SPECIAL ISSUE: ENGAGING NON-STATE ACTORS IN GLOBAL ASIA: MISSIONARIES, MIGRANTS, FILMMAKERS AND STUDENTS

 

 

EDITORIAL

 

Engaging Non-State Actors in Global Asia: An Introduction (pp. 1-5)

Joseph Tse-Hei Lee and Romi Jain

 

 

ARTICLES

 

A Colonial Model Minority? Migration and Social Mobility of Jaffna Tamils in Malaya Before World War II (pp. 6-36)

Kristina Hodelin

 

Abstract

During the early to mid-twentieth century, the Jaffna Tamils emerged as a middle class group holding jobs as civil servants throughout colonial Malaya. How did legacies of position, prestige, and access to goods and services across colonial locales speak to notions of belonging in the new country of settlement? How do these legacies speak to colonial and contemporary migration policies favouring the educated elite? By using petitions and community organization records, this article argues that the migratory experience of Jaffna Tamils between colonial Jaffna and Malaya exposes the ties between targeted and favoured migration. This type of migration was informed by greater access to education and higher socio-economic capital back in the country of origin which translated to privileged status in the new locale. Historically, migration has been a result of voluntary or involuntary circumstances such as employment, educational opportunities, religious freedom, to flee conflict, or escape climate change. Based on the reasons for movement, a group is either more easily accepted in a new society and acquires privileges or faces alienation in the new country or experiences both. This case study on the Jaffna Tamils can help us better understand contemporary migration policies favouring a brain drain of educated elites in the Indian Ocean World and the effects of this on those moving due to climate change and/or poverty who may not have access to high socio-economic assets or elite education unlike those migrants favoured by current policies.

 

 

A Space Out of Unitary Nationalism: Revisiting Hong Kong Cinema (pp. 37-58)

Ka-Ming Chan

 

Abstract

“The Death of Hong Kong Cinema” is a recurrent theme in discussing Hong Kong film since the mid-1990s. From the initial pirated issue to the Hong Kong-China co-production since 2003, local filmmakers have worries about their revenue and the limitations on expression in the dominant production logic of China. The recent unsettling socio-political circumstances of Hong Kong shatter the Cinema especially after the 2019–2020 citywide Anti-Extradition Law Movement and the launch of Hong Kong National Security Law in July 2020. The past scholarly discussion of the Hong Kong situation highlighting post-coloniality and “in-between-ness”- the British colonization and the China special administration- cannot fully describe the present Hong Kong. Though these theoretical ideas can be employed to examine the crisis of Hong Kong Cinema, the reality is much deeper. This paper examines how the Hong Kong directors of the younger generations, though facing tensions of the national administration, struggle through their communal-social depiction in their locally produced films. Different levels of communal representation in films will be discussed with respect to localities of the Hong Kong society. These portrayals of diversity in the new directors’ work are strategic oppositions to the present push for unitary national pedagogy and mobilization.

 

 

Emotional Transnationalism: Chinese Migrants in Southeast Asia (pp. 59-71)

Hui Wang and Na Wang

 

Abstract

After the mid-nineteenth century, the opening of more trading ports along the coast of China accelerated the wave of Chinese migration to Southeast Asia. Chinese migrants maintained close transnational ties with their hometowns through sending overseas remittances, performing rituals of ancestor worship, and practicing festival traditions. Among them, the circulation of photographs has received less attention within the scholarship of overseas Chinese history. This article examines the role of photographs among migrant families, contributing to the debates around transnationalism and Chinese Diaspora. It explores the question of how ordinary Chinese migrants, as non-state actors, practiced “emotional transnationalism” in a time of rapid change. The circulation of both family and personal photos, along with that of letters, information, and resources, reinforced the transnational ties of Chinese diasporas, exerting a long-lasting impact than financial transactions on the recipients. In particular, the circulation of photos not only showed a strong sense of loyalty to the migrants’ ancestral hometowns but also shaped the notion of identity and belonging of overseas Chinese in cross-cultural contexts.

 

Third Place Potentialities: Fostering Heritage Chinese Student Identities in US Higher Education (pp. 72-94)

Charissa Che

 

Abstract

This article urges a broadening of how we perceive, and therefore teach, heritage Chinese students in our composition classrooms through the theoretical framework of third places. The belief that there is a singular “Chinese learner” identity has historically been, and continues to be, upheld in traditional learning spaces. This not only tokenizes all heritage Chinese students’ English proficiency as “deficient” and “developmental”; it also ignores their individual experiences with literacy, institutionalized racism, and heritage language and identity negotiation. Alongside sustained privileging of “Standard English” ideologies, this can create feelings of inadequacy that lead to a disavowal of one’s heritage language and cultural knowledges. In response, the author examines how Chinese American students at a public research university act as agents in their language and identity practices amid an unfamiliar United States “host” culture, whether to resist hegemonic language attitudes in US education, to self-invent, or to forge solidarity among peers. This article seeks to offer a new understanding of the ways marginalized heritage language learners practice, invent, and circulate communicative practices across linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

 

Implications of the History of American Protestant Missionary Education in North China (pp. 95-114)

John R. Stanley

 

Abstract

Between the 1860s and 1920, the American Presbyterian Mission in Shandong developed a large system of mission schools that included primary, secondary, and university level institutions. The implications for the establishment of this school system were significant. These schools supported education as well as important social changes in the local society. For the Chinese church, they were also one of the first places where local Christians were able to display independent leadership within the mission organization that was displayed in the 1920s as the mission force retreated. This study traces the increasing role played by the local population in the Shandong mission’s school system and its implications for leadership.

 

COMMENTARY

 

Revisiting the US-China Trade Conflict (pp. 115-119)

Di Lu

 

How China Confronts the United States: Global Image and the COVID-19 Pandemic (pp. 120-130)

Romi Jain

 

BOOK REVIEWS

 

China’s Foreign Relations and Security Dimensions by Geeta Kochhar (pp. 131-134)

 

Facts and Analysis Canvassing COVID-19 Responses by Linda Chelan Li (pp. 134-138)