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Leadership and Power in the Chinese Community of Singapore during the 1930s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Yong Ching Fatt
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Extract

The 1930s was a unique, exciting, explosive and highly politicised decade for the Chinese in Singapore and Malaya due to the blossoming forth of Chinese nationalism aimed at China's national salvation in the wake of the Japanese invasion. This China-oriented nationalism took various forms. There was a boycott movement against Japanese goods; there were public and political rallies, cultural variety shows, and propaganda in the press and the schools, stirring up national feelings. There were campaigns for the return of skilled and professional Chinese in serving the Kuomintang (KMT) Government at Chungking, and for relief funds and funds for strengthening China's war footing. Undoubtedly, the Chinese nationalism that began in 1928 was a mass movement, and at its height in 1938 and 1939, the movement involved some 300,000 Chinese in Singapore for national salvation work, or 50 per cent of the total Chinese population on the island. It was during this politically volatile decade that various socio-enonomic forces within the Chinese community surfaced or re-surfaced in the bid for leadership. It also saw the rise, consolidation, collaboration and rivalry of various emergent elites and counter-elites in a rather restricted political arena, sensitively guarded and regulated by the British authorities. It is the concern of this paper to identify the nature and composition of various contending elites and counter-elites, to examine their roles in the national salvation movement and, finally, to analyse why a non-partisan elite headed by Tan Kah Kee ( 1874–1961) was able to capture and maintain the leadership during the period under examination.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , September 1977 , pp. 195 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1977

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References

1 CO 273/641, Monthly Review of Chinese Affairs (MRCA), 100 (December 1938), 24.

2 Yong, C. F., “A Preliminary Study of Chinese Leadership in Singapore, 1900–1941”, Journal of Southeast Asian History, IX, 2 (Sept. 1968), 264.Google Scholar

3 Nanyang Siang Pau (NYSP), 31 Mar. 1939.

4 Yong, C. F., “The Shantung Relief Fund Committee and Tan Kah Kee”, Sin Chew Jit Poh (SCJP), 25 Aug. 1976 (text in Chinese).Google Scholar

5 Seng, Png Poh, “The Kuomintang in Malaya, 1912–1941”, Journal of Southeast Asian History, II (Mar. 1961), 10.Google Scholar

6 NL 5937, GD/C/212, Governor, SS, to the Colonial Office, 4 Sept. 1929.

7 NL 5949, GD/C 41, Governor, SS, to the Colonial Office, 16 Feb. 1927.

8 NL 5937, GD/C/222, Governor, SS, to the Colonial Office, 15 Sept. 1929.

9 CO 273/597, MRCA, 48 (August 1934), 43.

10 Ibid.

11 An interview with the Rev. A. B. Jordan, the Secretary for Chinese Affairs of the Chinese Secretariat, Singapore, 1934–1941, at his home at Nottingham, England, on 24 April 1974.

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16 CO 273/666, File No. 50336/41, Extract from a Malaya Combined Intelligence Summary, No. 8. 1st to 31st October 1940 which included policy of the MCP to the effect mentioned in the text.

17 Thompson, V. and Adloff, R., The Left Wing in Southeast Asia (New York, 1950), p. 128 Google Scholar. Cited by G. Z. Hanrahan, op. cit., p. 58.

18 CO 273/641, MRCA, 96 (August 1938), 14–20. CO 273/646, File No. 50500/38, The Governor, SS, to Malcolm MacDonald, Colonial Office, 5 Oct. 1938.

19 G.Z. Hanrahan, op. cit., pp. 58–59.

20 Ibid., 75. Colonel Chuang Hui Chuan, “I and Lim Boh Seng”, International Times, CI (Jan/Feb. 1969), 26 (text in Chinese). Akashi, Yoji, The Nanyang Chinese National Salvation Movement, 1937–1941 (Kansas 1970), p. 170 Google Scholar (35n). Brimmell, J. H., Communism in Southeast Asia (London and New York 1959), pp. 194–195.Google Scholar

21 M. R. Stenson, op. cit., p. 21. Cited from Lam Swee, , My Accusation (Kuala Lumpur 1952), p. 2 Google Scholar.

22 Yoji Akashi, op. cit., p. 173 (57n). Yoji Akashi regards both Soo Tong Ing and Koo Chung Eng as cadres of the Chinese Liberation Vanguard Corps but MRCA, 96 (Aug. 1938) states that they were ringleaders of the A.E.B.U.S. The former was controlled by Hau Say Huan while the latter by the MCP. Akashi's information is incorrect on this point.

23 V. Thompson and R. Adloff, op. cit., p. 126.

24 G. Z. Hanrahan, op. cit., p. 59.

25 J.H. Brimmell, op. cit., p. 148.

26 M. R. Stenson, op. cit., pp. 22–23. Cited from Annual Report on the State of Crime and the Administration of the Police Force, F.M.S. 1939, 20.

27 CO 273/662, File No. 50336/40, Subject: Labour Unrest in Malaya, containing a confidential despatch from the Governor, SS, to Malcolm MacDonald, Colonial Office, 29 Dec. 1939.

28 NYSP, 28 June 1928.

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30 J.H. Brimmell, op. cit., p. 146.

31 CO 273/662, File No. 50336/40, Governor, SS, to Malcolm MacDonald, Colonial Office, 9 Apr. 1940.

32 Ibid.

33 CO 273/641, MRCA, 96 (Aug. 1938), 14.

34 Ibid.

35 CO 273/662, File No. 50336/40, op. cit.

36 According to one interview I conducted on 5 Feb. 1976 in Singapore on the CNEV with a certain well-known Chinese in Singapore who preferred to remain anonymous, the information is that the SCRFC financed the organisation at a rate of S$8,000 per month with tacit approval from its Chairman, Tan Kah Kee. The CNEV was an illegal organisation.

37 CO 273/629, MRCA, 87 (Nov. 1937), 16.

38 CO 273/641, MRCA, 90 (Feb. 1938), 19–20.

39 CO 273/641, MRCA, 100 (Dec. 1938), 14.

40 CO 273/662, File No. 50336/40, Governor, SS, to Malcolm MacDonald, Colonial Office, 29 Dec. 1939.

41 Ibid.

42 CO 273/641, MRCA, 93 (May 1938), 19–20.

43 Ibid., 19.

44 CO 273/641, MRCA, 96 (Aug. 1938), 24.

45 Ibid.

46 C. F. Yong, “The Shantung Relief Fund Committee and Tan Kah Kee”, op. cit.

47 Seng, Pang Wing, “The Double-Seventh Incident, 1937: Singapore Chinese Response to the Outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, IV, 2 (Sept. 1973), 299.Google Scholar

48 NYSP, 29 and 30 May 1931.

49 Information obtained on 5 Feb. 1976 in Singapore from an interview with the same Chinese who would prefer to remain anonymous. According to this person, Aw Boon Haw provided a sum of S$250,000 to Lim Keng Lian and others from the Hokkien pang for undermining Tan Kah Kee's leadership roles. Lim Keng Lian, for example, mobilised his Ann Koey people to oppose the setting up of a Sub-Committee of the SCRFC at Lim Chu Kang.

50 Tan Kah Kee, My Autobiography, I (Singapore, 1946), 82 (text in Chinese).

51 Ibid.

52 CO 273/572, MRCA, 11 (July 1931), 13–14. CO 273/614, MCRA, 68 (Apr. 1936), 25.

53 CO 273/606, MCRA, 58 (June 1935), 40.

54 Tan Kah Kee, My Autobiography, II, 230, 320.

55 Ibid., 301–303.

56 Yoji Akashi, op. cit., p. 29.

57 CO 273/641, MRCA, 100 (Dec. 1938), 24.

58 Ibid., 23–24; and CO 273/641, MRCA, 101 (Jan. 1939), 30.

59 CO 273/654, MRCA, 106 (June 1939), 34.

60 CO 273/654, MRCA, 103 (Mar. 1939), 22.

61 Yong, C.F., “Emergence of Chinese Community Leaders in Singapore, 1890–1941”, Journal of South Seas Society, 30, 1 & 2 (Dec. 1975), 18 Google Scholar.

62 Tan Kah Kee, op. cit., II, 345. Southseas China Relief Fund Union, ed., The Great War and the Southseas Chinese (Singapore 1947), 47 Google Scholar. Kee, Tan Kah, Collection of Speeches and Writings of Tan Kah Kee (Singapore 1949), p. 123 (text in Chinese)Google Scholar.

63 C. F. Yong, “Emergence of Chinese Community Leaders in Singapore, 1890–1941”, op. cit., 1–18.

64 Yong, C. F., “Pre-War Singapore Chinese Protectorate, Ho Siak Kuan and Sng Choon Yee”, SCJP, 17 and 24 Nov. 1976 (text in Chinese).Google Scholar

65 Ibid.

66 6 An interview with the Rev. A. B. Jordan at Nottingham, England, on 24 Apr. 1974. According to the Rev. Jordan, Sng Choon Yee was his right hand man during his term of office as the Secretary for Chinese Affairs prior to Japanese occupation of the island.

67 Tan Kah Kee, My Autobiography, I, 42.

68 Ibid.

69 Pang Wing Seng, op. cit., 277.

70 Ibid.

71 NYSP, 9, 11 and 17 Aug. 1934.

72 The British did succeed in imposing various constraints on the SCRFC and later SCRFU. For example, the SCRFC could not collect funds for purposes other than relief. It could neither be allowed to advocate the boycott of Japanese goods nor its enforcement of the boycott movement. In November 1938, the Chinese Secretariat tightened up the activities of the SCRFC by imposing more rigid rules “designed to protect the public from annoyance, intimidation and fraud by collectors”. Also, the Relief Fund Committees throughout Malaya were called upon to apply for registration under the Societies Ordinance and Enactments. See CO 273/628, MRCA, 84 (Aug. 1937), 18 and CO 273/654, MRCA, 103 (Mar. 1939), 15–20.