Chinese Studies of the Malay World: A Comparative Approach (review)

SOJOURN Vol. 19, No. 2 (2004), pp. 313-18ISSN 0217-9520 Chinese Studies oftheMaUy World:A ComparativeApproach. Edited by Ding Choo Ming and Ooi Kee Beng. Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2003. Pp. 271. The Chinese have had a long tradition ofcuriosity about its southern neighbours, often called the Nanyang(or South Seas), and some ofrJieir accounts constitute an indispensable source for the writing ofpremodern Southeast Asia. The volume under review represents an important step towards an understanding ofthe knowledge about the Malayworld by die Chinese from die mainland and die region itself. Most ofdie authors are senior scholars who have done substantial research in the relevant fields, and the book consists ofa compilation ofpapers presented at an international colloquium held at the National University ofMalaysia's Institute of the Malay World and Civilization (ATMA) in September 2002. As the editors point out, although ATMA by tradition has been concerned with Malay nationalism, it has recently organized a series of conferences examining Dutch, French, Nordic, and German scholarship on the Malay world. The latest colloquium on the Chinese aims at answering the question "[w]hat are the distinctive features of Chinese scholarship on the Malayworld?" (p. 2). Believing that "the Malayworld is the Promised Land for the scholar of inter-cultural reladons" (p. 11), the editors suggest diatwhile die longhistoryofChinese studies about the region has created an "apolitical tradition", scholarship about the Malay world by Southeast Asian Chinese grew slowly but steadily after the nineteenth century (some of the latter are well represented by contributors to this volume, such as Wang Gungwu, Leo Suryadinata, Tan Chee-Beng, and Ho Khai Leong). The book's title, Chinese Studies oftheMaUy World, should be understood in a broader sense; it is not mainly about (pure) scholarship in its conventional meaning, but about the construction ofvarious types of knowledge that the Chinese have formulated and disseminated dirough a variety ofmedia such as travelogues, poetry, novels, and political commentaries . The ten essays in this volume can be roughly grouped into three different yet closely related categories. The first group, composed ofessays byWang Gungwu, Claudine Salmon, andTakeshi Hamashita, 314Book Reviews is concerned with the Chinese (and its premodern vassal's) views ofthe Malayworld; the second group, consisting ofessays by Suryadinata, Tan, and Sidharta, deals with the cultural contributions of the Baba and Peranakan Chinese to the region in which they have increasinglybecome an integral component; and the third group, composed of essays by Rosey Ma Wang, Leon Comber, Ho Khai Leong, and Ooi Kee Beng, examines political participation and socio-cultural assimilation ofthe local Chinese in the Malay world. Wang Gungwu's essay, "Chinese Political Culture and Scholarship about the Malay World", was originally a keynote address delivered at the colloquium. In his usual eloquent style, Wang paints a picture ofthe changing Chinese knowledge ofthe Malay world (defined here as "the whole ofthe MalayArchipelago") and the reasons behind the changes. He suggests that Chinese scholarship about the Malayworld was closely related to "changes in political culture, both in China and in the various Malay polities", given that relations between China and the Malay World are built on "at least fifteen hundred years ofgood erratic trading relations, followed by a century of distrust, and distance" (p. 12). There are at least five reasons explaining the emergence ofdistrust and distance in the last century: the arrival of the Europeans forced the local Chinese to be more adaptive to the new power structure, thus leading to die distrust ofthe Malay trading elite; die newly arrived Chinese merchants and labour were seen as displacing the Malays of their opportunities; the emergence ofindigenous nationalism and the corresponding discriminatory actions against the local Chinese; the ColdWar environment and the internal divisions in China's politics; and the cultural distance resultant from the distrust and political gap. Wang is more optimistic about the future prospect, in part because ofthe emergence ofa maturing local scholarship by those "loyal citizens of Chinese decent" who have developed "a fine sensitivity about the fears and aspirations oftheir respective countries". While warning of"the greatest danger" of "discrimination against scholars who are at pains to set out the truth as they know it", he concludes, "when enough scholars are...