Making Malaysian Chinese
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
MAKING MALAYSIAN CHINESE: WAR MEMORY, HISTORIES AND IDENTITIES A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2015 FRANCES TAY SCHOOL OF ARTS, LANGUAGES AND CULTURES Contents Introduction.............................................................................................................. 14 Identity: The Perennial Question ........................................................................ 16 Memory-Work and Identity Construction ............................................................ 17 Silence as a Concept .......................................................................................... 22 Multiple Wars, Multiple Histories......................................................................... 26 Ambiguous Histories, Simplifying Myths ............................................................. 30 Analytic Strategy and Methods ........................................................................... 34 Chapter 1. Historical Context: Chinese as Other .................................................... 38 Heaven-sent Coolies .......................................................................................... 39 Jews of the East.................................................................................................. 41 Irredentists and Subversives .............................................................................. 44 Overseas Chinese Compatriots .......................................................................... 46 Nanyo Kakyo....................................................................................................... 50 Colonisers ........................................................................................................... 56 Chapter 2. Landscape of Terror .............................................................................. 62 Sources and Methodology .................................................................................. 65 Mapping Violence ............................................................................................... 74 Abnormal Times .................................................................................................. 79 Chapter 3. Chinese War Memory and Silences ...................................................... 99 The Making of Silences .................................................................................... 101 Chinese Memory-Work ..................................................................................... 116 Remembering the Dead, Misremembering the War ......................................... 130 Chapter 4. Sites of Memory .................................................................................. 139 National Sites of Memory .................................................................................. 140 Chinese Sites of Memory .................................................................................. 154 Focus Groups ................................................................................................... 166 Chinese War Memory: Which Chinese? ........................................................... 170 Chapter 5. Between Histories and Identities ......................................................... 176 Making Malaysian Chinese ............................................................................... 178 A National History for a National Identity .......................................................... 181 2 The Promise of Bangsa Malaysia ..................................................................... 184 Malaysians or Chinese First? ........................................................................... 185 Diaspora Space: Growing Roots and Falling Leaves ....................................... 195 Walking on Two Roads ..................................................................................... 210 Conclusion............................................................................................................. 214 Bibliography .......................................................................................................... 223 Word Count (including footnotes): 79,699 words 3 Table of Figures Figure 1. Japanese invasion of Malaya.. ................................................................ 11 Figure 2. Japanese Empire in Far East and Southeast Asia, 1942 ........................ 12 Figure 3. Present-day Malaysia. ............................................................................. 13 Figure 4. Foreign rituals on local sites. ................................................................... 25 Figure 5. Three Heinous War Criminals.”. .............................................................. 72 Figure 6. Geographical spread of war crimes ......................................................... 77 Figure 7. Prevalence of war crimes ........................................................................ 78 Figure 8. Distribution of war crimes by ethnicity. .................................................... 78 Figure 9. Exhumations at Bukit Dunbar. ................................................................. 87 Figure 10. "Big Clean Up!" ...................................................................................... 93 Figure 11. “Permission for Burial.” .......................................................................... 96 Figure 12. Counter-insurgency operations during the Malayan Emergency. ....... 106 Figure 13. Four narrators. ..................................................................................... 118 Figure 14. Chan Ai Lin, a Malayan Overseas Chinese martyr. ............................. 125 Figure 15. Exhumation at Parit Tinggi. .................................................................. 133 Figure 16. The exhumed remains at a temporary tomb awaiting burial. .............. 134 Figure 17. Dedication of the Kuala Pilah memorial ............................................... 134 Figure 18. Kuala Pilah memorial on Qing Ming .................................................... 135 Figure 19. Kuomintang cenotaph. ......................................................................... 137 Figure 20. The Rebuilt Memorial to Malayan Victims ........................................... 138 Figure 21. Tugu Negara, 2014. ............................................................................. 142 Figure 22. Japanese occupation exhibit at Muzium Negara ................................. 145 Figure 23. Scenes from Hari Pahlawan ................................................................ 147 Figure 24. Asia for Asians ..................................................................................... 152 Figure 25. Penang Anti-War/War Memorial. ......................................................... 157 Figure 26. 9-1 Martyrs Memorial ........................................................................... 159 Figure 27. Monument in Memory of Malayan Heroes ........................................... 162 Figure 28. Focus groups demographics. .............................................................. 168 4 Figure 29. Commemoration of the 60th anniversary victory. ................................ 175 Figure 30. Malaysia 'Truly Asia.’ ........................................................................... 189 Figure 31. Leong clan ancestral halls in Shunde district, Foshan ........................ 204 Figure 32. Migrant story: Leong-Lim family portraits. ........................................... 205 Figure 33.Contemporary Malaysian Chinese: a spectrum of self-identification .... 209 Note: Sources for all illustrations are credited in the respective captions. Where credit is not included, they are the author’s own. 5 Acronyms and Abbreviations ACCCIM Association of Chinese Chambers of Commerce in Malaysia AJU Anti-Japanese Unit ANM Arkib Negara Malaysia (National Archives of Malaysia) BHC British High Commission DAP Democratic Action Party FCO Foreign and Commonwealth Office FMSVF Federated Malay States Volunteer Forces IIL Indian Independence League INA Indian National Army MCA Malayan/Malaysian Chinese Association MCP Malayan Communist Party MIC Malayan/Malaysian Indian Congress MNLA Malayan National Liberation Army MPAJA Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army NEP New Economic Policy PRC Peoples' Republic of China SSVF Straits Settlements Volunteer Forces TNA The National Archives of UK UMNO United Malays National Organisation 6 Abstract This thesis proposes a new perspective on Malaysian Chinese studies by exploring issues of identity formation refracted through the lens of contestations of war memory, communal history and state-sponsored national history. In multiethnic Malaysia, despite persistent nation-building programs towards inculcating a shared Malaysian national identity, the question as to whether the Chinese are foremost Chinese or Malaysian remains at the heart of Malaysian socio-political debates. Existing scholarship on the Malaysian Chinese is often framed within post- independent development discourses, inevitably juxtaposing the Chinese minority condition against Malay political and cultural supremacy. Similarly, explorations of war memory and history echo familiar Malay-Chinese, dominant-marginalised or national-communal binary tropes. This thesis reveals that prevailing contestations of memory and history are, at their core, struggles for cultural inclusion and belonging. It further maps the overlapping