Diasporic Cold Warriors

The last two decades have seen a surge in studies on the Cold War, transnational networks, and decentered approaches to global history. Diasporic Cold Warriors contributes to these fields through its account of how the Kuomintang (KMT), or Chinese Nationalist Party, worked with the Philippine state to create an “intra-Asian anticommunist ecumene” (9) in the mid-twentieth century. Through his extensive use of collections and archival documents from Taiwan, the Philippines, and the United States, Chien-Wen Kung shows that the Philippine Chinese were outliers among overseas Chinese in terms of their visible identification with both the Republic of China (ROC) and anticommunism.Neither, however, were historical givens. Chapters 1 and 2 show how the KMT competed with Chinese communists in the Philippines throughout the 1930s, the former gaining the advantage only after the Second World War. These chapters are particularly interesting for their account of the rise and fall of the Philippine Chinese Left, the existence of which remains relatively unknown today. Chapters 3 and 4 show how both local Chinese and the KMT adapted to the surge of anticommunism and Sinophobia in the Philippines in the early 1950s. Significantly, the KMT emerged from this period both solidifying its links with the Philippine state and military and establishing ideological dominance—and a form of shared sovereignty—over the local Chinese.The final three chapters show how this dominance transformed the civic identity of the Philippine Chinese. Chapter 5 describes how Philippine Chinese educational, cultural, and business institutions were restructured to align with local and international anticommunist networks, often to deflect anti-Chinese sentiment. Chapter 6 analyzes tours to the ROC that some of these institutions organized, and the various interests of the parties involved. Finally, chapter 7 analyzes the Yuyitung affair, a controversial deportation case where the Philippine state and the KMT worked together to crack down on the Chinese Commercial News, a liberal Chinese newspaper. This affair marked the height of the KMT's influence in the country, which would wane following shifts in Philippine policy in the 1970s—first toward the assimilation of the local Chinese, who were permitted to acquire Philippine citizenship in greater numbers, and second toward the recognition of the People's Republic of China (PRC).Kung identifies several factors for the success of the KMT in the Philippines, a success it did not see elsewhere. Following its defeat in the mainland, the ROC advocated that overseas Chinese see themselves as only temporarily displaced from “China.” Additionally, it promoted itself as the defender of traditional Chinese culture, and thus the symbolic homeland for all diasporic Chinese, whom they hoped to mobilize to its cause. The Philippine state, meanwhile, was receptive to these initiatives for various reasons. Its neocolonial relationship with the United States and the post-war Huk Rebellion made the Philippine government especially committed to anticommunism. At the same time, unlike its Southeast Asian neighbors, Manila was more indifferent toward assimilating its smaller Chinese population. Thus, despite setbacks in the early 1950s, Manila welcomed the ROC and the KMT as partners in managing the local Chinese, whom they both believed, paranoically, to be full of communist fifth columnists—even decades after the collapse of the Philippine Chinese Left.The relatively independent (i.e., non-American) character of this “intra-Asian anticommunist ecumene” is one of the book's most intriguing insights. As Kung notes, internationalist networks are often associated with left-wing movements. The fact that the KMT worked actively to build links with overseas Chinese, and the fact the KMT and the Philippine state coordinated their strategies for managing this community with relatively minimal involvement from the US state, is a reminder of both the significance of transnational networks in shaping contemporary history as well as the irreducible agency of the different actors involved in these networks.Naturally, this irreducible agency also manifested among the Philippine Chinese. As Kung argues, some did genuinely believe in and adhere to the ideological arguments of the KMT regarding anticommunism and diasporic Chinese identity. Others, however, even at the height of the KMT's influence, became “anti-anticommunist” dissenters, rejecting the illiberal practices of the KMT and its claims about what communism meant and/or what constituted communist activity.For the majority, meanwhile, expediency and self-interest played bigger roles. Often simply to ensure one's safety, though also sometimes to gain profit or status, anticommunist practices became a means for the local Chinese to exhibit to the KMT, the Philippine state, and Philippine society in general that they were not “problematic foreigners.” In a sense, although Kung does not describe it in this way, we can view anticommunist practice among the mid-twentieth-century Philippine Chinese as a kind of performance. As scholars of identity formation would argue, to think of it as such does not preclude the possibility of “genuine belief.” This performativity emphasizes, however, the practical significance of the visibility of anticommunist practice and the consequences of adhering to or deviating from what had become orthodox scripts about being “Chinese.”Diasporic Cold Warriors is a well-researched and insightful book that has much to offer scholars studying a variety of topics—anticommunism, the Chinese diaspora, the Cold War, the KMT, and Philippine politics. Given the recent resurgence of both paranoid anticommunism and Sinophobia in Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines, Kung's account of the KMT and the Philippine Chinese experience of anticommunism is timelier than ever

China · Citation · Icon · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Asian Studies and History · Chinese history and philosophy · Computer Science · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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