Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T13:21:48.608Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Chinese in Kampuchea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

W.E. Willmott
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Throughout the Nanyang and beyond, Chinese communities have been under attack of one sort or another at various times. The anti-Chinese riots in Batavia in 1740 and in Kuala Lumpur in 1969 are but the first and last major examples of violent attacks by indigenes on Chinese communities. More routinely, most countries in the region have resorted to legal restrictions that “nationalize” various occupations and professions. Some of these countries have also required their resident Chinese to clarify their citizenship, choosing between Chinese and local citizenship, some even forcing them to adopt the citizenship of their country of residence, as occurred in Vietnam in 1978.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , March 1981 , pp. 38 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Willmott, W.E., The Chinese in Cambodia (Vancouver, 1967)Google Scholar; idem, The Political Structure of the Chinese Community in Cambodia, London School of Economics Monographs in Socia Anthropology, no. 42 (London, 1970).

2 For a discussion of the important features of plural society as they apply to Kampuchea, see Willmott, , The Chinese in Cambodia, pp. 8–11Google Scholar. The reader should note that there are disagreements between scholars concerning the definition of overseas Chinese. I have argued elsewhere that the only definition that is methodologically and sociologically sound is one that relates to participation in Chinese associations (ibid., p. xii). Since some Chinese were assimilated into Khmer society throughout their history of residence, the community did not grow in size, despite natural increase, once immigration ceased in 1952 or 1953 (ibid., pp. llff.).

1 The Chinese vegetable farmers and pepper planters, numbering about 15,000, cannot be classified as peasants because their specialized agricultural pursuits were aimed at profit rather than subsistence as 1 will explain two paragraphs later. See also Willmott, op, cit., p. 51. A very small number of Hakka Chinese rice peasants lived in Takéo Province (ibid., p. 48).

4 Delvert, Jean, Le Paysan Cambodgien (Paris, 1961), esp. p.501Google Scholar, where he states that “in the most densely populated regions, 90 to 100% of the peasants are owners”. Summing up his discussion of peasant society, he states on p. 533: “With some important nuances which contribute towards regional diversification (large properties in Battambang, Prey-Veng and Svayrieng, small peasants in the process of emancipation in Takéo and Kandal), Cambodian peasant society is a democracy of small owner-tillers, under the commercial domination of Chinese and at a low standard of living” (my translation).

5 The Vietnamese Communist Party also ignored ethnicity as it applied to Vietnamese society until 1978, except for the establishment of an association of patriotic Hoa (the Vietnamese term for residents of Chinese extraction) as part of the united front against French colonialism. Only when the Sino-Vietnamese conflict became severe and large numbers of residents left southern Vietnam by boat in 1978 did they mention the fact that many of the businessmen who benefited from the American presence and later disrupted the socialist economy of the region were Hoa. See Those Who Leave (Hanoi, 1979), p. 25Google Scholar: “The militaristic and bureaucratic regime in Saigon which was born of the war and grew rich as the war proceeded, was closely tied to the Hoa comprador bourgeoisie.” The lack of conflict before 1978 is corroborated by the refugees themselves: “Virtually all the northern Hoa interviewed in Hong Kong described relations between the two ethnic groups prior to 1978 as ‘normal’, ‘good’, or ‘warm’ ”, according to The Boat People, An “Age” Investigation with Bruce Grant (Harmondsworth, 1979), p. 94Google Scholar.

6 Exploitation occurs in all societies, and it is accepted as part of the normal order of things unless it becomes defined as unjust. For a discussion of how peasants perceive exploitation in Southeast Asia, see Scott, James C., “Exploitations in Rural Class Relations: A Victim's Perspective”, SEADAG Papers on Problems of Development in Southeast Asia 75–1 (New York, 1975)Google Scholar.

7 The other major error in analysis was the identification of some 40% of the rural population as “poor peasants”. This error led the communists to assume that their popular support during the civil war was a mandate for revolutionary change of the rural social structure, for they thought that “poor peasants” would support collectivisation, as in China, because they had suffered under the old society. I shall elaborate this point in a subsequent paper.

8 It is significant that Hu Nim's “confession”, extracted under torture before he was executed on 6 July 1977, makes no mention of the Chinese community (Boua, Chantou and Kiernan, Ben, “Bureaucracy of Death”, New Statesman 99, no. 2563 (2 05 1980):669–76Google Scholar). This reinforces my argument that the Kampuchean marxists ignored ethnicity in their analysis and policy.

9 Hildebrand, George G. and Porter, Gareth, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution (New York and London, 1976), p. 42Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., pp. 30–33.

11 Because of later events, Western commentators seem to forget that people were starving in Phnom-Penh in 1974 and that disease was epidemic, owing to the crowded conditions of the refugees, the corruption of the government, and the inhumanity of the massive American bombing in 1973. See “Cambodia: An Assessment of Humanitarian Needs”, US Congressional Record, 20 Mar. 1975, p. S4619.

12 Hildebrand and Porter, op. cit., p. 71. See also “The Class Nature of Agricultural Cooperatives”, News from Kampuchea (Australia) 2, no. 2 (11–12 1978):12–14Google Scholar.

13 Willmott, , Chinese in Cambodia, p. 48Google Scholar.

14 The most widely known account is provided in Ponchaud, François's Cambodia Year Zero (London, 1978)Google Scholar. For a very different account, see Jérome, and Steinbach, Jocelyne, Phnom-Penh Libéré: Cambodge de I'aulre sourire (Paris, 1976)Google Scholar. The Steinbachs, who were also in Phnom-Penh on 17 Apr. 1975, describe an essentially organized and orderly exodus with a minimum of violence. Ponchaud recalls hearing on 18 Apr. 1975 a “Khmer Rouge cadre explaining that ‘the enemies of the Khmer people are the Chinese merchants living in our country’ ” (op. cit., p. 169), the single reference I have found to the ethnicity of the urban bourgeoisie.

15 Ben Kiernan and Chanthou Boua, “Interview with ethnic Chinese refugee from Kampuchea, Mrs Tae Hui Lang” (typescript), p. 1. See also Ponchaud, op. cit., p. 49.

16 See Ponchaud's comment in note 14 above. On the same page he states that, “according to the refugees, the Chinese merchants have been more abdominably treated than the rest of the urban deportees”. Ben Kiernan disagrees (private communication), as do others. Perhaps the fact that many of the refugees in Thailand were Chinese themselves accounts for this singular statement. See Le Monde, 7 Sept. 1977, p. 1.

17 “Letter of Appeal: Kampuchean Chinese Call for Justice”, Ming Pao Yüeh K'an, no. 149 (05 1978),p. 106Google Scholar. 1 am indebted to Dr. Leo Suryadinata for translating this letter for me. The letter states that a meeting was held on 25 Dec. 1977 in Paris to set up the Pro—tem Committee for the relief of Overseas Chinese in Kampuchea, which published an appeal in the European edition of Hsin Pao (6 Jan. 1978, p. 1) The Committee calls on the Chinese Government in Beijing to assure the life and safety of overseas Chinese in Kampuchea, to help overseas Chinese elsewhere to contact their relatives in Kampuchea, and to aid those who wished to leave the country to be reunited with their relatives. Gross exaggeration of numbers is not unusual in overseas Chinese publications.

18 “An Open Letter to Mr Liao Ch‘eng Chih” Ming Pao Yueh K'en, loc. cit., pp. 107–6 (sic)Google Scholar. This letter was also translated by Dr. Leo Suryadinata.

19 Those Who Leave, p. 30Google Scholar.

20 In Aug. 1978, I met several refugees from Kampuchea in a refugee camp in Hong Kong. They had left Kampuchea in 1975, but found life in Ho Chi Minh City and the possibility of further rustication intolerable, so left by boat for Hong Kong.

21 “An Open Letter to Mr Liao Ch'eng Chih”, p. 106.

22 “Interview with ethnic Chinese refugee from Kampuchea”, p. 12. Her father also appealed to a visiting delegation of Chinese experts but to no avail.

23 “Chinese Fleeing Cambodia Pour over Thai Border”, Washington Post, 18 05 1979, p. A32Google Scholar. “The refugees recently sent a letter to the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok saying the Vietnamese-backed government.‘used the same anti-Chinese policy which the Vietnamese used against the overseas Chinese left in Cambodia” (ibid.). See also Kiernan, Ben, “Vietnam and the Governments and People of Kampuchea”, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 11, no. 4 (10—12 1979):23Google Scholar. Kiernan also refers to the letter addressed by the overseas Chinese to the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok, and he states that the Vietnamese officers in Battambang sent thousands of trucks to the Thai border loaded with Chinese refugees, from whom they extracted payment in gold (ibid.).

24 “Chinese Fleeing Cambodia” Washington Post, 18 05 1979Google Scholar.