![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Studies of Southeast Asian Chinese are voluminous; yet, those about the Chinese in Vietnam are comparatively few. This article provides an updated account of the Chinese Vietnamese with focuses on the Chinese associations in the South of Vietnam and the shifting Chinese identity. Many have discussed the Chinese Vietnamese who fled Vietnam in the 1970s and 1980s, however, little is known about the plights of the Chinese inside Vietnam during those decades. This article elaborates on their situations in the post-unification decade in Ho Chi Minh City and the subsequent changes after the doi moi reforms in the 1990s. It will show how a liberalized economy and accommodative ethnic policies have resulted in a more proactive relationship between the Chinese minority and the Vietnamese society, which consequentially led to changes in the relationship between the Chinese in Vietnam and China.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all the interviewees who generously spent time in answering my questions. I also thank the two local assistants in Ho Chi Minh City who helped me conduct the survey amongst the ethnic Chinese communities. Thanks should also be extended to the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for supporting this research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. As reported by a number of studies, the Hoa enjoyed a prominent economic position in the south before the south-north unification. Many families were extremely wealthy, controlling large segments of trade and commerce. In 1975, the Chinese in the south controlled 100% of its domestic wholesale trade, 50% of the retail trade, 70% of foreign trade, and80% of the industry Li, The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas, 232. Prominent Chinese include Tran Thanh (in the rice trade) and Ly Long Than (in the manufacturing and trading of fabrics and textiles) (see Purcell, The Chinese in Southeast Asia, 186–198; also see; Li, “In Search of the History,” 52–61. After the socialist transformation of the south, the state confiscated much of this richness.
2. Ungar, The Struggle over the Chinese, 596.
3. See discussions in Chan, “Language Power,” 230–51.
4. See Wee and Chan, “Ethnicity and Capital,” 330.
5. Early discussions of the economic reemergence of the Hoa can be found in Hai, “The Policies on Chinese Residents” and Tran “The Ethnic Chinese and Economic.”
6. There have been some debates among academics about the pre-war situations of the Hoa. Li “In Search of the History,” 52–61 for example, argues that Chinese separateness was overestimated. Some of the best discussions of the political organizations and issues of citizenship of the Chinese can be found in Ungar, The Struggle over the Chinese and Han “Ethnicity and Capital.” Whether to say that the Chinese were totally segregated from or well integrated with the local Vietnamese can be far from the truth. From my long-term research amongst the Chinese in HCMC, it is a commonly held belief that the older generations of the Chinese in Cholon (which is about the area of today’s district 5, 6 and 11 in HCMC, the most prosperous commerce and trade centre of the Chinese in Vietnam), though living alongside the Vietnamese, had lived with a sense of superiority to the Vietnamese before the unification. Chinese did not in general mingle well with the Vietnamese and did not take the language of the Vietnamese seriously. If they learned the language, they learned it for business convenience and work. In Saigon-Cholon, in the 1940s, there were Vietnamese language classes provided by private tutors for adults Li, Xiaoran and Xinfu, Xidi Nianjian. For those who engaged in big businesses, especially those who also served directly the interests of the ruling regime, interactions with the Vietnamese were certainly part of their everyday life. On the other hand, it was observed that among those who inhabited the provinces to the south of HCMC, such as the provinces in the Mekong River Delta, the Chinese mingled better with the Vietnamese. It was also in rural regions where Chinese spoke more Vietnamese in their daily life and cross-ethnic marriages were more common. In Cholon, Chinese families did not prefer their children to marry Vietnamese (data from the field).
7. Some of these trips were financed by a Chiang Ching-kuo (CCK) Scholarly Foundation research grant.
8. The Hoa populations in Vietnam are distributed unevenly through different regions of the S-shape country. According to Vietnam’s 2009 census, the distribution of Chinese was as follows: 9,421 in Red River Delta (including 2,134 in Hanoi), 42,236 in the Northern Midlands and Mountains, 20,057 in North and South Central Coast, 23,882 in the Central Highlands, 550,297 in the Southeast (including 414,045 in HCMC), and 177,178 in Mekong River Delta “The 2009 Vietnam Population and Housing Census.”
9. In the 1990s, because of the doi moi policies, the Chinese became economically active again (see Hai, “The Policies on Chinese Residents”; Tran “The Ethnic Chinese and Economic.”).
10. Amer “The Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam,” 19.
11. Amer “The Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam,” 20–1; also see Marsot “The Chinese Community in Vietnam.”
12. Tran “The Ethnic Chinese and Economic,” 43.
13. Tran “An Analysis of the Population,” 60.
14. Amer “The Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam,” 56.
15. Chen “The Strategic Triangle and Regional”; Chang “The Sino-Vietnamese.”
16. Amer “The Boat People Crisis,” 36.
17. To understand the history and plights of the Southeast Asian Chinese refugees in state-run refugee farms in China, see Han, “The Demise of China’s Overseas,” 33–58; Elaine, “Laura Madokor and Glen Peterson,” 131–36.
18. See Chan, “Revisiting the Vietnamese Refugee Era,” 3–19.
19. Tran, The Ethnic Chinese and Economic Development.
20. One of those policies was the 62nd decree issued on 8 November 1995, which aimed at providing concrete guidelines for crafting new policies towards incorporating the Chinese minority in the new economic age. To achieve ‘great national solidarity’, Chinese language education, once prohibited in schools, was allowed to be taught in primary and secondary schools. Chinese was also a foreign language subject in the university (data from the field, June 2011).
21. For examples, Cushman and Wang, Changing Identities of the Southeast Asian Chinese; Freedman, Political Participation and Ethnic Minorities; Gomez and Hsiao, Chinese Business in Southeast Asia; Laurence and Cartier, The Chinese Diaspora; Suryadinata, Migration, Indigenization, and Interaction; Tong, Identity and Ehnic Relations in Southeast Asia and Wang, China and Southeast Asia.
22. See discussions in note 4 above.
23. See discussions in Wang, China and Southeast Asia, 55–66.
24. Gosling “Changing Chinese Identities in Southeast Asia,” 2.
25. Tan, Chinese Overseas.
26. See various cases and debates in Tan, Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Diaspora.
27. See discussions in Kuehn, Diasporic Chineseness after the Rise of China; Chan and Koh, New Chinese Migrations.
28. See Wang, “Sojourning,” 1–14 and Suryadinata, “Ethnic Chinese in Southast Asia,” 1–24 for meaningful discussions.
29. A term developed by Anderson, Imagined Communities.
30. Lan “The Hoa in HCMC are Flying High under the Reform and Open Policy”, 8.
31. Chinese populations in Vietnam were classified into these five ‘bang’ (groups) according to their (or their ancestors’) birthplace or dialect since the French era Purcell, The Chinese in Southeast Asia, 176. Today, the Cantonese are the most abundant in HMCM, representing 50 per cent of the Hoa, while the second largest group, the Teochiu, take up 30 per cent Lan, “The Hoa in HCMC are Flying High under the Reform and Open Policy”.
32. In 1949, a survey showed that there were over 200 Chinese language schools (huaqiao schools, schools for overseas Chinese) in the south of Vietnam (Nam Ky) in 1943–45, see Xidi Nianjian Li, Xiaoran and Xinfu, Xidi nianjian, 72.
33. Most of the temples of the Chinese hoi quan worship Tianhou (goddess of the sea) as the principal deity. They are all fondly labeled as ‘ah poh miu’ (temple of the grandma) by the locals. The Teochiu hoi quan however worships Guangong (the martial god of wealth), and is called by the locals, ‘ah gong miu’, temple of grandpa.
34. Field data collected in June 2011, and July 2017.
35. Those individuals awarded include the chairpersons of the Teochiu, Canton, Hainan, Hokkien associations. All of them were awarded the Third Level Labor Award.
36. Cited in Lewellen “Political Anthropology,” 99–100.
37. Relevant discussions can be found in Logan, “Protecting the Tay Nguyen Gongs,” 189–207 and Lixinski, “Selecting Heritage,” 81–100.
38. Tran, “Chinese Processions in Saigon to Celebrate the Festival of Yuanxiao”.
39. Interview conducted in HCMC on 4 August 2017.
40. See note 38 above.
41. See discussions about Vietnam’s cultural resource governance in Logan, “Protecting the Tay Nguyen Gongs,” 189–207.
42. Well-known overseas Chinese schools in those years included Suichen, Lingnan, Yian, Zhiyung, Guangzhao, and Fujian, see Xidi Nianjian Li, Xiaoran, Xinfu, Xidi nianjian, 72–84.
43. Interview conducted in HCMC on 5 August 2017.
44. See note 39 above.
45. All interviewees’ names cited in the article are pseudonyms.
46. Interview conducted in HCMC on 11 July 2012.
47. Van Huy, Chinese in Vietnam 242–3, cited in Tran (2001b, p. 47).
48. Interview conducted in HCMC on 15 July 2012.
49. Interview conducted in HCMC on 28 February 2011.
50. ibid.
51. Prominent enterprises owned by Chinese Vietnamese include the Viet Hoa Bank, Kinh Do and Bitis see note 30 above; also see note 19 above.
52. see note 30 above.
53. See Lim “Firm Entry Modes and Chinese Business Networks,” 176–94; there are also relevant discussions in Lindahl and Thomsen, “Private Business and Socio-economic Network Relations,” 129–55.
54. See discussions in Lim “Firm Entry Modes and Chinese Business Networks,” 176–94.
55. Field data from HCMC, July 2012.
56. Interview conducted in HCMC on 27 February 2011.
57. Interview conducted in HCMC on 12 July 2012.
58. The survey was conducted from January to June 2011. A total of 115 respondents answered the survey questionnaire. The numbers of respondents in different age groups are as follows: 2 born in the 1930s; 7 born in the 1940s; 11 born in the 1950s; 17 born in the 1960s; 30 born in the 1970s; 38 born in the 1980s; 10 born in the 1990s.
59. The three choices given in the survey include ‘Chinese in Vietnam’ (yuht naahm wa yahn in Cantonese and yuenan huaren in Mandarin), ‘Vietnamese’ (yuht naahm yahn in Cantonese, and yuenan ren in Mandarin) and ‘overseas Chinese in Vietnam’ (yuht naahm wa kiuh in Cantonese, yuenan huaqiao in Mandarin, and hoa kieu tai Viet Nam in Vietnamese). The last term differs from the first one by its stress on the sojourning identity.
60. Han, “Spoiled Guest or Dedicated Patriots,” 1–36 has reported that in the early 1970s, there was a subtle change in the term used by the official organization of the Chinese in Vietnam. The term huaqiao was replaced by huaren. The two terms differ by the fact than huaqiao denotes the connotation of sojourning, temporarily living elsewhere, while huaren means the ethnic Chinese. The terms used for the Chinese in different Southeast Asian countries and in different epochs actually involve complex ethnic politics. See Han, “Spoiled Guest or Dedicated Patriots,” 20.
61. Despite the fact that the Vietnamese government has been recruiting communist members from the Chinese communities, many ethnic Chinese still felt that it would be difficult for Chinese to attain a political career or become higher-up officials. In general, Chinese are cautious about issues of politics, and would avoid touching on any political topics, especially issues related to Vietnam-China relationships (field data, Aug, 2017).
62. Vietnam recorded one of the most robust economic growth rates since the late 1990s amongst ASEAN countries. Its GDP growth rate averaged 6.19 per cent from 2000 to 2016, see Trading economics, “Vietnam GDP Growth Rate, 2000-2017”, also see Hong Kong Trade Development Council, Vietnam, A Fast Growing Market in ASEAN.
63. Interview conducted in HCMC on 6 August 2017.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Yuk Wah Chan
Yuk Wah Chan’s research interests cover borderlands, migration, identity, Vietnam-China relation, and Chinese overseas.
Postal address: Yuk Wah Chan, Department of Asian and International Studies, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong