A bi-annual publication of the University of San Francisco Center for the Pacific Rim Volume I · Number 1 May · 2001 Copyright 2001 CONTENTS Editors Stephen J. Roddy Shalendra D. Sharma To Change China: A Tale of Three Reformers >>...........................................................................Greg Anderson 1 Editorial Consultants Barbara K. Bundy Hartmut Fischer Buddhist Perspectives on Contemporary Ethical Issues Richard J. Kozicki Stephen Uhalley, Jr. Regarding Life and Death Xiaoxin Wu >>.............................................................................Alison Burke 19 Editorial Board Yoko Arisaka Globalized Chinese Capital in Central America Bih-hsya Hsieh Uldis Kruze >>.................................Amy L. Freedman and Ethel C. Brooks 23 Man-lui Lau Mark Mir Noriko Nagata John K. Nelson Sony’s Morita: A Visionary Leader Kyoko Suda >>.......................................................................Richard Lambert 32 Bruce Wydick Graduate Editorial Representative Vatican City and the Forbidden City; Lauren Mallas St. Peter’s Square and Tiananmen Square: A Comparative Analysis >>...........................................................................Lauren Mallas 39 Globalization and Economic Crises in Emerging Countries >>................................................................Rolf Màrio Treuherz 47 Asia Pacific: Perspectives is a peer-reviewed journal published twice a year in May and November. It welcomes submissions from all fields of the social sciences and the humanities. In keeping with the Jesuit traditions of the University of San Francisco, Asia Pacific: Perspectives commits itself to the highest standards of learning and Asia Pacific: Perspectives scholarship. Center for the Pacific Rim 2130 Fulton St, LM202 Our task is to inform public opinion through a broad hospitality to divergent views and ideas that promote San Francisco, CA cross-cultural understanding, tolerance, and the dissemination of knowledge unreservedly. Papers adopting a 94117-1080 comparative, interdisciplinary approach to issues of interrelatedness in the Pacific Rim region* will be especially welcome. Graduate students, as well as established scholars, are encouraged to submit their work. Tel: (415) 422-6357 Fax: (415) 422-5933 * ‘Pacific Rim region’ as used here includes North America, Pacific Central and South America, Oceania, Australia, New Zealand, email: [email protected] Southeast Asia, East Asia, South Asia (India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka), and the Russian Far East. Downloaded from http://www.pacificrim.usfca.edu/research/perspectives USF Center for the Pacific Rim Asia Pacific: Perspectives · May 2001 must comply with more exploitative, flexible forms of manufacturing and production. In this paper, we aim to move past debates over the merits of globalization; rather, we Globalized Chinese Capital will show that globalization, while it affects the economic in Central America realities of corporations, managers and workers, it is not the inevitable process described above. In fact, globalization by Amy L. Freedman, Ph.D. serves to both reproduce and strengthen existing patterns and and Ethel C. Brooks, Ph.D. perceptions of migration and ethnic politics, while it in turn is shaped and maintained through those patterns and percep- tions. While there are obvious winners and losers from Abstract increased free trade and the movement of goods and people, This paper links two areas of scholarly interest: it examines globaliza- tion of capital by looking at Asian investment in Central America; and it it is necessary to examine its everyday manifestations through addresses ethnic elements of migration. Our research illustrates how local relations of class, ethnicity and gender; we aim to these two phenomena are intrinsically related. Using the example of explore the ways in which globalization discourse is negoti- Chinese-owned (and managed) textile factories in El Salvador and ated and often contested symbolically through the mobiliza- Honduras, the paper highlights both a dramatic shift in the status of tion and reconfiguration of race, gender and class stereotypes. Chinese immigrants in Latin America, and it furthers our understanding The following research uses the example of export- of the political economy of capitalist restructuring. Chinese migration and Chinese investment are intrinsically linked to the globalization of oriented garment factories—maquiladoras—in El Salvador and capital This has implications for how Chinese immigrants are perceived Honduras to highlight a dramatic shift in Chinese immi- in their adopted countries and it impacts the economic and social grants’ status in Latin America and to further our under- conditions of factory workers. Most factory workers are Salvadoran, not standing of the political economy of capitalist restructuring. fellow Chinese as was the case 100 years ago. Despite a shift from a time Chinese migration and Chinese investment are intrinsically when impoverished Chinese workers were consigned to the lowest rungs of the social ladder to a present in which Chinese are owners of capital, linked to the globalization of capital in Central America, as ethnic Chinese are still viewed derogatorily. They are stereotyped as evidenced in zonas francas or export processing zones. This crafty, greedy, and culturally distinct from the native population. Ulti- has implications for how Chinese immigrants are perceived in mately this paper aims to show how globalization is linked to issues of their adopted countries and for the economic and social race, class, and gender. conditions of factory workers. In El Salvador, for example, factory workers in Chinese- or Taiwanese-owned and oper- ated factories are Salvadoran, not fellow Chinese as was the Introduction case 100 years ago.1 Although there has been a shift in class This paper bridges the gap between two vibrant, but levels from the time when impoverished Chinese immigrant generally distinct sets of academic inquiry. On one level it is a workers were consigned to the lowest rungs of the social paper about globalization of capital and the effects of Asian ladder to a present in which Chinese are owners and manag- investment on Central America. It is also a paper about ers of capital investment, ethnic Chinese are still viewed ethnicity and the politics of migration. We illustrate here how derogatorily. They continue to be stereotyped as crafty, these two processes interact and re-enforce each other, and greedy, and culturally distinct from the native population; are, as Sassen (1988) points out, part of same phenomenon. added to these traditional stereotypes is the current notion The increased movement of people and investment into that Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean factory owners are more diverse parts of the world. The subjects of study are Chinese abusive than Central American or United States-based investors and managers of garment factories in Honduras and factories owners, capitalists and managers. El Salvador, and their relations with the local people who Once Chinese migrants to Central and Latin America produce the garments. were looked down upon because they worked as virtual Most of the literature on globalization falls into one of slaves and remained communally separate from indigenous two camps: those who extol the virtues of free markets and peoples. Now, although Chinese immigrants occupy a increased trade as the engine of economic growth, and those different socioeconomic niche, those earlier stereotypes that argue it benefits large capitalists at the expense of persist, along with others mentioned above; why? In part this workers and the under class. Most scholars who study is due to the nature of the relationship between (male) globalization tend to view it as an inevitable process. As Chinese owners and managers and their (female) Salvadoran Bonacich, Cheng, Chinchilla, Hamilton and Ong note when workers, and in part because Chinese factory owners and explaining these divergent views: managers are the local faces of globalized capital. Because “Technology allows globalization, and competition forges it; they stand as markers of this highly contested realm where there is really no stopping the process, so the best one can do is relations of power, race, money and class are at once local and adapt on the most favorable terms possible. Nations feel they cross-border, Chinese investors in Central America are treated must get into the game quickly so as not to be left behind.” as proxies for the seemingly anonymous forces of globalized (1994:9) capital. In fact, they are the local raced, classed and gendered Scholars and activists critical of the effects of markets and faces of globalization. expanded free trade, such as Deyo, argue that not everyone At the outset it should be noted that not all recent benefits from globalization and that it displaces workers who Chinese immigrants to Central America are middle or upper http://www.pacificrim.usfca.edu/research/perspectives Chinese Capital / Freeman & Brooks · 23 USF Center for the Pacific Rim Asia Pacific: Perspectives · May 2001 class. Like Asian and Chinese immigrants to the US, Chinese Brief History of overseas communities in Latin America exhibit class polariza- Chinese Immigration to Latin America tion. At one end are well-off, often transient, investors and As the slave trade ended, European landowners in Latin professionals. This new group of immigrants is not numeri- America needed to find new sources of inexpensive labor for