Transnational business networks and sub-ethnic nationalism: Chinese business and nationalist activities in interwar Hong Kong and Singapore, 1919--1941

This dissertation examines the interplay between business and nationalist activities among the Chinese bourgeoisie in Hong Kong and Singapore in the interwar years (1919-1941). In these years in the two British colonial port-cities with predominant Chinese population, booming business opportunities converged with rising Chinese anti-foreign nationalist activities. The most devastating Chinese anti-British boycotts and strikes occurred in Hong Kong in the 1920s, while Singapore became the command center of Chinese anti-Japanese boycotts in the 1930s. Why were the primary points of the transnational business and migration networks also centers of Chinese anti-foreign nationalist activities? Why did the Chinese bourgeoisie in Hong Kong and Singapore develop different agendas of Chinese anti-foreign nationalism in interwar years? Existing literature suggests that the Chinese nationalist movements in Hong Kong and Singapore in the early twentieth century were transplanted from mainland China. Cross-checking a wide range of archival sources (including British colonial archives, Japanese intelligence reports, Chinese newspapers, commercial directories, and newsletters of business associations, among others) reveals that the Chinese bourgeois nationalist movements in the two cities were grounded on both internal politics of the local Chinese communities and their external linkages to the global and regional economies.;The internal divisions of the Chinese bourgeois communities in both societies were often intertwined with the conflicting business networks organized around different sub-ethnic groups (demarcated along native-place and dialect lines). The surging Chinese anti-British strikes and boycotts in Hong Kong in the 1920s were supported by the pro-China Sze Yap Cantonese (Cantonese from the western part of Guangdong province) who sought to challenge the dominance of the pro-British Eurasian and other Cantonese elites. In Singapore in the 1930s, the British-associated Chinese merchants, most of them Hokkien (Chinese originating from the southeastern part of Fujian province) and Teochew (from eastern Guangdong), mobilized Chinese anti-Japanese boycotts. Their primary targets were other Chinese, mostly Cantonese, who were trading Japanese goods.;To explain the strong anti-Japanese nationalism in Singapore and the weak Chinese anti-Japanese position in Hong Kong in the 1930s, I highlight the different ways the two colonies articulated with regional and global markets. In Singapore, the transshipment center in Southeast Asia, the inroads of Japanese manufactures severely threatened both local Chinese manufacturers (mostly Hokkien) and the import-export traders of British goods (mostly Teochew). The Hokkien and Teochew elites were therefore keen to stage anti-Japanese boycotts with the tacit approval of the British authority. The primary concern of Hong Kong elites, however, was to compete with other city-ports in the Pearl River Delta for dominance in the region.;In both societies, Chinese bourgeois nationalism coexisted with the British status quo. The nascent Cantonese manufacturers in Hong Kong were seeking to expand into the huge market in other British territories (particularly Malaya) by taking advantage of the British imperial preference system in the 1930s. Some of these Hong Kong exports were registered as British Empire products and were made of Japanese materials. But to appeal to ethnic Chinese customers in Malaya, Cantonese industrial capitalists in Hong Kong cooperated with the Hokkien trade agents to foster a "buying Chinese products" movement. A transnational identity with dual or multiple political allegiances was formed. At the same time, through mobilizing Chinese native-place associations in nationalist movements, the Chinese elites in diasporic societies were exercising their influence to intervene into the development in mainland China. As a result, a transnational space between South China and Nanyang was established. It was a space that each Chinese sub-ethnic group competed for nationalist allegiance, and hence for greater political influence in both their diasporic communities and in mainland China.