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15200 results in ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute

Page 174 of 760

  • Old Stereotypes, New Convictions: Pribumi Perceptions of Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia Today

  • Johanes Herlijanto
  • Book:
    Old Stereotypes, New Convictions
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 March 2019
    Print publication:
    14 July 2017, pp 1-26

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    On 30 July 2016, a riot took place in Tanjung Balai, a city in Indonesia's North Sumatra Province. It was incited by a protest from an ethnic Chinese woman, who felt that the sound from the loudspeaker of a nearby mosque was too loud and disturbing. Considering her protest to be harassment against their religious practice, Muslims from around the city gathered in front of the woman's house. Unable to attack the house, which was cordoned off by the security forces, the group targeted a number of Chinese and Buddhist temples, and shops, many of which belonged to ethnic Chinese Indonesians.

    Leaders in faraway Jakarta responded to the incident in various ways. The general chairperson (Ketua Umum) of Muhammadiyah, one of the largest Islamic organizations in Indonesia, saw the riot as the tip of a “social problem iceberg” caused by a deep socio-economic gap. Similarly, the general chairperson of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), another one of the biggest Islamic organizations in the country, pointed to the intellectual, economic, and social gaps within society as the root of the problem. But a more straightforward opinion came from Lieutenant General (Retired) Suryo Prabowo, who asserted that the riot was triggered by the arrogant behaviour of the ethnic Chinese, who dominate the middle and upper middle business sectors, including the property business. His assertion indicates that after two decades of reformasi, negative views of ethnic Chinese persist among important members of the pribumi elite, and the public expression of this has begun taking place more openly in recent years.

    This article studies this apparent turnaround in Indonesian public discourse, especially among the pribumi elite eighteen years after the demise of the New Order regime. Inherited from the colonial era, the term “pribumi” refers to hundreds of different ethnic groups whom the Dutch administration subsumed into one category, essentially “the natives”. The pribumi identity became a significant issue in the beginning of the twentieth century when the Indonesian nation was still being constructed. While some of the founding fathers of the nation wished to build a nation to include all who lived in the Netherlands Indies, many others thought that the nation should be exclusively for the pribumi.

  • Foreword

  • Johanes Herlijanto
  • Book:
    Old Stereotypes, New Convictions
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 March 2019
    Print publication:
    14 July 2017, pp v-vi

  • Summary

    The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

    The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

    The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policy makers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

  • Old Stereotypes, New Convictions: Pribumi Perceptions of Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia Today

  • Johanes Herlijanto
  • Book:
    Old Stereotypes, New Convictions
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 March 2019
    Print publication:
    14 July 2017, pp vii-viii

  • Summary

    EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

  • •Despite improvements in the position of ethnic Chinese in the reformasi era, critical and negative perceptions of them persist among prominent pribumi personalities, particularly in recent years.

  • •These include leaders of several Islamic organizations, nationalists who harbour suspicions about foreign powers, and some who were in mid-career and/or were well placed in the last years of the Suharto era. This latter group consists of retired senior military officers, senior scholars, as well as current and former senior government officials.

  • •The ethnic Chinese are often portrayed as outsiders who are already dominant economically, and who are trying to be politically dominant as well. Furthermore, it is often claimed that ethnic Chinese tend to be loyal towards China.

  • •At the same time, there are others, including politicians affiliated with pro-government political parties, high-ranking officials, leaders of NGOs sympathetic to President Jokowi, as well as advocates of multiculturalism (many of whom are scholars and Muslim leaders), who believe that Chinese Indonesians are first and foremost Indonesians. The evidence they cite to support this belief varies, from past heroic actions by ethnic Chinese to the identity constructs of Chinese Indonesians, which is usually based on Indonesia or some Indonesian region.

  • The Natunas: Territorial Integrity in the Forefront of Indonesia–China Relations

  • Leo Suryadinata, Mustafa Izzuddin
  • Book:
    The Natunas
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 March 2019
    Print publication:
    11 July 2017, pp 1-33

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    On 18 and 19 May 2017, the Indonesian military conducted a large-scale training exercise in the Natuna Seas, known as Latihan Perang Pasukan Pemukul Reaksi Cepat (War Exercise of the Rapid Reaction Attacker Troops). This exercise was witnessed by all the governors from the twenty-three provinces of Indonesia. On 19 May President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) came to Tanjung Datuk, Kabupaten Natuna (Natuna Regency) to observe the display of military weapons. He delivered a speech to 1,500 personnel there, advising the Indonesian military to upgrade their skills and defence system. Earlier he had conveyed his condolences to the families of the soldiers killed on 17 May during the military exercise due to a malfunctioning artillery cannon. The military exercise garnered increased attention from the Indonesian government to the Natuna Islands, following last year's tensions in the area.

    In early 2016, three incidents took place in the Natuna Islands (Natunas) over the span of three months involving Indonesia and the People's Republic of China (hereafter, China). These took place on 19 March, 27 May and 17 June, when Chinese fishermen and their vessels encroached into Indonesian waters.

    On 19 March, the Chinese fishing boat Kway Fey strayed into the Natunas’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and was arrested by the Indonesian navy for illegal fishing. A high-capacity Chinese coast guard vessel suddenly emerged and succeeded in freeing the fishing boat. Eight crew members were detained by the Indonesian authorities.

    On 27 May, a Chinese fishing vessel entered the EEZ again, but this time, the Indonesian navy was better prepared. Not only did the Indonesian coast guard/navy detain the fishing vessel, but the Chinese patrol boat accompanying the vessel also refrained from intervening. Unsurprisingly, China's Foreign Ministry demanded the release of the fishermen, and its spokesman also said that Beijing and Jakarta “have different views” on the waters where the Chinese vessel was detained.

    The third incident occurred on 17 June where a Chinese fishing vessel was again intercepted by an Indonesian patrol boat. According to a Chinese media report, one fisherman was injured but was rescued by a Chinese patrol boat, while the fishing vessel and seven fishermen were detained by the Indonesian authorities. The Chinese patrol boat failed to liberate the fishing vessel primarily because three Indonesian warships had reportedly arrived in the vicinity to stop the rescue effort.

  • Foreword

  • Leo Suryadinata, Mustafa Izzuddin
  • Book:
    The Natunas
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 March 2019
    Print publication:
    11 July 2017, pp v-vi

  • Summary

    The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

    The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

    The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policy makers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

  • The Natunas: Territorial Integrity in the Forefront of Indonesia–China Relations

  • Leo Suryadinata, Mustafa Izzuddin
  • Book:
    The Natunas
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 March 2019
    Print publication:
    11 July 2017, pp vii-viii

  • Summary

    EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

  • •In May 2017 the Indonesian military conducted a large-scaleexercise in the Natuna Islands. This was in the wake of threeincidents in 2016 that involved Chinese fishing boats. Jakartaaccused the vessels of “stealing fish” within the IndonesianExclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) but Beijing considered these boatsto be carrying out “regular activities in Chinese traditional fishinggrounds”.

  • •Both Beijing and Jakarta acknowledge that the Natuna Islandsbelong to Indonesia. But while the Chinese avoid mentioning theissue of the islands having an EEZ, Jakarta openly claims that theislands definitely do have an EEZ.

  • •The two countries are “strategic partners”, and while Chinaneeds Indonesia to help realize some of its “One Belt One Road”ambitions, Jakarta eyes funding from Beijing to help its “MaritimePower Dream”.

  • •Indonesia has adhered to its claim of being an Archipelagic Stateand has relied on the United Nations Convention on the Law of theSea (UNCLOS) to support its territorial claims. China has alsoopenly stated that the South China Sea issue would be resolved withreference to UNCLOS.

  • •However, Indonesians are divided over the issue. There are thosewho wish to bring the problem to an international tribunal, becausethey have no faith in bilateral negotiations as a possible path to asolution. The rise of hardline Muslims in recent months and their critical view of Chinese investments in Indonesia may also affect Jakarta–Beijing relations.

  • • While the Natunas is likely to remain a perennial issue between Indonesia and China in the short to medium term, it is unlikely to derail the bilateral relationship as economics is likely to continue trumping politics in Sino-Indonesian relations, at least under Indonesian President Jokowi's administration. It is also unlikely to bring about an outright naval confrontation between Indonesia and China.

  • 5 - The Reconstruction of Heritage in Rural Vietnam: An Analysis of State and Local Dynamics

  • Edited by Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, Yew-Foong Hui, Philippe Peycam
  • Book:
    Citizens, Civil Society and Heritage-Making in Asia
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    03 January 2018
    Print publication:
    30 June 2017, pp 86-113

  • Summary

    We have lived not only in the era of globalization but also in the age of heritagization. More and more sites and activities have been officially designated as tangible or intangible heritage, from the local level to the international. Many scholars have attributed the making and remaking of heritage, both tangible and intangible, to globalization and state policies, specifically to the impact of the accelerating international tourist flow as well as to state efforts to shape distinctive national identities and to attract international tourists through cultural-historical heritage.

    International research on the remaking of heritage in Vietnam — which has focused on major tourist attractions like UNESCO-designated heritage sites in Huế and Hội An — has similarly emphasized the impact of global forces and state policies (see Long 2003 and Salemink 2007 regarding the Huế festival). Vietnamese research has strongly centred on state policy issues, such as how to maintain or to manage heritage in the context of globalization and urbanization (Trương Thin 1993; Bui Hoai Sơn 2009; Đặng văn Bai 2012). However, in numerous localities throughout Vietnam, heritage is being made and remade far from the domestic and international tourist gaze, and with little state support. In this chapter, I suggest that local networks and regionally varying community dynamics play at least as an important role as global forces and state policies in the making and remaking of tangible and intangible heritage in Vietnam.

    Focusing on rural/semi-rural festivals normally linked to sacred spaces in particular localities, I analyse why the revival of festivals as intangible heritage is much stronger in the Red River delta of northern Vietnam than elsewhere in the country. According to 2006 statistics from the Department of Community Culture (Vietnamese Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism), the Red River delta, although home to only 21.6 per cent of the Vietnamese population, witnessed the celebration of 3,650 festivals (46 per cent of all festivals in Vietnam in 2006). The Mekong delta of southern Vietnam, with 20.7 per cent of the Vietnamese population, had only 1,234 festivals (15 per cent of all festivals in Vietnam that year). Of the two main metropolitan areas in Vietnam, Hanoi had 1,097 festivals (14 per cent) while Hồ Chi Minh City, despite having a larger population, had only 91 festivals (1.1 per cent; see appendix).

  • 11 - Policy Formation and Civil Society Engagement in Heritage-Making in Taiwan: A Historical Examination

  • Edited by Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, Yew-Foong Hui, Philippe Peycam
  • Book:
    Citizens, Civil Society and Heritage-Making in Asia
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    03 January 2018
    Print publication:
    30 June 2017, pp 232-250

  • Summary

    In Taiwan the discussion of civil society emerged in the 1980s and peaked in the early 1990s, when the society underwent political democratization. Civil society was considered a public sphere, enjoying relatively autonomy from the control of the state or the market. The birth of civil society in Taiwan came about by the proliferation of non-profit organizations, community organizations, and professional and voluntary groups through continuous social mobilization. Lawmaking was indispensable for the consolidation of civil society. New ordinances, ranging from human rights, environmental regulation to cultural preservation, were brought to the agenda. The emergence of civil society allowed people to leverage themselves from the control of the state and the market. In addition to this, the new Taiwanese identity that took shape in the 1990s reinforced the civil society that was in the making. However, across the turn of the millennium, as the state– society relationship reconfigured, civil society also differentiated. Both the market and the state tried to entrench civil society, which more often than not led to many different voices within civil society. Conflicts among various social groups have become a noticeable feature in the debates and decision-making processes of public affairs.

    Against this backdrop we would like to trace the early history of the development of the idea of heritage preservation in Taiwan. The emergence of the heritage preservation movement and related policies is closely intertwined with the changing cultural politics that reflect the contested meanings of national and local identities in Taiwan. Before the lifting of martial law in 1987, civil society had played a significant role in heritagemaking. Since 1987, civil society has further pushed the state to change the laws and policies governing heritage preservation.

    The first piece of legislation in this area, the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act, was promulgated in Taiwan in 1982, while the country was still under authoritarian rule. The implementation of the Heritage Act and associated cultural policies inevitably reflected the Chinese nationalist historical narrative; however, at the same time, it created negotiable spaces for diverse narratives through the imported notion of “cultural heritage”, which could be seen as an indirect challenge to the dominant narrative.

  • 2 - Heritage, Identity and Power

  • Edited by Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, Yew-Foong Hui, Philippe Peycam
  • Book:
    Citizens, Civil Society and Heritage-Making in Asia
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    03 January 2018
    Print publication:
    30 June 2017, pp 15-39

  • Summary

    My colleague Yujie Zhu recounted a tea ceremony he had attended in Canberra, Australia. At the ceremony was a student from Taiwan, a Chinese mainland tea expert, and a Japanese scholar. The Taiwanese student said, “Every time I drink this, it make me feel like I am back at home. It is like I am in Taiwan. I am feeling Taiwanese.” The Japanese scholar responded, “Yes, I can understand, but you know, this tea was actually influenced from Japan.” The tea expert then said, “Oh, interesting, because the tea is now sold as a Chinese tea.”

    What this story tells us is that heritage-making is always fraught and contested. Indeed it is always political, not simply because its interpretation or history may be disputed, but because any assertion of inclusive heritage must also include an implicit assertion of exclusion — “this is who I am, and you are different from me”.

    One of the significant assumptions that underpins both heritage management practices and heritage scholarship is that heritage is about identity. Heritage, in either its intangible or tangible form, is intuitively understood to be about the assertion and reinforcement of identity — be that associated with social, cultural, national, ethnic or other forms of identity. The link between heritage and identity is often simply taken for granted, and there is very little work that takes as its central task an analysis of the linkages between expressions of identity and heritage.

    In attempting to reveal these links, I want to develop my argument that heritage is a cultural performance, in which the meaning of the past for the present is continually recreated and reinterpreted to address the political and social needs and problems of the present. Contra to the writings of David Lowenthal (1986, 1996) and Benedict Anderson (1991), heritage is neither a cult nor is it imagined or simply invented; rather it is part of a cultural and political performance and set of negotiations that has material consequences for a range of contemporary social problems.

  • 1 - Introduction: Finding the Grain of Heritage Politics

  • Edited by Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, Yew-Foong Hui, Philippe Peycam
  • Book:
    Citizens, Civil Society and Heritage-Making in Asia
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    03 January 2018
    Print publication:
    30 June 2017, pp 1-14

  • Summary

    This volume is a collection of papers from the second conference in a series of three. This series of three conferences was first envisioned to look into what we call “the cultural politics of heritage-making” in Asia. In positing the notion of “heritage-making”, we foreground “heritage” as a dynamic process, a product that is unfinished and always in the making, akin to Harvey's (2001) assertion that the term is a verb, that is, something that is done. We further recognize that this process of heritage-making is embedded in contesting political interests that seek to present “heritage” as a finished product, a noun that becomes appropriated as a form of cultural capital, broadly speaking. Or to put it another way, “heritage” becomes the manifest material and symbolic anchor for culture, and one must have a “heritage” as one must have a nose and two ears (to borrow Gellner's simile) if one is to be recognized and recognizable in the international, national and sub-national arenas. Thus, “heritage” implies the process of heritage-making, and this process, when we consider the politics of recognition that is at stake, is embedded in cultural politics of multiple scales (see Harvey 2014).

    These multiple scales, ranging from the local to the national and international levels — which we do not assume are discrete arenas of social action — involve different players with different degrees of agency and interests. In a generic way these players include the state, local actors at the grass-roots level, and international organizations and experts. Again, we do not assume that these actors or the arenas that they operate in are discrete. Often we may find actors reprising roles across the different scales, which hints at the complex assemblages that produce what we call “heritage”. Without foregoing the multi-scalar complexities involved in the process of heritage-making, but with a view to foregrounding in turn the different sets of actors involved at different levels of the heritage-making chain, each of the conferences in the series focused on one set of players respectively. Thus, the first conference, held in Singapore in January 2014, focused on the role of the state.

  • 3 - Heritage-Making and Post-coloniality in Yangon, Myanmar

  • Edited by Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, Yew-Foong Hui, Philippe Peycam
  • Book:
    Citizens, Civil Society and Heritage-Making in Asia
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    03 January 2018
    Print publication:
    30 June 2017, pp 40-60

  • Summary

    In a nation where the post-independence, military-led governments saw their people as potential enemies who threatened the territorial integrity of Myanmar,1 heritage-making has been deployed as an exclusive technique of the state to manufacture a unitary national identity. That identity has been Burman (the dominant ethnic group), Buddhist, and, until recently, staunchly anti-colonial, with the Shwedagon Pagoda standing as its ultimate monument. Since 2012, educated elite in Yangon have begun to rewrite the narrative of colonial oppression to incorporate the modernity implanted through British rule as represented by the grand facades of institutions such as Grindlays Bank and the Secretariat. This foregrounding of aesthetic modernity has been spearheaded by Thant Myint-U (grandson of U Thant, the third UN secretary-general), who has returned to Myanmar from a cosmopolitan life in the West. With the assistance of foreign-educated Myanmar architects, Thant has founded the Yangon Heritage Trust (YHT) to safeguard the physical and aesthetic integrity of colonial-era buildings. In the words of Thant, “If we can make Yangon the most attractive, beautiful and liveable city in Southeast Asia, this is an asset worth billions of dollars” (Linthicum 2014).

    This chapter investigates the influence of Myanmar's elite, a small segment of the city's civil society, in redefining Yangon's heritage during a time of unprecedented change. National reforms initiated in 2011 followed by the lifting of international sanctions have ushered in fast-paced real estate development that threatens to alter the face of Yangon before the local population has a chance to reflect on what they value. In the haste to save turn-of-the-century architecture from the irreparable damage of wrecking balls, critical questions about the history of Yangon and how residents live in the city have been left barely examined. The YHT's efforts to save colonial-era buildings, though important for maintaining the traces of history in the built environment, run the risk of erasing colonial abuses and masking entrenched urban inequalities. These inequalities were largely introduced by British rule, even if paradoxes, exclusions and segmentations are always a part of urban organization and city form (AlSayyad and Roy 2006).

  • 8 - Encounter and Counter-Narratives of Heritage in Macau

  • Edited by Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, Yew-Foong Hui, Philippe Peycam
  • Book:
    Citizens, Civil Society and Heritage-Making in Asia
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    03 January 2018
    Print publication:
    30 June 2017, pp 164-184

  • Summary

    At dusk, from the outer rim of Macau's Reservoir edging the Pearl River Delta, one can see the casino cluster on the opposite bank gradually light up, illuminating the darkening sky and projecting itself as a colourful sequin pattern over the still water. Next to it, a hill shrouded in darkness bears a solitary spot radiating a moving beam of light. Somewhat outshined by the LED panels and glittering signs that separate by a few hundred metres the casino district from the city's highest geographical point hosting one of its World Heritage sites, the Guia Lighthouse continues, nevertheless, to glow. This urban scene embodies the contrasting nature of struggles over space ensuing from Macau's drastic transformation over the last ten years. Materialized in this setting, the adjacent position of gambling and heritage is a powerful representation of the forces, complementary, but also uneven, which have marked their relationship throughout the integration of the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR) into China. To some extent it signals the seemingly irreversible connection between the realization of capital and the (im)possibility of the social (cf. Bissell 2005: pp. 221–22). The ambivalences they evoke can, thus, be easily grasped in binaries, the old and the new, the colonial and the post-colonial, the past and the future — the latter of which carries the particular connotation in China that it can only be attained with the demise of the past (Zhang 2006). In this chapter, I argue that the relationship between the political economy of gambling and the emergence of “heritage” as a new cultural narrative of place in Macau is, however, multiple, claiming their striking opposition, rather than casting the invalidation of the social, acts as a catalyst for change.

    In light — literally — of modern, extravagant and dominating structures over the cityscape, it is tempting to surrender to that mental construct of antinomies. Despite the fact that they hold true to some extent — a casino erected in 2008 is irrefutably new compared to an eighteenth century church — the processes these phenomena represent cannot be seen simply as a matter of the new replacing the old or the past succumbing to the future. As an economic activity, gambling is as old as some of Macau's historical sites and buildings, arguably older than many.

  • 7 - Constituting Philippine Filmic and Linguistic Heritage: The Case of Filipino Regional Films

  • Edited by Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, Yew-Foong Hui, Philippe Peycam
  • Book:
    Citizens, Civil Society and Heritage-Making in Asia
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    03 January 2018
    Print publication:
    30 June 2017, pp 137-163

  • Summary

    Heritage-making is, more often than not, a task taken by the national government to bind its peoples and to make them recognize representations of national history, culture and identity. In this case the state becomes a source of what Laurajane Smith calls the “Authorized Heritage Discourse or AHD”, where heritage is seen as “nationally significant” (2014b). In this instance heritage-making entails processes that at times homogenize naturally diverse cultures; at times impose a national character to tangible and non-tangible artefacts that may not necessarily represent something meaningful to some people in other parts of the country. This practice of heritage-making invokes a collective experience, a shared culture that erases differences within the nation-state. In its recognition of what is a “national heritage”, it misrecognizes others’ heritage in the periphery. This is especially problematic in the context of the Philippines, an archipelagic country composed of 7,107 islands populated by various ethnic groups, and that makes processes of nation-formation complicated. The diversity of the country's cultures challenges the homogenized notion of a “national culture” and “national heritage” that the state espouses in its cultural policies.

    A clear example of this cultural politics in the Philippines is the declaration of Filipino as the official language, a language that is primarily based in a regional language called Tagalog. This is despite the fact that 183 languages exist in the country that includes other major regional languages like Cebuano spoken widely in the Visayas and Mindanao islands, Ilocano in northern Luzon, Kapampangan in central Luzon, Hiligaynon in Panay and Negros islands, Bicol in Southern Luzon, and Waray in Samar and Leyte islands, among others. The said islands are among the largest and most populous in the Philippines. On the other hand, Tagalog is widely spoken in Manila, the capital city, and other nearby provinces and islands in Luzon.

    When Tagalog was declared as the basis for the national language in 1937, the country was a commonwealth under the United States but essentially still a colony. Prior to this, in 1934, a Constitutional Convention was called to formulate the constitution for the commonwealth government to prepare for the colony's self-governance, which was to begin in 1935.

  • 13 - Defining Culture in the Heritage Preservation of Taiwanese Veterans’ Villages: The Case of Zuoying

  • Edited by Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, Yew-Foong Hui, Philippe Peycam
  • Book:
    Citizens, Civil Society and Heritage-Making in Asia
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    03 January 2018
    Print publication:
    30 June 2017, pp 281-304

  • Summary

    Introduction: The Origin of Taiwanese Veterans’ Villages

    After the Chinese civil war spread in February 1947, the troops of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) suffered successive military reversals in the Liaoshen, Pingjin and Huaihai campaigns of 1948. Consequently, the KMT military strategy was to retreat.1 At a military conference in Dinghai in 1949, from among the three possible strategies — “shift to Xikang”, “retreat to Hainan Island” or “retreat to Taiwan” — Chiang Kaishek elected for the Taiwan option.2 The retreat to Taiwan in 1949 saw the transportation of governmental agencies and large quantities of antiques to Taiwan. According to statistics, 1.2 million troops and civilians were moved between 1945 and 1953 (Lin 2011, p. 250).

    To relocate millions of KMT soldiers and their dependents, Taiwanese veterans’ villages (pinyin: juancun) gradually emerged on the landscape of Taiwan. According to Guo Guanlin, it is not correct to see the Taiwanese veterans’ villages as “villages built up for the soldiers and dependents”, because the villages were constructed with the exclusive political motive “to stabilize the morale of the KMT troops” (Guo 2005, p. 1). Early in 1932, military settlements similar to the Taiwanese veterans’ villages emerged in Jiangxi Province and Shanxi Province of mainland China. These settlements were built to accommodate KMT troops and to support the fight against the Communist forces. Prior to 1949 the military settlements in Taiwan were mostly quarters and barracks left by the Japanese colonial power. For instance, Whampoa New Village in Fengshan District of Kaohsiung City is typically regarded as the earliest dormitory for Japanese land forces. Gu Chaoguang proposed that due to dissatisfaction with the KMT's internal conflict between the Whampoa warlords and the Baoding warlords, Sun Liren arrived at Fengshan for troop training in October 1947. He established the fourth military training class and arranged the accommodation for soldiers and their dependents in Whampoa New Village. As the civil war in mainland China worsened during the retreat, temporary buildings, rebuilt warehouses, old factories, and even illegal houses were gradually subsumed within the category of Taiwanese veterans’ villages.

  • 9 - Cultural Activities of the Chinese Community in Post-war Myanmar

    • By Yi Li, University of London
  • Edited by Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, Yew-Foong Hui, Philippe Peycam
  • Book:
    Citizens, Civil Society and Heritage-Making in Asia
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    03 January 2018
    Print publication:
    30 June 2017, pp 185-207

  • Summary

    Heritage, community and identity remain “malleable” (Harvey 2001, p. 310) for scholars who have for years been investigating the meaning of the past (Graham and Howard 2008, p. 13). Nevertheless, it is generally agreed that things related to the past are open to interpretation and manipulation under the present political and social contexts, and it is an ever-changing, ongoing process (Harvey 2001, p. 320). “If heritage is constructionist and concerned with the selected meanings of the past in the present, this suggests that the past in general, and its interpretation as history or heritage, confers social benefits as well as potential costs in the construction and reproduction of identities” (Graham and Howard 2008, p. 5). Indeed, this particular ambiguity presents a unique opportunity to make and remake heritage “according to the needs of articulating and empowering” (Crooke 2010, p. 17), sometimes by individuals and communities at disadvantaged positions.

    This chapter examines the formation, maintenance and recent development of the cultural heritage of the ethnic Chinese community in Yangon in the post-war era. It looks at two Yangon-based grass-roots institutions, a Classical Chinese poetry society and a Chinese language library, and follows their ups and downs throughout the eventful decades between the late 1940s and the present day. For an ethnic-minority, exmigrant community in a newly independent nation state that has been dominated by the indigenous majority, communal organizations like these have to walk a fine line to reconnect the ancestral past with a volatile and demanding present, in a balanced style through careful and conscious selections, and must constantly adjust their strategies. The heritagization of certain cultural practices not only established a relationship to the community's temporally and geographically remote, sometimes imaged, past, but also faithfully reflected the changing social environment of what was permitted and what was not. Furthermore, questions such as what is to be defined the community's cultural heritage and who has the authority to define it, have been negotiated over the years and are still open to debate. It is also worth pointing out that in post-war Myanmar the awareness of preserving heritage (heritage as we understand today) has been fairly limited if not non-existent among the cultural practitioners, and the most obvious driving force often came from contemporary geopolitical pressures and personal subscriptions.

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