Ambition and Identity: Chinese Merchant Elites in Colonial Manila, 1880–1916

4. Carlos Palanca Chen Qianshan: Elite Activism in the Manila-Chinese Community, 1896–1901

4 Carlos Palanca Chen Qianshan Elite Activism in the Manila-Chinese Community, 1896–1901 110 At century’s end, Manila’s Chinese community faced myriad crises and opportunities. In one sense, the world they knew as Chinese and as migrants was coming to an end. Within a few years the associations that had defined their community and had negotiated their relations with the “outside world” would be replaced by new institutions. Within the enclave, greater regional diversity threatened to loosen the bonds that held the chinos together, while the external environment grew increasingly chaotic. Over the course of a single decade, the Philippines suffered plague, pestilence, depression , two revolutions, a foreign invasion, and a change in colonial government. Simultaneously, the migrants’ homeland was being transformed. The effort to save the failing Qing dynasty had forced China’s rulers to reassess the importance of the Chinese overseas and to seek out closer relations with them as well as with merchant elites in China. The Chinese in Southeast Asia responded enthusiastically to the possibility of strengthening their links to China. The drive for consular expansion, like so many nation-building and self-strengthening projects in the late Qing dynasty, was as much the product of local elite activism as it was a result of initiatives from Beijing and China’s provincial governors. From the 1870s to the early 1900s, the overseas elite were increasingly aware that consular representation was an effective strategy to protect their interests and enhance their status in the often hostile world outside China. The first attempts at founding a Qing consulate in Manila were initiated not by Qing officials but by the local Chinese cabecillas who petitioned for Carlos Palanca Chen Qianshan 111 protection. In Manila as elsewhere, the motives for overseas elite activism were both environmentally specific and conditioned by personal ambition and self-interest. The appeal of a Qing consulate in Manila lay in the fact that a consul would have the official sanction of both Beijing and Madrid. Presumably, this dual recognition would give the consul an added measure of influence, legitimacy, and linkage to China that existing institutions, such as the Gobernadorcillo, were lacking. The consular movement was also an elite campaign designed to promote community solidarity. This solidarity, however, was not based on consensus or cultural affinity but was a unity conceived and controlled by the community’s elite and exercised through institutions and migration networks. Although the position was new in the sense that the consul would be the official representative of one sovereign nation to another , his value for the Chinese elite lay primarily in the fact that the consul could further personal, local, and community interests. This role in turn raised the possibility that cabecilla influence over the consulate could be construed as private ambitions cloaked as public service. Although attempts to establish a Chinese consular presence in the 1880s had failed, in 1898 the cabecilla petitioners were finally successful . It should come as little surprise, therefore, that local perceptions of the role of the consulate general and the early history of the office would be profoundly influenced by the dynamics of elite leadership within the Chinese community and especially by the actions of the dominant cabecilla, Don Carlos Palanca Chen Qianshan, and his vocal and well-connected adversaries. Chen Qianshan was the preeminent member of the community in the late nineteenth century, and he was the central figure in the campaigns to establish a Qing consulate in Manila. From the beginning, elite participation in the drive to establish a consulate hinged on their desire to maintain the community ’s institutional cohesion, which in turn would perpetuate their elite status and enhance their rapport with external sources of authority . This pattern of elite dynamics was a proven strategy for asserting and maintaining elite status in the Spanish Philippines. Chen Qianshan was a skilled practitioner of the full range of cabecilla strategies, which gave him status within the Chinese community and an extensive network of external allies. His motives for taking an active role in this campaign and the methods he employed had a profound impact on the early history of China’s first consulate in the 112 Chapter 4 Figure 2. Don Carlos Palanca Chen Qianshan . Huang Xiaocang , ed. Feilübin Minlila Zhonghua shanghui sanshi zhounian jinian kan. Manila: Zhonghua Shanghui Chubanbu, 1936. Philippines. Chen opportunistically coopted the...