Racializing Chineseness

Abstract

At present, it is estimated that there are 18--20 million ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia. In the context of the Chinese Diaspora, this constitutes about 80--85% of all Chinese found outside China. As such, any attempt to understand the Chinese Diaspora will benefit from an analysis of the Chinese in Southeast Asia, where the migrant Chinese find themselves co-existing in states with multiple different ethnic groups. The demographic profile and the position of the Chinese in these countries are quite different, providing a fascinating case study of ethnicity and ethnic relations. While Singapore has almost 80% of her population who are Chinese, Indonesia is home to over 300 ethnic groups with several hundred languages, and the Chinese constituting only 3% of the population. The sociological question is whether the different ethnic compositions and the different trajectory of the population result in different conceptions of Chinese identity. One of the main focus on this book, based on primary data collected in the various countries in Southeast Asia, relates to who and what is a Chinese. What are the markers of ethnic identity? How is ethnic identity presented? Are there similarities or differences on how ethnic identity is constructed in these different countries?1