7 - An Historical Turning Point: The 1911 Revolution and Its Impact on Singapore's Chinese Society

Summary

Introduction

Chinese nationalism in Singapore began in 1877 with the establishment of a Chinese consulate-general, the first in Southeast Asian Chinese history. From 1877 to 1894, the emergent Chinese nationalism was more cultural in content with Consul-General Tso Ping Lung (1850–1924) playing an enlightened but pivotal role in stimulating the intellectual awakening among the Chinese-educated immigrants and English-educated Straits Chinese. During his term of office (1881–91), he promoted a Confucian movement, chaired debates among the Straits Chinese on current affairs and lectured the Chinese immigrants on Chinese culture and civilization. Besides, he personally awarded students who composed the best essays or classical Chinese poems graded by himself. Coupled with the late Qing's diplomatic drives and the sales of Qing's titles and degrees to the higher echelon of the Chinese society for improved prestige and social mobility, Tso's cultural endeavours bore fruit in the form of a pro-Qing's cultural nationalism. However, all these efforts of the Qing Government and officials were undone by the defeat of China at the hands of the Japanese in the first Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) which resulted in the ceding of Taiwan to the victor.

From 1894 to 1911, there blossomed forth a political nationalism with two diverse and opposing strains, one led by K'ang Yu-wei (1866–1929), a pro-Qing and pro-monarchist reformist and the other by Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925), an anti-Qing revolutionary and a staunch republican. Both K'ang and Sun made Singapore an important base in Southeast Asia for enlisting Chinese support for their respective political causes. To these ends, K'ang helped to organize a semi-secret society, the Pao Huang Hui [Emperor Protection Society] in 1900 to promote his movement, while Sun initiated the formation of a Singapore branch of the Tongmenghui (TMH, the United League) in 1906 to rally public support. Both societies utilized print media (such as TMH's Chong Shing Yit Poh versus reformists' Union Times) to propagate their respective ideologies which often resulted in political polemics, involving such issues as revolution and reformism as panacea for China's problems.