundamentally framed around the PRC conflict. When the PRC began to reach out to Overseas Chinese after the end of the Cultural Revolution, the PRC conflict continued to circumscribe ROC-diaspora relations, though the ROC rhetoric was less explicit than in the previous period. What makes the PRC circumscription of ROC-diaspora relations unique is the significant power and size imbalance between the two states. Since 1949 the territory and population under ROC control was several times smaller than that under PRC rule. Beginning in the 1970s, with the PRC’s opening up to the non-communist world and the delegitimization of ROC sovereignty, the PRC began to play a much larger geopolitical role while the ROC became a liminal world actor. Finally, the PRC’s rapid economic ascendancy after market-oriented reforms in the 1990s has left Taiwan economically marginal, as well. The historical concomitance of the PRC and the ROC and the disparity in scale and clout between them has created a dynamic where the PRC is a major determinant of ROC action, even when the PRC itself is not actively involving itself in ROC affairs.

The golden age of ROC ideological power in the diaspora (1949 to 1976)

The mutual dependence between the ROC and Overseas Chinese communities began even before the establishment of the Republic. Overseas Chinese leadership, troops, and

4 financing were instrumental in the overthrow of the last imperial Chinese dynasty in 1911 and the establishment of the ROC in 1912. Spearheaded by Sun Yat-sen, himself a diasporan who had lived in Hawaii, Chinese living overseas sent funds to support the revolution and cultivated political support for the newfound republic and its governing Chinese Nationalist Party. In recognition of Overseas Chinese support of the revolution, the Nationalists established the OCAC and charged it with developing and maintaining ties with the diaspora. The Nationalists lost the Chinese Civil War (1927-1950), resulting in the founding of the PRC on the Chinese mainland by the Chinese Communist Party and the retreat of the Nationalists and the ROC to Taiwan. In the United States, Chinatown elites remained loyal to the ROC, and the influx of refugees sympathetic to the Nationalists cemented the strong ties between American Chinatowns and the ROC on Taiwan (Lai 2010). While the ROC embraced Overseas Chinese and has seen them as a strategic asset since the beginning, the PRC's relationship with Overseas Chinese has undergone many tumultuous changes. From the founding of the PRC in 1949 to the end of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party ignored Overseas Chinese affairs (Zhou and Liu 2013). During the Cultural Revolution, the state claimed that Overseas Chinese were unpatriotic and persecuted their family members and associates in Mainland China (Peterson 2012). The PRC’s absence gave space for the ROC to organize the diaspora as the sole homeland state actor. Though the PRC did not actively involve itself in Overseas Chinese affairs until after the Cultural Revolution, it was latently present in US Chinatowns because the ROC’s diaspora activities were organized around the ROC-PRC conflict. After the end of the war, the official ROC defence goal was to take back the Mainland. In Chinese communities in the US, Cold War anti-communist politics allowed Nationalist sympathizers to cultivate pro-ROC, anti-Mainland sentiments among their co-ethnics. The US recognized the ROC, then under the dictatorship of the Nationalists on Taiwan, as the legitimate government of all of China. During the McCarthy era, when the US government put suspected communist sympathizers under intense scrutiny, Nationalist supporters among the elites of US Chinatowns claimed their neighbourhoods for ‘free China’ and the anti-communist Nationalist Party. At the same time, the PRC’s lack of interest in Overseas Chinese affairs allowed the Nationalists to monopolize the homeland attachments of Chinese in the US. The Chinatown Consolidated Benevolent Associations (CCBA), the powerful umbrella organizations of Chinese groups in a number of US Chinatowns, worked closely with OCAC and Nationalist representatives from Taiwan to squash leftist opposition within the Chinese immigrant community (De Bary and Nee 1976). They used Chinese language schools, an important educational and childcare service for the community, to spread pro-ROC propaganda coming out of Taiwan (Lai 2001). Textbooks extolled the virtues of ROC leaders and told students that they were expected to serve the Chinese nation. Chinese language schools were a key link in the relationship of mutual dependence between Chinatown organizations and the ROC government. For the ROC government, ideological control over this important socializing institution allowed them to create Chinese subjects abroad, with the goal of fomenting pro-ROC, anti-communist political activity among diasporans in the US. For CCBA, the financial support was invaluable in providing vital social services to a working-class immigrant community that was socially and politically marginal within the society of reception. The absence of the PRC and the Cold War anti-communist political climate in the US additionally cemented the ROC-Chinese school relationship and gave the ROC the power to mould the schools and their curriculum to meet foreign policy goals.

The PRC rises (1976 to the present)

Both the PRC and the ROC required foreign states to relinquish ties with the ‘other China’ as a condition of bilateral relations. In 1950, the ratio of the number of states that had

5 diplomatic relations with the ROC to the number that had relations with the PRC was 1.91:1. By 2004, this had dropped to 0.16:1 (Wang 2007). The most rapid change happened in the 1970s, following the United Nations recognition of the PRC and expulsion of the ROC in 1971. The US de-recognized the ROC in 1979 after President Richard Nixon's trip to Beijing in 1972. The loss of official recognition essentially amounted to the loss of sovereignty for the ROC. In the absence of widespread official recognition as a legitimate sovereign state, the ROC was now forced to remind the world that it still existed as a separate political entity (Corcuff 2012). Without the usual diplomatic channels, ‘soft’ diplomacy became paramount in importance. Acknowledging that it must exist in the PRC's shadow, the ROC government has come to focus on ‘raising Taiwan’s international visibility’ (Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission 2012). The presence of ROC flags, consular offices, political party offices, and cultural centres in Chinatowns in Los Angeles and other major Western cities is a manifestation of this quest for recognition. However, as the ROC has no direct control over organizations abroad, it must cultivate its longstanding relationships with these organizations and convince them that they should cooperate with the state in maintaining these highly visible symbols. Before World War II, Chinese migrants in the US were primarily working-class men from parts of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong (formerly Canton) province. During the Cold War, the composition of Chinese immigration to the US began to diversify. The US Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Taiwan's explosive economic growth from the 1960s-1980s, refugee crises of the Vietnam War in the 1970s, and the liberalization of emigration from the PRC in the late 1980s all brought new flows of ethnic Chinese of different class backgrounds, geographic origin, and political circumstances. Migrants continued to settle in Los Angeles' Chinatown, but most had no connection to Taiwan or the ROC. Of more interest to ROC authorities were the affluent, well educated, and well-connected emigrants from post-Civil War Taiwan. Many came to the US for graduate studies and settled in predominantly white suburbs, away from the working-class Cantonese in Chinatowns. In Southern California, these students and the entrepreneurs and investors who followed them turned the San Gabriel Valley suburbs east of Los Angeles into a sprawling ‘ethnoburb’ with a thriving economy catering to middle- and upper-class Taiwanese and Chinese (Li 2009). They created their own Chinese language schools separate from the Chinatown schools, teaching in Mandarin instead of Cantonese. These migrants and the schools they set up for their children became a new focus for OCAC because not only did they have the financial, social, and cultural capital to act in Taiwan's interest in Taiwan and in the US, but also because supporting them was also politically uncontroversial in Taiwan. Starting with the beginning of the democratization process in the late 1980s, domestic political upheavals in Taiwan led to the distancing of OCAC from Chinatown communities in the United States and other Western countries. The ROC’s grip on diaspora organizations loosened just as the PRC began to reach out to them. In 1977, with Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Four Modernizations’ reform program, the PRC began to embrace Overseas Chinese as a source of remittances and foreign direct investment. Family members of emigrants were politically rehabilitated and returnees were given special rights, in hopes of attracting more Overseas Chinese capital (Thunø 2001; Barabantseva 2005). The state now promotes emigration has a patriotic act (Nyíri 2001). In the three decades since the PRC’s rapprochement with Overseas Chinese, the state has developed a large infrastructure at multiple levels of government to handle diaspora affairs (Barabantseva 2005).

The PRC as constraint on ROC-diaspora relationship today

Before the end of the Cultural Revolution, the PRC constrained the ROC-diaspora organization relationship passively, in that the PRC did not actively step into diaspora affairs. The ROC shaped its diaspora project around the perceived PRC threat to the ROC’s geopolitical sovereignty and to the Chinese nation. When the PRC opened up to Overseas

6 Chinese after 1976, it began to constrain the ROC-diaspora organization relationship actively, by co-opting organizations and encouraging them to switch allegiances. However, the PRC’s passive constraint continued, given the PRC’s continued claim over Taiwan and the imbalance in population size and geopolitical clout between the two states.

Passive constraint: from ‘Chinese’ to ‘compatriots’ and back again

The PRC’s claim to be the government of China has continued to be a passive constrain the ROC-diaspora relationship. Much of the ROC’s activities in diaspora communities have been in response to perceived PRC threats. For example, the ROC continues to use language school curricula as a counter to the PRC’s attempted monopolization of Chinese language and culture education abroad. However, the PRC’s claim to China has gained new dimensions since Taiwan’s democratization in the 1990s. Just as the PRC’s claim to China strengthened through near-universal diplomatic recognition, pro-independence parties in the ROC began to repudiate that state’s claim. This resulted in more equivocal support for diaspora organizations such as language schools, as these organizations often served populations with no ties to Taiwan. As a unit of the executive branch of government, OCAC saw dramatic changes during the first non-Nationalist Party presidency in ROC history. Under pro-Taiwan independence president Chen Shui-bian (2000-8), OCAC's English name changed from Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission to Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission.iii OCAC began to focus on Taiwanese emigrant communities at the expense of Chinese communities with no connection to the island. This was in line with the Taiwan independence movement’s goal of refocusing government priorities on Taiwan and Taiwanese people as opposed to China and Chinese people (Wang 2004). In late 2012 under Nationalist president Ma Ying-jeou, OCAC quietly changed its name back to ‘Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission,’ provoking fierce opposition from the Taiwan independence movement. Pro-independence legislators argued that the word ‘Chinese’ implied that Taiwan was part of China, and that the current name was too easily confused with the PRC's equivalent office, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council. In a legislative hearing about this name change, pro-independence politician Hsiao Bi-khim articulated the party’s concern with spending state resources on non-Taiwanese:

Hsiao: Those Chinese people in Chinatowns, the illegal immigrants overseas, the Chinese people all over the world, they all say they're Chinese. They're going to want you to serve them!

Wu: We only serve those who identify with Taiwan and with the Republic of China.

Hsiao: They say Taiwan is theirs. Of course they identify with it. They say Taiwan is part of their country. They want you to serve them because you are part of them! (Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China 2012)iv

As a result of this debate over OCAC's English name, the Legislative Yuan cut the commission's budget and forced it to change its English name to the more neutral ‘Overseas Community Affairs Commission’. OCAC’s three English name changes in 12 years and the controversies surrounding the changes demonstrate how the PRC’s passive constraint operates on the ROC-diaspora relationship in the post-Cultural Revolution, post-Taiwan democratization era. The ROC continues to shape its diaspora policy with the PRC in mind, as emigration from the PRC and

7 the PRC’s diaspora engagement projects come into contact with OCAC and the organizations that it supports. Democratic politics in the ROC led to the strengthening of the Taiwan independence movement, which is anti-PRC in a slightly different way. In addition to decrying the PRC claim to Taiwan, Taiwan independence politicians aim to separate the island from all claims to China, resulting in less domestic political support for organizations serving Overseas Chinese.

Active constraint: symbolic and material co-optation

In addition to constraining the ROC-diaspora relationship by its presence on the regional and world stage, since the end of the Cultural Revolution the PRC has also begun constraining this relationship by co-opting ROC-allied organizations. This co-optation occurs through symbolic inclusion of these organizations in PRC rhetoric and through material exchanges such as the exchange of funds. An example of the former is the listing of ROC-supported language schools on PRC lists of Chinese language programmes. For example, the first thing I noticed on Las Palmas’ web site before my first visit there was a bolded line in English and Chinese that said that the school has absolutely no relationship to the Confucius Institute, one of the PRC’s most prominent cultural diplomacy programmes. When I arrived at the school, I asked Principal Tsai about this and she became very animated. She said that while she was president of the Southern California Council of Chinese Schools, the umbrella organization for ROC-affiliated Chinese language schools in Southern California, a member discovered that the Confucius Institute's web site linked to the home pages of all of the schools in the Council. She and the other officials in the Council saw this as an affront to their homeland’s sovereignty. In an extension of their claim that Taiwan rightfully belonged to the PRC, the PRC was claiming Taiwanese American language schools as their own. As president of the Council, she mobilized the schools to e-mail the Confucius Institute with their complaints and threatened legal action against the Institute. However, the Confucius Institute did not back down, and there were no grounds for a lawsuit. The bolded line on the school home page was the last remnant of this fight for Taiwanese sovereignty writ small. In addition to these symbolic attempts to include ROC-affiliated organizations within the PRC diaspora and foreign policy programme, the PRC also offers language programme support through the Confucius Institute and Hanban (the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language). Confucius Institute and Hanban support were particularly attractive for some administrators at Pacific Beach, a highly diverse school with many administrators who did not speak Chinese and had no previous ties to China or Taiwan. Chinese-speaking, Taiwan- born administrators ensured that school received textbook subsidies from OCAC and that the teachers attended OCAC’s semi-annual teacher training events. Meanwhile, non-Chinese speaking administrators had tried to get PRC support but ran up against language difficulties and lack of enthusiasm from the Taiwanese administrators. Nancy, a non-Chinese speaking administrator and my main contact at Pacific Beach, told me that she was looking to see if Hanban could be a potential source of funds for the consistently cash-strapped school. She found that all of the application materials were in Chinese, and was unsuccessful in getting Chinese-speaking administrators to help her apply. When I asked Shiran, the Taiwanese principal, about sources of external support, she openly acknowledged funding from OCAC and from the US government's STARTALK program for ‘national security languages.’ As for funding from the PRC:

‘We haven't got any connections with the government from Mainland China for some historical reasons, because our school was first built by families from Taiwan. We didn't go out of our way

8 to expand to both governments yet. I don't know what it will be like in the future because now our population comes from both sides. I can envision that will be the future.’

The two schools could not ignore the PRC’s active presence in the diaspora language school field. The PRC introduced itself into the relationship between the ROC and its affiliated language schools by symbolically including these schools in PRC projects and offering similar kinds of funding and support. Though the administrators continued to have personal and political reservations about engaging with the PRC, the PRC’s active presence observably shaped their operations.

Leveraging the PRC against the ROC

The PRC’s entry into the diaspora field since the Cultural Revolution has opened up possibilities to leverage the PRC’s claim to homeland status for concessions from the ROC. My participant observation in the schools revealed several instances of two-step leverage, all of which were organizational responses to material demands on the ground. The PRC’s presence and activities at the macro level shaped the lived realities of administrators, teachers, parents, and students, and the schools had to compromise on the ROC political line in order to meet the needs of these actors living across the Pacific.

Orthography and the politicization of language

Chinese language programs in the US must confront the politicization of language in the PRC and the ROC and the pluralistic reality of the US context. The PRC and the ROC both span multilingual regions and have set Standard Mandarin (an artificially constructed standard language based on the Mandarin dialect of Beijing) as the state's official spoken language and the ‘proper’ language to teach and use in schools. While the differences between the PRC and ROC spoken standards are minimal, the written language has deviated significantly since the 1950s, when the PRC enacted a significant orthographic reform. Thus, Chinese language programs abroad must decide whether to teach the ROC's ‘orthodox’ (‘traditional’)v characters or the PRC's ‘simplified’ characters. ROC authorities do not explicitly condone the teaching of simplified characters in diaspora schools that they support. Much of their language-related activities in diaspora communities heavily emphasize traditional characters. For example, OCAC sponsors festivals around the world celebrating traditional characters. Las Palmas hosted the Los Angeles event, where ROC dignitaries and local Taiwanese American officials demonstrated their traditional character calligraphy skills to an audience of schoolchildren. At a workshop for Chinese school administrators, an OCAC official emphasized that the diaspora schools helped to ‘bring our traditional, orthodox Chinese language education to the mainstream community’, while his co- presenter gave a short lecture about the problems with simplified script:

Let's take 愛 (love) for example. Does 爱 in simplified have a 心 (heart) in it? From this example, you can see the nature of the characters Mao Zedong created.

However, even as they push traditional characters and criticize simplified as a potent symbol of communist cultural corruption, OCAC quietly tolerates simplified character instruction as long as it is done in tandem with instruction in traditional. The reason had surfaced earlier in the workshop, when the OCAC official voiced the organization’s concern that declining Taiwanese immigration was leading to declining demand for Taiwanese-run schools. (The

9 unmentioned subtext was that immigration from the PRC was increasing rapidly at the same time.) Indeed, Las Palmas and Pacific Beach had begun to teach two separate tracks of classes (one for traditional and one for simplified) because of the changing demographics of their service areas. Many of the students in these two schools were children of PRC migrants or were from non-Chinese families with an interest in the PRC, who wanted their children to learn simplified. Furthermore, the arrival of highly educated PRC women migrants, many of whom were on spousal visas that did not allow them to work in the formal economy, created a pool of potential language teachers who were willing to volunteer or work in exchange for the small honoraria that the schools provided to teachers. Given the changing demographic context, both Las Palmas and Pacific Beach had decided to integrate simplified characters into the curriculum. The two schools both had separate tracks of classes for traditional and simplified characters. While one simplified class at Pacific Beach used a textbook published in Singapore by an international publishing conglomerate, nearly all of the other classes at both schools used the MeiZhou Chinese series of books written by Taiwanese American teachers and sponsored by OCAC. Tellingly, OCAC only provided its 59 per cent subsidy for the traditional character versions of the book. The orthographic issue is, in many ways, the conflictive relationship between the ROC, diaspora organizations, and the PRC in a microcosm. The ROC has a strong, politically potent preference for the use of traditional characters. Because the schools are independent non- profits in a different country, the ROC lacks the power to force the schools to follow its directives, it expresses this preference through messaging as well as material support in the form of textbook subsidies for approved traditional character textbooks. The schools respond to these incentives, but also to local pressures to teach simplified characters. The PRC's growing economic and political power is both a direct and indirect cause of these local pressures: direct through the increase in non-Chinese with an interest in China and its language, and indirect through increased emigration to the US.

Taking from both sides

In 2008, newly elected ROC president Ma attempted to merge OCAC into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Los Angeles CCBA, the umbrella organization in charge of Zhongshan, feared that this merger portended a reduction in ROC support for their activities and began an intense lobbying campaign against the move. They wrote letters to Taiwan and made public statements about how this merger would negatively affect Overseas Chinese. The Ma administration attempted to quell discontent by sending the diaspora minister to Los Angeles to explain the government’s position with community leaders. CCBA representatives refused to attend the meeting, instead sending a letter explaining the ‘grave consequences’ of the ministerial reorganization. Eventually, Ma relented and cancelled the merger. In their anniversary yearbook, CCBA wrote of this incident:

Overseas compatriots are the indispensable force that contributed to the success of the revolution of the Republic in the early 20th Century. The ROC government should not efface their sacrifice and patriotism in the process of losing a powerful support base. The pressure put upon Ma Ying-jeou's government by overseas Chinese on this subject is constructive and of good intention. (Ng 2009)

‘Grave consequences’ and ‘losing a powerful support base’ are euphemistic references to alignment with the PRC. CCBA did not just threaten to build ties with the PRC. In fact, it had sent representatives to Beijing as guests of the state on several occasions (Zhou and Lee 2013).

10 However, there were no repercussions from the state despite regular monitoring in the form of visits from ROC officials, OCAC journalists, and the ROC-allied Southern California Council of Chinese Schools. CCBA was dependent on ROC funding for its programs and the ROC was dependent on CCBA symbolic support of its claim to sovereignty and statehood. However, CCBA was based across the Pacific, outside of the bounds of the ROC's infrastructural power. From its distant location, CCBA could raise the spectre of the PRC as leverage against the ROC, and in doing so was able to receive the concession that it wanted: maintenance of the institutional status quo. While these are a very public, organizational-level attempts to play the two sides of the Taiwan Strait against each other, Zhongshan also takes from both sides at the classroom level. For example, from September to June the school uses textbooks from a PRC state press; ROC books are only used in July and August, when educational standards are lower. These PRC textbooks use simplified characters only and emphasize a PRC political point of view, much like martial law-era books from the ROC (Nieto 2007). One chapter in the 11th level textbook featured Tan Kah Kee, a businessman born in Qing-era Fujian province who became rich in British colonial Singapore. Tan eventually returned to Communist China, bringing his wealth with him.

‘On October 1, 1949, Tan Kah Kee was invited up to the Tiananmen tower for the ceremony marking the foundation of the People’s Republic of China. With his own eyes, he saw the five- starred red flag rise solemnly as the majestic national anthem played. He felt deeply the pride of being a Chinese person; at the same time, he felt a great sense of duty. After the PRC was founded, he held one [political] office after another… He threw himself fervently into the project of creating a new China.’ (Jinan Daxue Huawen Xueyuan 2007a, 32)

The unmistakable message here is that overseas Chinese should return to and invest in the homeland state project, as Tan had done. This is one of a number of lessons in the series that would be objectionable from the standpoint of ROC politics. In a 5th level lesson about the PRC's first manned spaceflight, the authors listed ‘crop seeds from China's Treasure Island-- Taiwan’ among the items the astronaut brought with him to space (Jinan Daxue Huawen Xueyuan 2007b, 72). This nonchalant claim that Taiwan belongs to China would be fiercely challenged in Taiwan. The use of simplified characters and PRC textbooks is not unsurprising given the demographic makeup of the actors in the school. Most of the teachers, administrators, and parents of students are recent immigrants from the PRC. At one point a teacher had asked the students about their relatives ‘back home,’ and nearly all of them spoke of grandparents or parents who had stayed behind in Guangdong. Some of the students were born in the US, while others were recent immigrants who had been schooled and socialized in the PRC. For example, during recess I had observed a group of boys who proclaimed themselves as ‘soldiers of the [PRC’s] People’s Liberation Army’ and paraded around the parking lot in military step. In Taipei, I asked OCAC Secretary General Chang Liang-min about the possibility of schools taking resources from both the PRC and the ROC, as Zhongshan has done. After avoiding the question for several minutes, he eventually spoke metonymically of ‘taking down the flag of this side of the [Taiwan] Strait’:

If they wanted to take down [the ROC] flag, they would have to think about the heritage of their ancestors and the meaning of the flag. Why did their ancestors raise [the ROC] flag to begin with? I

11 think they would regret [taking the flag down]. If they value the meaning of the flag for their ancestors, if they value freedom and democracy, if they acknowledge that their fate is linked with that of the ROC and that it is something that they cannot shake, they will keep the flag flying.

The ROC’s dependence on Zhongshan and CCBA’s symbolic capital explains why the ROC has not retaliated against them for making overtures to the PRC. If Zhongshan were to sever ties with the ROC, the ROC would be the loser in the relationship given that maintaining visible ties to overseas supporters is a central part of ROC diaspora policy and foreign policy. Zhongshan and other CCBA programs provide a highly visible symbolic presence for the ROC in the US. Because symbolic gestures are so important to the ROC in the absence of recognized sovereignty and direct control over the diaspora, OCAC has a clear incentive to maintain these ties to Zhongshan, even as it is aware that it cannot force the school to reject engagement with the PRC.

Discussion

The power dynamics in the relationship between homeland states and diaspora organizations is changeable and historically contingent. While common sense may suggest that the homeland government is the controlling actor when the organizations are financially dependent on it, under certain circumstances the diaspora organizations may be able to shift the balance of power in their favour. The way in which Chinese language schools in Los Angeles leverage the PRC against the ROC is one mechanism by which diaspora organizations can gain leverage over the homeland. By making explicit or implicit overtures to the alternative homeland state, these schools were able to extract concessions from OCAC, which was heavily invested in maintaining the schools’ support. The relationship between homeland and diaspora does not exist in a vacuum. Exogenous political and economic factors constrain actions on both sides, but also create opportunities for rebalancing power. While previous work has argued that states must build national consciousness in the diaspora before being able to take advantage of the ‘overseas nation’ for their political and economic ends, the preceding analysis suggests that diasporic persons and organizations may negotiate their own position in the homeland’s diaspora project and can co-opt this project to meet their own needs. This paper follows one set of homeland-diaspora relationships over time. Further research could explore the historical and political contingency of these relationships through comparisons across other axes of variation. For example, the fact that the US is a global superpower could have increased the amount of attention that OCAC gave to these schools. Homeland states would most likely forge different kinds of relationships with diaspora organizations in different receiving countries. Additionally, while a receiving country may give all diasporic groups a similar political opportunity structure, different diasporic groups may not be able to gain leverage in their relations with the homeland in the same way.

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i ‘Taiwan independence’ means the establishment of a Republic of Taiwan on Taiwan for a Taiwanese nation (and thus the disavowal of the ROC and its claims to Chinese territory and the Chinese nation). ii As the US does not formally recognize the ROC's sovereignty, all diplomatic relations are handled through ostensibly non-governmental organizations. iii The Chinese name uses the word qiao, which means ‘diaspora.’ It does not refer to China explicitly and thus remains uncontroversial. iv My translation. Hsiao said the underlined words in English, while the rest of the exchange was in Mandarin. While the English terms ‘Chinese’ and ‘Chinatown’ are relatively unambiguous, Mandarin terms such as huaren (Chinese) and huabu (Chinatown) are especially ambiguous in a Taiwanese context, as hua refers to Chinese culture and civilization rather than to China as a political entity. v In common Chinese language use, orthodox characters are known as fantizi (lit. complex characters). To avoid the stigma of complexity and to insinuate that simplified characters are improper, ROC official usage prefers zhengtizi (lit. orthodox characters).