Page 215 - On Not Speaking Chinese Living Between Asia and the West

NOTES

2 The emergence of a discourse on ‘cultural China’, as launched by Tu, is closely related
to the growing prominence of the discourse of ‘Greater China’. The latter is the
most commonly used term, in English at least, for ‘the system of interactions among
mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and people of Chinese descent around the
world’ (Harding 1993: 683). Harding (1993) distinguishes three key themes in
the contemporary discourse of Greater China: the rise of a transnational Chinese
economy; the (prospect of a) reunification of a Chinese state; and the emergence of
a global Chinese culture, to which Tu’s (1994c) discussion of ‘cultural China’ is a key
contribution.
3 It should be noted that Tu’s paper first appeared in 1991, only two years after the
crushing of pro-democracy demonstrators at Tiananman Square in June 1989 by
the People’s Liberation Army. This event has had a massive impact on the fate of
representations of ‘Chineseness’ in the contemporary world, and has been of major
significance in the emergence of the dissident discourse of ‘cultural China’.
4 It is ironic, however, that by the beginning of the twenty-first century the Western
world has largely abandoned its moral preoccupation with human rights issues in
China in favour of strengthening economic relations with the largest country in the
world, which is opening up its economy to global capitalist market forces at breakneck
speed.
5 Gilroy explicitly and passionately rejects Africa-centred discourses of the black
diaspora, which are highly influential among some African-American intellectuals in
the USA (as in the idea of Africentricity).
6 Thus, Suryadinata mentions a survey which reveals that most South-East Asian
Chinese capitalists who have invested in mainland China are mainly those who are
‘culturally Chinese’. Peranakan Chinese have by and large been prevented from this
‘return’ for economic purposes because ‘having lost their command of Chinese, [they]
are unable to communicate with the mainland Chinese’ (Suryadinata 1997: 16).
7 For a discussion of Chinese conceptions of race, see Dikötter (1992).
8 Yang’s book Sadness (which was originally presented as a one-man slide show) alter-
nately traces two stories of his life – one around his Chinese family and the other of his
gay community in Sydney.

3 INDONESIA ON MY MIND
1 This was an anti-communist pogrom, not an anti-Chinese one, although press
accounts during the 1998 unrest sometimes gloss over the difference. The association
of communism with the People’s Republic of China did create an atmosphere of
suspicion among the Chinese, but according to one historian, ‘killings of the Chinese
because they were Chinese were more sporadic and less systematic’ (Coppel 1983: 58).
Most anti-Chinese violence after the 1965 coup, according to Coppel, did not take the
form physical harm (including killing) but of damage of property, looting, and burning
of shops and houses. This pattern was largely repeated in the 1998 anti-Chinese riots,
although many did get killed in the process. A disturbing new feature of the 1998
riots was the occurrence of rape, often gang rape, of ethnic Chinese women by the
rioters.
2 In his book Culture and Society, Williams (1961: 289) argued that ‘masses’ are illusory
totalities: there no masses, ‘only ways of seeing people as masses’.
3 For historical accounts of the position of the Chinese minority in the Indonesian
nation–state, see e.g. Mackie (1976); Suryadinata (1975; 1979); Coppel (1983).
4 It should be pointed out that who ‘the Chinese’ are in Indonesia is not a question with
a straightforward, objective answer. Those of Chinese ancestry who live in the country
are a very diverse group: an important distinction stemming from colonial times
is often made between the the more locally-rooted peranakan Chinese and the more

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