Contesting Chineseness: Nationality, Class, Gender and New Chinese Migrants 9789048554416

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Contesting Chineseness

New Mobilities in Asia In the 21st century, human mobility will increasingly have an Asian face. Migration from, to, and within Asia is not new, but it is undergoing profound transformations. Unskilled labour migration from the Philippines, China, India, Burma, Indonesia, and Central Asia to the West, the Gulf, Russia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand continues apace. Yet industrialization in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and India, the opening of Burma, and urbanization in China is creating massive new flows of internal migration. China is fast becoming a magnet for international migration from Asia and beyond. Meanwhile, Asian students top study-abroad charts; Chinese and Indian managers and technicians are becoming a new mobile global elite as foreign investment from those countries grows; and Asian tourists are fast becoming the biggest travellers and the biggest spenders, both in their own countries and abroad. These new mobilities reflect profound transformations of Asian societies and their relationship to the world, impacting national identities and creating new migration policy regimes, modes of transnational politics, consumption practices, and ideas of modernity. This series brings together studies by historians, anthropologists, geographers, and political scientists that systematically explore these changes. Series Editor Pál Nyíri, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam Editorial Board Xiang Biao, Oxford University Peggy Levitt, Wellesley College Johan Lindquist, Stockholm University Tim Oakes, University of Colorado, Boulder Aihwa Ong, University of California, Berkeley Tim Winter, University of Western Australia Brenda Yeoh, National University of Singapore

Contesting Chineseness Nationality, Class, Gender and New Chinese Migrants

Sylvia Ang

Amsterdam University Press

Cover photo: Geylang Road, Singapore Source: the author Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 246 9 e-isbn 978 90 4855 441 6 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789463722469 nur 740 © Sylvia Ang / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2022 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.



Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 7 Introduction: Contesting Chineseness 9 Global anxieties at China’s ascent and the outflow of Chinese immigrants 12 The invisibilities of co-ethnic politics 15 Immigration and the cultural politics of being Chinese 17 Imagining Chinese identity 19 Insider, outsider and digital ethnography 22 Overview of the book 26 1 Who’s Chinese? Once a Chinese, always a Chinese Realizing the China dream De-Chineseness in Singapore Re-sinicizing Singapore Hostage to China’s rise and fall

35 37 39 43 45 50

2 Not the lower classes “We won’t go overly dressed” “I don’t dare to eat their food” “Dirty” women Sensory disturbances, repulsion, and class Denying cultural citizenship Marked as a Chinese migrant

55 58 59 61 63 66 69

3 A better Chinese man Hierarchy of Chinese Masculinities “We are of low quality” Higher suzhi makes a better man Performing Chinese masculinity Seeking solace on WeChat Reimagining the better Chinese man

73 74 79 83 85 88 90

4 When a Chinese does not speak Chinese Chineseness as Mandarin Other ways to be Chinese

97 100 104

Fragmenting identities My Chinese culture is better than your Chinese culture Civilizational or national belonging? Regulating the internet Sanitized Chineseness

106 109 110 112 113

5 In the new Chinatown Racialization and the politics of place The original Chinatown and the European imaginary Geylang: The new Chinatown The media’s complicity Chinese migrants react: Self Orientalisation Locals’ displacement Two Chinatowns, two imaginaries of Chineseness

119 122 123 126 129 133 136 138

Conclusion: A hierarchy of Chineseness Coconstitution of China and Singapore’s Chineseness Enduring Chineseness

145 148 150

Index 153

Acknowledgements Writing a book is no easy feat and this book would not be possible without the kindness and generosity of many. My thanks go firstly to those whose mentorship has pushed and supported me on the rough terrain of academia: Val Colic-Peisker, Lan Anh Hoang, Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho and Brenda S.A. Yeoh. I have also benefited greatly from the encouragement and advice generously offered by Ien Ang, Allen Chun, Francis L. Collins, Jia Gao, Pei-Chia Lan, Karen Farquharson, Fethi Mansouri, Fran Martin, Michelle Miller, Nana Oishi, Parvati Raghuram, Shanthi Robertson, Rachel Silvey, Jay Song, Leng Leng Thang, Takeyuki Tsuda, Peidong Yang and Junjia Ye. My thanks too, to colleagues and friends for sharing creative conversations and inspirations: Sophie Chandra, Ning Ning Chen, Yi’En Cheng, Xinyi Cheow, Jenny Tuen Yi Chiu, Anastasia Chung, Siao Young Fong, Courtney Fu, Carola Lorea, Stephanie Goh, Ryan Gustafsson, Yiling Lim, Shu Yun Lin, Li-Chia Lo, Kaiwen Ko, Woojong Moon, Peichoo Ng, Shilin Ng, Yasmin Ortiga, Shiori Shakuto, Menusha De Silva, Chand Somaiah, Cherlyn Tan, Kellynn Wee, Sokphea Young, Ting-Fai Yu, Shu Min Yuen and Xinyu Andy Zhao. I am tremendously grateful to the participants of this research who have so generously shared their time and thoughts. I hope this book does at least a little justice to their rich experiences. My gratitude goes also to the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore for a Postdoctoral Fellowship which provided both the finances and vibrant academic environment that brought this book to fruition. Thanks to Shannon Cunningham and the team at Amsterdam University Press for their help in smoothing the publishing ride. Finally, to Mum, Dad, Ian, Ryan, Parbat, Keisha and Mandy: thank you for your unconditional love and support for my constant curiosity. Some material from Chapter 4 appeared in an earlier version in Sylvia Ang (2017) “I am More Chinese than You: Online Narratives of Locals and Migrants in Singapore.” Cultural Studies Review 23(1): 102-17. Some material from Chapter 5 appeared in an earlier version in Sylvia Ang (2018) “The ‘new Chinatown’: the racialization of newly arrived Chinese migrants in Singapore.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44(7): 1177-1194.



Introduction: Contesting Chineseness Abstract This chapter introduces the paradox of politics among ethnic Chinese. It provides a detailed exploration of global anxieties to China’s ascent and the outflow of Chinese immigrants. The case study of Singapore is introduced as a mirror of the anxieties faced by cities with new flows of Chinese immigration. Both Singaporean-Chinese and new Chinese migrants’ stories are detailed to draw the audience into the cultural politics of being Chinese. The chapter explains the book’s framework through critically engaging scholarship across various fields including migration and ethnic studies. A methodology section justifies the book’s focus on Chinese subjects’ everyday lives which are shaped, though not necessarily determined, by global and state discourses. An overview of the chapters follows. Keywords: social imaginaries, Chineseness, co-ethnicity, China’s rise, anxieties, digital ethnography

In 2015, I was at Melbourne (Australia) Airport to board a flight bound for Singapore. As I was queuing to clear customs, a group of three Chinese tourists who were ahead of me tried to ask an Asian woman in Mandarin1 for help in tackling the customs declaration form. The Asian woman seemed to understand Mandarin but impatiently responded to them in English which baffled the Chinese tourists who could not understand her. What resulted was what is termed in Mandarin as “chicken and duck talk” ( jitong yajiang). Neither seemed to understand the other. I decided to intervene and responded to the Chinese tourists’ questions in Mandarin. They were delighted to finally have their questions answered and heaped praise on me. They asked me where I was from (Singapore) and seemed surprised, 1 I use Mandarin throughout to denote the standard Chinese language used both in Singapore and China. It is also referred to as putonghua in China.

Ang, Sylvia, Contesting Chineseness: Nationality, Class, Gender and New Chinese Migrants. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463722469_intro

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“Your putonghua [Mandarin] is so fluent!”2 while shooting the other Asian woman dirty looks. I sensed their disbelief that an ethnic Chinese overseas such as myself could speak good Mandarin and felt rather flustered. Amidst the praise, I became defensive and told them in a manner that implied of course I can speak Mandarin, “my grandfather was from China”. A pang of regret hit me as soon as I uttered the words. Did the Asian/English-speaking woman hear me? My remark may have unwittingly increased her “crime” (of not speaking Mandarin) since her grandparents could be from China as well. When the Chinese tourists eventually moved ahead in the queue, the Asian woman, who I noted had a Malaysian passport, mumbled in frustration to me, “How can they travel overseas without knowing a word of English?” As an ethnic Chinese overseas who spoke good Mandarin, I was “too Chinese”.3 On the other hand, the Asian woman who did not speak Mandarin was considered a mismatch with her embodiment – she was not Chinese enough. We were both inadvertently judged by the benchmark of the mainland Chinese tourists. The Chinese tourists were being judged too, however, by the Asian woman. In an era of globalization where English is deemed by many as the lingua franca of development, of first-world status, and as necessary to “travel overseas”, the Chinese tourists’ inability to speak English was denounced. The Asian woman seemed to suggest their lack of English ability should act as a kind of limit to disallow travel outside of their country. In other words, by not speaking English, the Chinese tourists were perceived as inward, and backward. This scenario, however, must be contrasted against our backdrop, Melbourne Airport, which in recent years has adopted Mandarin signage and advertisements such as the massive banner just outside the airport boldly promoting luxurious Italian furniture in Mandarin. While many are still stuck in a post-colonial hangover where English is seen as the necessary language, others have pushed ahead to embrace Chinese capitalism. My dilemma of being an ethnic Chinese overseas did not stop at Melbourne Airport. On returning to Singapore, I was reminded of the growing resentment amongst Singaporean-Chinese against new migrants from China. Since the 1990s, the Singaporean state has adopted liberal immigration regulations to meet skills shortages and improve low birth-rates. As a result, Singapore’s permanent resident and non-resident immigrant population nearly doubled between 2000 and 2010. 4 A record number of 79,167 perma2 All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 3 Ien Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese: Living between Asia and the West (London: Routledge, 2005). 4 Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho, Citizens in Motion: Emigration, Immigration, and Re-Migration across China’s Borders (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019).

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nent residency applications were approved in 2008. From 2008 to 2013, the permanent resident immigrant population in Singapore increased by more than a quarter-million. China was a key source country for both higher-wage and high net-worth immigrants who are encouraged to settle permanently in Singapore as well as low-wage temporary labour migrants.5 In the light of falling Singaporean-Chinese birth-rates, the state’s liberal policies toward Chinese migrants settling is also a move to maintain the status-quo of a dominant seventy-five per cent ethnic Chinese population in Singapore.6 Contrary to our early education in Singapore that the ethnic Chinese is a cultivated race and that we should be proud of China as our “motherland” (see Chapter One), Singaporean-Chinese respondents informed me that they “dislike PRCs”7 because “they are dirty” and “in my space”. Others preached “Chinese values” and reminisced proudly about their hardworking ancestors from China before delving into gossip about “PRC” women who prey on elderly Singaporean-Chinese men for their money. In a tightly controlled state with little to no freedom of speech, the distaste for Chinese migrants also grew and manifested a large presence online. In 2012, for instance, a video showing a Ferrari car crash by a Chinese driver that killed a local taxi-driver went viral. The circumstances of the Ferrari driver’s speeding and running a red light ignited anti-Chinese sentiment on Singaporean social media. One user commented, “Foreign talent? They are here to kill our dear Singaporean? Hope that PRC burn in hell.”8 The backlash against Chinese nationals in Singapore was so rife and so prominent online that various news outlets specifically noted the extent of online furore including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, the latter headlined “In Singapore, Vitriol Against Chinese Newcomers”.9 At the same time, my mainland Chinese respondents told me that they had imagined sharing cultural affinities with Singaporean-Chinese, at least before arriving in Singapore. Almost every Chinese migrant I spoke to said that they assumed there would be few integration issues as “we 5 Ibid. 6 Beng Huat Chua, “Being Chinese under Off icial Multiculturalism in Singapore.” Asian Ethnicity 10, no. 3(2009): 239-50. https://doi.org/10.1080/14631360903189609 7 “PRC” is used colloquially in Singapore to denote Chinese nationals, often derogatorily. 8 All user comments and social media posts are quoted sic. RaiderZX00 (2012) “Fatal Accident: Ferrari crashed into Comfort Taxi at Bugis” [Youtube post]. Available at https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=GywH2zccXDE (Accessed 3 Aug 2014) 9 “In Singapore, Vitriol against Newcomers from Mainland China,” Andrew Jacobs, New York Times, July 26, 2012, accessed on May 5, 2020 from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/world/ asia/in-singapore-vitriol-against-newcomers-from-mainland-china.html.

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are all Chinese”. These assumptions have been rudely interrupted. Some Chinese respondents told me that Singaporean-Chinese have lived alongside Singaporeans of other ethnicities for so long that they have become “different from us, the real Chinese”. Others were appalled at the weak Mandarin proficiency of Singaporean-Chinese and criticized their overt individualism. A paradox has emerged: why are there tensions between ethnic Chinese settlers and new Chinese arrivals despite similarities in phenotype, ancestry, and customs? I began to cultivate an empirical puzzle. To my knowledge, studies on migration and ethnicity at that time did little to look at the identity politics between different flows of ethnic Chinese. I wanted to learn more about how the new flows of Chinese migrants from an increasingly powerful China are interacting with ethnic Chinese settlers. Rather than focusing only on how migrants integrate, as much migration literature does, I also wanted to find out more about how ethnic Chinese settlers are being transformed with new Chinese immigration. Most of all, I wanted to learn how and why anti-Chinese-national sentiments are so prevalent in a predominantly ethnic Chinese Singapore.

Global anxieties at China’s ascent and the outflow of Chinese immigrants In 2019, emigrants from China were the third largest foreign-born population in the world, with nearly eleven million Chinese migrants living outside China.10 While the West was traditionally more popular as a migration destination, Chinese migrants are increasingly heading to other areas, including areas with older waves of ethnic Chinese. Yet scholarship on tensions between host societies and Chinese subjects is highly concentrated in the “West”, including in the United States,11 Australia,12 Canada,13 New 10 United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), International Migrant Stock 2019. UN DESA Population Division, New York. Accessed on April 12, 2020 from www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/data/estimates2/estimates19.asp. 11 Rosalind S Chou and Joe R Feagin, Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism (London: Routledge, 2015); Wei Li, “Beyond Chinatown, Beyond Enclave: Reconceptualizing Contemporary Chinese Settlements in the United States.” GeoJournal 64, no. 1 (2005): 31-40.; Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999). 12 Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese; Shuang Liu, “Searching for a Sense of Place: Identity Negotiation of Chinese Immigrants,” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 46 (2015): 26-35. 13 Shibao Guo, “Economic Integration of Recent Chinese Immigrants in Canada’s Second-Tier Cities: The Triple Glass Effect and Immigrants’ Downward Social Mobility,” Canadian Ethnic

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Zealand,14 and Italy.15 While such scholarship advanced understanding of Chinese subjects in the face of the “West” and by the “West”, its relevance is limited in non-Western fields. The juxtaposition of the West against the Chinese is no longer adequate in an era where new waves of Chinese migration are reaching many different parts of the world, including into non-Western territories, such as Asia and Africa. Importantly, studies set in the West tend to rely on a presumed dichotomy between whites and others. This has caused first, an ignorance of Chinese heterogeneity while ignoring the politics of difference among the Chinese; and second, a lack of studies on issues of discrimination in non-white settings. How are contemporary Chinese migrants received in settings outside of the “West”? How are new Chinese migrants received by earlier waves of ethnic Chinese populations? And finally, how are new Chinese migrants reshaping host countries? These are questions which countries with new and old flows of Chinese migrants are interested in and which this study addresses. Global anxieties towards China’s ascent have emerged dramatically all over the world. In 2019, a Pew Research Centre survey in America showed that unfavourable opinions of China have reached a 14-year high: 60% of Americans have an unfavourable opinion of China, up from 47% in 2018 and at the highest level since the Pew Research Centre began asking the question in 2005.16 In Australia, a poll suggested that Australians’ trust in China as a responsible global actor has hit its lowest point in the survey’s 15-year history. Only 32% of the sample say they trust China to act responsibly.17 Anxiety levels are similar, if not higher in Asia. A 2017 poll found that both South Koreans and Vietnamese rated China’s power and influence as the

Studies 45, no. 3 (2013): 95-115; Timothy J Stanley, Contesting White Supremacy: School Segregation, Anti-Racism, and the Making of Chinese Canadians (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2011). 14 Liangni Sally Liu, “A Search for a Place to Call Home: Negotiation of Home, Identity and Senses of Belonging among New Migrants from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to New Zealand,” Emotion, Space and Society 10 (2014): 18-26; Bingyu Wang, New Chinese Migrants in New Zealand: Becoming Cosmopolitan? Roots, Emotions, and Everyday Diversity (London; New York: Routledge, 2018). 15 Antonella Ceccagno, City Making and Global Labor Regimes: Chinese Immigrants and Italy’s Fast Fashion Industry (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); Elizabeth L Krause, Tight Knit: Global Families and the Social Life of Fast Fashion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018). 16 “U.S. Views of China Amid Trade War Turn Sharply Negative,” Laura Silver, Kat Devlin and Christine Huang, Pew Research Center, August 13, 2019, accessed on April 12, 2020 from https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/08/13/u-s-views-of-china-turn-sharply-negative-amid-trade-tensions/ 17 “Australians’ Trust in China at Lowest Point in Survey’s History,” Katharine Murphy, The Guardian, Jun 25, 2019, accessed on April 12, 2020 from https://www.theguardian.com/ australia-news/2019/jun/25/australians-trust-in-china-at-lowest-point-in-surveys-history

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top threat facing their nations.18 Anti-Chinese sentiments have also risen in Malaysia where former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has pushed back against China’s presence in the country, claiming that “lots of people don’t like Chinese investments.”19 China’s international image is intimately tied to how ethnic Chinese are viewed throughout the world. In the U.S. for instance, unfavourable opinion towards China has led to questions on the loyalty of Chinese Americans. State mistrust has resulted in discrimination against Chinese Americans with ties to China. A Bloomberg news analysis found that when it comes to security clearances to work for government contractors, more than three-fifths of applicants who have family or other ties to China are rejected while two-thirds of applicants with ties to other countries are approved.20 In Singapore, the loyalty of China-born immigrants has been increasingly questioned both by the state and by Singaporeans. In 2017, a China-born US citizen, Professor Huang Jing who worked at a prestigious research institute in Singapore, was accused of “deliberately and covertly advancing the agenda of a foreign country at Singapore’s expense.” The official statement did not name the country, but many assumed this was the country of his birth, China. Professor Jing was subsequently stripped of his Permanent Resident status and expelled from Singapore.21 Chinese propaganda has since been a hot topic and some have speculated that Singapore’s recently established regulations against “fake news” were, other than the ruling party’s consolidation of power, an attempt to counter Chinese propaganda.22 While questions on China-born immigrants’ loyalties have always been present amongst Singaporeans, this recent saga has translated to increased talk about Chinese spies. Discourses on whether 18 “How People in Asia-Pacif ic View China,” Laura Silver, Pew Research Center, October 16, 2017, accessed on May 5, 2020 from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/16/ how-people-in-asia-pacific-view-china/ 19 “Anti-China Sentiments Will Do No Good: The Star Columnist,” Chun Wai Wong, The Straits Times, April 23, 2018, accessed on May 5, 2020 from https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/ anti-china-sentiments-will-do-no-good-the-star-columnist 20 “Mistrust and the Hunt for Spies Among Chinese Americans,” Peter Waldman, Bloomberg, December 10, 2019, accessed on April 12, 2020 from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/ features/2019-12-10/the-u-s-government-s-mistrust-of-chinese-americans 21 “LKY School Professor Huang Jing Banned, has PR Cancelled, for Being Agent of Influence for Foreign Country,” Royston Sim, The Straits Times, August 7, 2017, accessed on May 1, 2020 from https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/lky-school-professor-huang-jing-banned-haspr-cancelled-for-being-agent-of-influence-for 22 “US Think Tank Highlights Channels for China’s ‘Influence Operations’ in Singapore,” Wong Pei Ting, Today Online, July 17, 2019, accessed on May 1, 2020 from https://www.todayonline. com/singapore/us-think-tank-highlights-channels-chinas-influence-operations-singapore

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new Chinese citizens should be trusted to do mandatory military service (in case state secrets are leaked) dominate mainstream Singaporean society and have been iterated to me by my Singaporean-Chinese respondents. Online forum threads titled “What is being done to purge Singapore of PRC spies?”23 and “Pro-Chinese Government Propaganda [in Singaporean online forums]” have emerged to considerable popularity.24 The latter thread, for instance, consisted of four hundred posts. As this book highlights, the rise of China and accordingly, outflows of new Chinese migrants have produced new tensions as the fortunes of ethnic Chinese and the countries they live in must now negotiate new constellations of power beyond western dominance.

The invisibilities of co-ethnic politics In Singapore, “race” is an off icial category and mandated in all formal documents. Race, however, as many scholars have long established, is a social construct, although it persists in shaping people’s lived experiences. Race is a mode of categorization that is utilized, intentionally as well as unintentionally, to ascribe certain behavioural and cultural characteristics to individuals based primarily on their biological and physical appearance (perceived and real).25 While race commonly denotes immutability, ethnicity indicates the learned aspects of groups that share a common identity-based ancestry, language, or culture. It is frequently based on customs, beliefs and religion as well as memories of migration or colonization.26 This book uses “ethnicity” instead of “race” to avoid attaching fixed characteristics to groups and highlight instead the fluid, learned aspects of groups. Consequently, “Co-ethnics” is used to refer to a group of people who may be perceived as of the same phenotype e.g. Chinese but have different culture and/or beliefs such as Singaporean-Chinese and Chinese nationals. 23 “What is Being Done to Purge SG of PRC spies?” Laksaboy, The Sammyboy Times, January 10, 2020, accessed on April 12, 2020 from https://www.sammyboy.com/threads/what-is-being-doneto-purge-sg-of-prc-spies.276780/ 24 “[Discussion] Pro-Chinese Government Propaganda,” Hierophant Jirachi and RedEyesFan. (n.d.)., accessed on April 12, 2020 from https://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/eat-drink-manwoman-16/%5Bdiscussion%5D-pro-chinese-government-propaganda-6153525.html 25 Sin Yee Koh & I Lin Sin, “Academic and Teacher Expatriates in Malaysia: Racial Privilege and Disadvantage in Transnational Education Mobilities,” Forthcoming. 26 Stephen E. Cornell and Douglas Hartmann, Ethnicity and race: Making identities in a changing world (USA: Sage Publications, 2006).

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Studies that focus on co-ethnic tensions and migration have mostly looked at return migration27 and in terms of Chinese co-ethnicity, ethnic Chinese resettlement in China.28 Such work has advanced our understanding of co-ethnic Othering, bringing our attention to how the return migration of diasporic descendants are driven by roots, identity and belonging.29 Rather than look at how return migrants are treated as minorities in their ancestral country, however, the minority-majority dichotomy is destabilized in this book. I join the conversation started by scholars of return migration by complicating the idea of “return”. Since Singaporean-Chinese have been socialized to look to China as the “motherland”, do the new flows of migrants from mainland China conjure a sense of return or reuniting with fellow co-ethnics? How do new flows of Chinese migration complicate previous ideas of the “motherland”? Chinese migrants may be considered the “majority” Chinese in terms of originating from the “motherland” and accordingly more “authentic”, yet they are marginalized as a minority in Singapore. This book shows how Chineseness can be both an object of similarity and difference between Chinese migrants and Singaporean-Chinese which makes for an intriguing investigation on how difference is produced, right down to details of dress and taste (see Chapter Two). Investigating how difference is produced between co-ethnics is important as migrants’ ethnic similarity to the host state often veils otherwise more visible forms of marginalization. Skin colour is not the only signif ier of exclusion/inclusion and may obstruct deeper insights into issues of discrimination, allowing a kind of “cultural invisibility” to the victims.30 The book’s focus on ethnic politics beyond colour is part of a movement to move beyond the white/Other binary that dominates 27 Takeyuki Tsuda, Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003); Takeyuki Tsuda, Diasporic Homecomings: Ethnic Return Migration in Comparative Perspective (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009); Dennis Conway and Robert B Potter. Return Migration of the Next Generations: 21st Century Transnational Mobility (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009); Russell King and Anastasia Christou, “Of Counter-Diaspora and Reverse Transnationalism: Return Mobilities to and from the Ancestral Homeland,” Mobilities 6, no. 4 (2011): 451-66. 28 Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho, “‘Refugee’ or ‘Returnee’? The Ethnic Geopolitics of Diasporic Resettlement in China and Intergenerational Change,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 38, no. 4 (2013): 599-611; Michael R. Godley, “The Sojourners: Returned Overseas Chinese in the People’s Republic of China,” Pacific Affairs 62 (1989): 330-52. 29 Ho, “‘Refugee’ or ‘Returnee’?” 600. 30 Macan Ghaill, “The Irish in Britain: The Invisibility of Ethnicity and Anti-Irish Racism.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration studies 26, no. 1 (2000): 137-47.

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American sociological theories of assimilation. “Ethnicity” is traditionally used as a unit of analysis by classical assimilation theorists to measure assimilation.31 While this has resulted in important studies that predict that migrants would eventually assimilate, the limits of these studies have been pointed out by segmented assimilation theorists who suggest that nationality and class backgrounds have to be taken into account in studies of assimilation. This book hopes to contribute to this dialogue by suggesting that how co-ethnics imagine nationality, class and gender is crucial to how they interact with co-ethnic others and has important implications for assimilation.

Immigration and the cultural politics of being Chinese One way to understand the effects of China’s rise is to examine how Chinese nationals and ethnic Chinese overseas imagine China and its outf low of new Chinese migrants. With the rise of China, Singapore, like other high-income countries dependent on international capital flows, must now grapple with the shift from western-based capital to Chinese-based capital flows. At the same time, due to China’s uneven developing status, host societies must negotiate the flows of new Chinese migrants which consist of both higher-wage professionals as well as low-wage workers. Singapore provides a compelling site to investigate anxieties towards the rise of China and its outflow of new Chinese migrants as it is the only state outside of Greater China (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong) with a predominantly ethnic Chinese population. Singapore is both an outsider as well as an insider. As a longstanding political and military partner of the United States, Singapore is as anxious as any western country in watching China’s ascent. At the same time, Singapore’s geographical and cultural proximity to China has translated to worries of China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea as well as its diasporic policies. Singapore’s insider and outsider positionality is nowhere clearer than in the ongoing trade war between the US and China. In the 2019 National Day Rally, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke at length 31 Gordon Milton, Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964); Alba Richard and Victor Nee, Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).

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about Singapore’s ethnic Chinese and the need to remain sovereign and independent amidst the US-China trade war: “If we support China, the US and other countries may think we do so because we are a majority Chinese country and therefore accede to China. But China may also misunderstand if Singapore supports the US … In fact, on occasions when Singapore and China have held different views in the past, some of our friends from China have asked us: since we share a common language, a common ancestry and a common heritage, why does Singapore not share a common view?”32

Singapore’s predominantly ethnic Chinese population has also increased state anxieties in other ways. Since 2018, China launched a new five-year visa for foreigners with Chinese ancestry, in a bid to lure overseas Chinese to “participate in China’s economic development”.33 This compelled Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to point out publicly in 2019 that Singaporean-Chinese are different from Chinese communities elsewhere, including China.34 Even as Singapore attempts to define its own Chinese identity, however, it cannot deny its large proportion of China-born population. The number of Chinese migrants in Singapore at its peak, was estimated at between 700,000 to one million, representing a substantial proportion of Singapore’s 5.7 million population.35 While the number of Chinese nationals in Singapore has since fallen, it is still the second largest migrant population, second only to Malaysians, occupying 18% of Singapore’s 32 “National Day Rally 2019: Singapore Wants to Remain Good Friends with US, China; Must Always be Principled in Approach, says PM Lee,” Linette Lai, The Straits Times, August  18, 2019, accessed on May  1, 2020 from https://w w w.straitstimes.com/politics/ national-day-rally-2019-spore-wants-to-remain-good-friends-with-us-and-china-must-always-be 33 “China to Issue 5-year Visas for Foreigners of Chinese Origin,” Danson Cheong, The Straits Times, February 1, 2018, accessed on October 29, 2019 from https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/ east-asia/china-to-issue-5-year-visas-for-foreigners-of-chinese-origin 34 “S’pore’s Chinese Community Different from Others Elsewhere: Pm Lee,” Faris Mokhtar, Today Online, February 4, 2019, accessed on May 30, 2019 from https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/ singapore-chinese-community-different-from-others-pm-lee-chinese-new-year-message. 35 No concrete data is available from the state, see Malcom Moore, “Singapore’s ‘Anti-Chinese Curry War’,” The Telegraph, August 16, 2011, accessed on April 5, 2015 from http://www.telegraph. co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/singapore/8704107/Singapores-anti-Chinese-curry-war.html; Ching Ching Yim, Transnational social spaces and transnationalism: A study on the new Chinese migrant community in Singapore, 2011, Doctor of Philosophy. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong; Yeoh and Lin, “Chinese Migration to Singapore: Discourses and Discontents in a Globalizing Nation-State.”

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foreign-born population.36 This number does not account for the number of new citizens which as of end-2010 consisted of 175,155 new citizens and permanent residents from China, including Hong Kong and Macau, in Singapore.37 Singapore’s dilemma in terms of China, new Chinese migrants and a predominantly ethnic Chinese population mirrors the anxieties faced by global cities all over the world as they grapple with China’s ascent and negotiate old and new flows of Chinese migration. How do shifting global capital configurations affect the terms in which ethnic Chinese negotiate their imaginaries of China and Chinese identity? Investigating how Singaporean-Chinese and mainland Chinese migrants imagine their Chinese identity against the backdrop of China’s ascent offers insights into global power shifts that transform our understanding of Chinese identity.

Imagining Chinese identity What is Chinese-ness? This is a big question this book does not seek to address specifically, and indeed, cannot. Various scholars have attempted to address this question and answers are disparate at best.38 At risk of oversimplification, the debates may be best defined as the primordialists versus the modernists, with some arguments falling in between these two positions. Tu Weiming’s seminal work on Chineseness: “Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center”39 is one example of a primordialist perspective where he suggested that the rise of Chinese cultural consciousness is 36 “Migrants in Singapore mostly from Malaysia,” Ee Lyn Tan, The Straits Times, January 19, 2020, accessed on April 12, 2020 from https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/migrants-inspore-mostly-from-malaysia 37 Wong, “Anti-China sentiments will do no good.” 38 Wei-ming Tu, “Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center.” Daedalus 120, no. 2 (1991): 1-32. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20025372; Ien Ang, “Together-in-difference: Beyond Diaspora, into Hybridity.” Asian Studies Review 27, no. 2(2003): 141-54. https://doi.org/10.1080/10357820308713372; Chris Vasantkumar, “What Is This “Chinese” in Overseas Chinese? Sojourn Work and the Place of China’s Minority Nationalities in Extraterritorial Chinese-Ness.” The Journal of Asian Studies 71, no. 2 (2012): 423-46. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911812000113; Loong Wong, “Belonging and Diaspora: The Chinese and the Internet.” First Monday (2003). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v8i4.1045; Michael Jacobsen, “Re-Conceptualising Notions of Chinese-Ness in a Southeast Asian Context. From Diasporic Networking to Grounded Cosmopolitanism.” East Asia 24, no. 2 (2007): 213-27. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-007-9015-y; Lok CD Siu, “Diasporic Cultural Citizenship: Chineseness and Belonging in Central America.” Social Text 19, no. 4 (2001): 7-28. 39 Tu, “Cultural China.”

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embedded in “ethnic, territorial, linguistic, and ethical-religious terms”. 40 Chineseness, according to Tu, does not necessarily stem from holding a Chinese passport. Rather, he emphasizes the predominance of “bloodlines” in recognizing the ethnic Chinese across the globe. Tu’s approach has been criticized by scholars as reifying Chineseness; a point this book is eager to avoid. Rather, Chineseness can be viewed as a paradox as it is “simultaneously many and one – many within the PRC and one without”. 41 Within China, Chineseness is plural, consisting of a majority Han population and fifty-five minorities. Outside of China, however, there is only one “Overseas Chinese-ness that is geographically unbounded and resolutely uniform in ethno-racial terms”. 42 It is this paradox of Chineseness that belies why scholars cannot agree on its definition. Accordingly, this book approaches Chineseness as processual rather than fixed. 43 In other words, Chineseness is used in this book in a modernist/ constructivist manner. As Ien Ang (2005) wrote, “If I am inescapably Chinese by descent, I am only sometimes Chinese by consent. When and how is a matter of politics”. I consider the question “what is Chineseness?” to be less important than the puzzle of “how is Chineseness constructed?” It is the “situatedness”44 of Chineseness that the book is concerned with; the context in which Chineseness is expressed and contested. In other words, rather than seek to define the “factual substance” of Chineseness, it is more significant to “know who is really speaking, how statements are produced and disseminated, how they relate to other discourses, and, finally, how they become systematized and institutionalized”. 45 Through approaching Chineseness as a cultural discourse that is “not just imagined but authorized and institutionalized”, 46 this book investigate how Chineseness is imagined both by people and the state, including how states authorize and institutionalize Chineseness (see Chapter One). The contestation of Chinese identity becomes starker when migrants are investigated. Migrants are forced to create new imagined worlds from the ones they had come from; imaginaries of which are nuanced by mass 40 Ibid., 3. 41 Vasantkumar, “What Is This “Chinese” in Overseas Chinese?,” 426. 42 Ibid. 43 Vasantkumar, “What Is This “Chinese” in Overseas Chinese?,” 427. 44 Allen Chun, Forget Chineseness: On the Geopolitics of Cultural Identification (New York: SUNY Press, 2017). 45 Allen Chun, “Fuck Chineseness: On the Ambiguities of Ethnicity as Culture as Identity,” Boundary 2 23, no. 2 (1996): 111-138 (114-115) 46 Chun, “Fuck Chineseness,” 111-138.

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migration and the mass media. 47 Such imaginaries may not fit or fit well with the dominant imaginaries of nation-states. In other words, migrants’ imaginaries can merge or clash with the worlds they have moved into. Moreover, imaginaries are not forced on people in a single direction but challenged by co- and counter-imaginaries. 48 My Chinese migrant respondents have found their imaginary of “we are all Chinese” displaced in Singapore by Singaporean-Chinese’s imaginaries that “Chinese migrants are different from us”. Singaporean-Chinese imaginaries of Chineseness are also displaced by the large number of “more authentic” Chinese migrants from the “motherland” with their versions of Chineseness. Importantly, migration does not only displace migrants but also the host society, whether physically or imaginary-wise. The cultural “certainties” of a place are reconfigured with migration such that even the host society that has not “moved” may find their relationships to a familiar place changed.49 This book distinguishes itself from mainstream work on migration and integration by not only investigating migrants or hosts but both migrants and hosts. This approach enables us to see the different imaginaries of Chinese-ness as well as how migration transforms both migrants and hosts. Investigating “imaginaries” is useful to locate the lived worlds of migrants and hosts. However, the book is further interested in the social: to not only illuminate how migrants or the host society think but how they think of themselves amidst others. Using the “social imaginary” instead of only “imaginary” brings attention to the interactional nature of migration, of encounters between migrants and hosts, and of confrontations and concurrence. “Social imaginary” is useful as a microscopic lens to understand how people construct their worlds as collective agents and the complex of meanings that underlies people’s behaviour.50 It is also useful on the meso level: it allows us to investigate how the state and mass media shape social imaginaries. On a macro level, investigating social imaginaries enables us to understand how migration and globalization are negotiated in people’s lives. Importantly, despite the book’s focus on Chineseness, the “social” is emphasized over the “cultural” as the book’s foremost argument is that 47 Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, “Toward New Imaginaries: An Introduction,” Public Culture 14, no. 1 (2002): 1-99. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/26270; Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). 48 Gaonkar, “Toward New Imaginaries.” 49 Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, “Culture, Power, Place: Ethnography at the End of an Era,” in Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology, ed. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997). 50 Gaonkar, “Toward New Imaginaries,” 1.

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“Chinese culture” is socially constructed. It is precisely due to its fluid and constructed nature that Chineseness is open to contestation. Through stitching together the two concepts: how subjects imagine their social existence alongside others (“social imaginaries”) and an ethnic lens (“Chineseness”), this book seeks to venture beyond narratives of encounter by pushing for an understanding of the link between words/action and imaginary. This contributes to a more rounded understanding of “processes of negotiation, of co-production as well as co-presence”.51 In so doing, Contesting Chineseness advances migration and ethnicity scholarship in three ways. First, I draw out how Singaporean-Chinese and Chinese migrants have different imaginaries of Chinese identity. This analysis contributes to unpacking the complexities of mass migration, super-diversities and the assumed homogeneity of the Chinese. Second, I show how my respondents imagine Chineseness alongside nationality, class and gender: factors which combine in myriad ways to produce hierarchies of Chineseness. Third, I consider my respondents’ interaction with state discourses on migration and Chinese capitalism to show how the state and China’s ascent shape their Chinese subjectivity.

Insider, outsider and digital ethnography As a second-generation Singaporean, I have had to contend with a hybrid identity since a young age. My maternal grandparents and paternal great grandfather originated from China. My maternal great-grandmother may have had Burmese or Thai origins while my paternal grandmother’s origins were unknown. I was nonetheless labelled “Chinese” at birth in the official “race” category, just like my father and mother, although as many have told me, I do not look one bit Chinese. I grew up with American media and was inculcated in British English in Singapore’s education system up to bachelor’s level. In school, I took Mandarin as a compulsory “Mother Tongue” subject till I was seventeen years old. As a result, I cannot communicate with any of my grandparents who spoke little Mandarin and only Chinese vernaculars of which I had meagre understanding. The arrival of new Chinese migrants since the 1990s in Singapore was an opportunity for me: I wanted to find out what Chineseness is. 51 Katy Bennett, Allan Cochrane, Giles Mohan and Sarah Neal, “Negotiating the educational spaces of urban multiculture: Skills, competencies and college life,” Urban Studies, 54 no. 10 (2017): 2305-2321.

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I conducted f ieldwork in Singapore in 2013 and 2014, with biannual follow-ups from 2015 to 2018, followed by research and writing up this book in Singapore in 2019 and 2020. I talked to and spent time with sixtytwo participants (aged twenty-four to fifty-eight years old) comprising both Singaporean-Chinese (twelve males, twelve females) and mainland Chinese migrants (ten females, twenty-eight males). I accessed most of my respondents through my personal contacts who would recommend other respondents, and through WeChat (see below). I made deliberate efforts to diversify my sources to ensure my participants had diverse occupations and educational backgrounds. As such, my Singaporean-Chinese respondents’ occupations ranged from taxi-driver to occupational therapist while my Chinese respondents included construction workers and academics. Many ethnographers take the view that long-term members who live within the culture lack the ability to see the basic assumptions behind their worldview (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). Although I am Singaporean, my position as one who has lived overseas for four years (at the time of my fieldwork) assisted in making me part-stranger and allowed me to occupy simultaneously an insider and outsider position during my fieldwork. As a middle-class Singaporean-Chinese female, I have sought to minimise my positionality with Singaporean-Chinese respondents by letting them choose both the interview locations and language to maximise their comfort level. As an insider, I could include strategies of code-switching between English, Singlish, good Mandarin, bad Mandarin and even Chinese vernaculars to minimise the social/class distance between the respondent and me. At the same time, I positioned myself as an ill-informed overseas returnee i.e. outsider that needed to be enlightened. This placed many of my participants in positions of authority and helped to lessen my middle-class positionality. My position as an “insider” Singaporean while interacting with Chinese migrants had certain benefits. A poignant example was when I met a group of Chinese construction workers at Geylang (the ‘new’ Chinatown, see Chapter Five) and asked about their interaction with Singaporeans. They responded that they have never had the opportunity to interact with any Singaporeans, except me. They proceeded to treat me like a star at the dinner, asking me multiple questions about Singapore, and each was interrupting the other to speak with me. At the same time, my then status as a graduate student at an overseas University made me an “outsider” which mitigated the wariness they may normally have with other Singaporeans. Although I am proficient in Mandarin, however, I am certainly not as fluent as my Chinese respondents. To make up for my shortcomings, I

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often prepared for my interviews by looking up words in the dictionary and reading local Mandarin newspapers to brush up on my Mandarin. My efforts were reflected in how many Chinese participants were taken aback by my fluency. I was, of course, also privileged by my high school training in Higher Chinese, a curriculum only available to a select minority in the Singapore education system; a privilege reflective of the many differences within the heterogenous Singaporean-Chinese population, as I highlight in Chapter Four. This book also used digital ethnography data which was accessed during a time when online narratives of locals and migrants were rife, easily accessible and often openly critical of the Singaporean ruling government. In fact, the internet was seen by many as the reason for the local opposition’s large gains in the 2011 elections. In a world where everyday lives are deeply entangled with and communicated via digital technologies, digital ethnography helps to present a more rounded approach to people’s lives. In undertaking digital ethnography, I take as its starting point “the idea that digital media and technologies are part of the everyday and more spectacular worlds that people inhabit”.52 At the same time, even as I take digital media as part of the everyday lives of people, it is also not the only part. Other aspects of their lives must also be taken into consideration in the analysis: digital ethnography complements my ethnographic work as well as in-depth interviews. I used digital ethnography in two ways. First, I focused on social media websites frequented by Singaporeans and Chinese migrants in Singapore. Social media websites are important in Singapore as they contain alternative narratives, many of which openly counteract state narratives. Second, I used the mobile media application WeChat to access and talk to many Chinese migrants. I observed social media websites frequented by Singaporeans (Youtube, Facebook, Hardware zone forum, Sam’s Alfresco Coffee forum, Sgforums) and Chinese migrants in Singapore (Tianya sequ forum, shichengwang forum) and did not make known my presence as a researcher as doing so would have disrupted forum group dynamics. I only use quotes that are publicly available. Having immersed myself on these websites since 2013, I have grown familiar with the “code of conduct” as well as colloquialisms of each forum. For instance, on the Chinese forum site Tianya, a search for xinjiapo (the standard Chinese term for “Singapore”) would render far fewer results than using the slang pokuo which is more commonly used to discuss 52 Sarah Pink, Heather Horst, John Postill, Larissa Hjorth, Tania Lewis and Jo Tacchi, Digital ethnography: Principles and practice (London: Sage Publications Ltd, 2015).

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Singapore. I also follow relevant viral threads and videos that are frequently shared on these websites. All digital ethnographic data was collected within a 10-year period, from 2009 to 2019, matching both Singapore’s unprecedented immigration growth as well as the growing importance of the digital sphere for alternative views. I have not chosen the most vicious online comments as data. Rather, only online comments that were typical of online narratives that are widely circulated, and which matched my offline observations were chosen. While all my chapters use digital ethnography in a complementary manner, I have dedicated Chapter Four to mainly digital ethnographic data to show how the online overlaps with the offline. Chapter Four should be read complementarily to the other chapters. The contestation of Chineseness online is not only a result of migrant-local tensions, it also actively shapes how people imagine the Chinese Other. Both Singaporeans and Chinese nationals are avid social media users and the overlap of the online with the offline is evidenced through my interviews with many respondents who commented frequently, “Didn’t you see this on the online forum? I read about this online”. I initially resorted to using the mobile media application WeChat to access migrants during f ieldwork because of failed attempts to access potential respondents through local Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). While NGOs under local contexts generally work with caution, their anxieties were elevated after the Little India riots in December 2013 where about 300 people, many of whom are migrant workers, rioted. Twenty-three emergency vehicles were damaged, including five that were torched. The riot coincided with the start of my fieldwork. Understandably, the local NGOs were highly protective of the migrants they served at a highly sensitive time and denied me access. Fortunately, I was informed by many respondents that WeChat was a good means to seek Chinese contacts. To my delight, WeChat’s “discovery” function to seek users of the same application who were in physical proximity to me not only identified Chinese migrants in general but many low-wage male Chinese migrants specifically. Frequently hidden from public view, male low-wage workers are imported by the state in large numbers to do construction work and shuttled at the back of trucks between their work sites and isolated dormitories, leaving them little opportunity to interact with Singaporean society. WeChat enabled me to access many Chinese male low-wage migrant workers who were otherwise hard to meet in person: they work long hours with few days off, and many had curfews to meet at the dormitories or worksites they resided in. In total, I chatted online with fourteen Chinese male migrants on the application, met eleven of them in person and conducted phone interviews (an average

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of 1.5 hours) with three respondents using the application’s call function. The perils of WeChat for me, however, were that it was both a tool for many to liaise with their friends as well as to hook up. There were visibly more male users of the application than females at least in terms of allowing their profiles to be public, and in the vicinities in which I used the application. As a female user, it was unsurprising then that I received more than a few propositions, mostly from Chinese migrants but some from locals too. It was thus with caution that I proceeded with the many conversations I had on the application. Many of these conversations and propositions reminded me of how lonely being a migrant was, especially for low-wage migrants who cannot bring along their family to Singapore and were socially isolated and marginalized. This recognition of their social marginalization led to Chapter Three where I discuss how low-wage male Chinese migrants use strategies to regain Chinese masculinity. This book seeks to provide a balanced story through examining both Chinese migrants and Singaporean-Chinese’s social imaginaries in all chapters. While the social imaginaries of Chineseness are necessarily diverse, I have chosen to focus on themes that are the most contemporary, have the most urgency and which have not been sufficiently covered by extant scholars. The themes of each chapter are detailed in the chapter outline.

Overview of the book Following this introduction, Chapter One provides an overview of Chinese identity and Singapore’s relationship with China. It discusses how state imaginaries of Chineseness are constructed and contingent on the practical needs of capitalism and geopolitics, whether in China or Singapore. I show that Singapore’s Chinese identity is interwoven with China and which feeds off China’s evolution. The superficiality and fragility of Singapore’s Chineseness has been illuminated with the arrival of new Chinese migrants, compelling Singaporean-Chinese to question the state’s imaginary of Chinese identity and Chinese homogeneity. This chapter critically explores the assumption that blood and descent predetermine shared cultural consciousness. Chapter Two explores migrants’ claims to belonging and citizenship, and the host society’s denial of such claims. It shows that contrary to many mainland Chinese professional migrants imagining that they are like Singaporeans, Singaporean-Chinese segregate between a “middle-class” us and a “working-class” them. Specifically, it analyses that SingaporeanChinese imagine the Chinese, especially female migrants, as marked by bad

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dressing, poor hygiene, and sexual immorality. For Singaporean-Chinese, these markers are imagined to be Chinese migrants’ embodiment of the “third world” status of their country and which construct Chinese migrants as of the lower classes and undeserving of Singaporean citizenship. This chapter concludes with a critical consideration of how class is interwoven with nationality and gender in imaginaries of Chineseness to deny Chinese middle-class migrants the right to belong. Chapter Three details how Chinese men’s use of digital media shapes their sense of identities. Drawing on my text chats, phone chats and meet-ups with Chinese migrant men initiated on WeChat and on internet forums frequented by Singaporean-Chinese men, this chapter analyses the fluid meanings of being a Chinese man. I detail low-wage Chinese migrant men’s feelings of displacement and how they are positioned by SingaporeanChinese men into the bottom rung of a hierarchy of Chinese masculinities. I show, however, that Chinese migrant men can reimagine and reposition themselves in ways that establish their masculinity. This chapter reminds us that gender is an important aspect of imagining Chineseness. It concludes that migrants can reimagine gender, nationality and class to reposition themselves as better Chinese men than the host society. Chapter Four investigates the online narratives of locals and migrants to argue that state constructions of Chineseness can become a site of contestation for people on the ground. It shows how Chinese migrants imagine Singaporean-Chinese as “not Chinese enough” by deriding their weak Mandarin proficiency. In defence, Singaporean-Chinese berate Chinese migrants’ “culture”. It analyses the fact that both groups display issues of belonging: Chinese migrants imagine a homogeneous Chinese civilization while the Singaporean-Chinese show growing fissures along the lines of class, generation, and language. Challenging extant studies on immigrant incorporation which take for granted host societies’ sense of belonging, this chapter reflects broadly on the unstable imaginaries of belonging amongst ethnic Chinese subjects – both migrants and hosts – in this age of migration and China’s ascent. Chapter Five analyses how Chinatowns and their link to Chinese identity is imagined. Through a textured description of both the new and old Chinatowns in Singapore, it explores Singaporean-Chinese’ imaginaries of a “new” Chinatown and how it is linked to racialization discourses. How Singaporean-Chinese racialize new Chinese migrants is subtle and reinforced by the media as well as state structures inherited from Singapore’s colonial history. While there are parallels between the racialization of Chinese migrants in Singapore and colonial racism, this chapter shows that locals

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are not merely emulating colonial discourse. Chinese migrants’ response of self-orientalisation adds to the complex rubric of racialization. This chapter analyses how host societies’ imaginaries of place can enable illusions of power as well as displace themselves in an increasingly mobile world. It offers a broader reflection of how the intersection of Chinese and global capital with local modernity can produce the racialization of migrants. Finally, the Conclusion reflects on the COVID-19 pandemic and how it illuminated China’s centrality to the rest of the world. It revisits the questions raised in the preceding chapters to reflect on the book’s implications for how we understand ethnic Chinese subjects’ experiences of nationality, gender and class today in an era of China’s ascent. Through these reflections, the Conclusion ends with a discussion of how the book’s approach provides deep insights into the imaginaries and limits of ethnicity. These insights enrich understanding of an increasingly mobile and diverse world. In this book I reveal how Chinese migrants and Singaporean-Chinese imagine Chineseness and how such imaginaries shape how they see the Other as well as themselves. Chinese migrants and Singaporean-Chinese’ social imaginaries of Chineseness operate both online and offline and interact with the state’s imaginary as well as China’s ascent. Contrary to the homogenizing category of “Chinese”, Chinese co-ethnics are heterogeneous and their social imaginaries of Chineseness interact in variegated ways with nationality, class and gender. Whether it is embracing China’s ascent, counteracting state Sinicization or establishing hierarchies of Chineseness, my respondents are, in their everyday lives, contesting Chineseness.

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King, Russell, and Anastasia Christou. “Of Counter-Diaspora and Reverse Transnationalism: Return Mobilities to and from the Ancestral Homeland.” Mobilities 6, no. 4 (2011): 451-66. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2011.603941. Koh, Sin Yee and I Lin Sin “Race, whiteness and internationality in transnational education: academic and teacher expatriates in Malaysia.” Ethnic and Racial Studies (2021). https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2021.1977362 Krause, Elizabeth L. Tight Knit: Global Families and the Social Life of Fast Fashion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Lai, Ah Eng. “Viewing Ourselves and Others: Differences, Disconnects and Divides among Locals and Immigrants in Singapore.” Paper presented at the Proceedings from The Population Conundrum Roundtable on Singapore’s Demographic Challenges, Singapore, May 3, 2012. Lai, Linette. “National Day Rally 2019: Singapore Wants to Remain Good Friends with Us, China; Must Always Be Principled in Approach, Says PM Lee.” The Straits Times, August 18, 2019. https://www.straitstimes.com/politics/national-day-rally2019-spore-wants-to-remain-good-friends-with-us-and-china-must-always-be. Laksaboy. “What Is Being Done to Purge Sg of Prc Spies?” The Sammyboy Times, Jan 10, 2020. https://www.sammyboy.com/threads/what-is-being-done-topurge-sg-of-prc-spies.276780/. Li, Rupert. “New Chinese Immigrants Are Different from Chinese Americans and Proud of It.” HuffPost, May 16, 2017. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ chinese-american-immigrants_b_58dd412ee4b05eae031df98c. Li, Wei. “Beyond Chinatown, Beyond Enclave: Reconceptualizing Contemporary Chinese Settlements in the United States.” GeoJournal 64, no. 1 (2005): 31-40. https://doi.org/10.2307/41147963. Liu, Hong. “Beyond Co-Ethnicity: The Politics of Differentiating and Integrating New Immigrants in Singapore.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37, no. 7 (2014): 1225-38. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2014.892630. Liu, Liangni Sally. “A Search for a Place to Call Home: Negotiation of Home, Identity and Senses of Belonging among New Migrants from the People’s Republic of China (Prc) to New Zealand.” Emotion, Space and Society 10 (2014): 18-26. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2013.01.002. Liu, Shuang. 2015. “Searching for a Sense of Place: Identity Negotiation of Chinese Immigrants.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations, In Search of a Cultural Home in a Multicultural Society, 46 (May): 26-35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. ijintrel.2015.03.020. Milton, Gordon. Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. Mokhtar, Faris. “S’pore’s Chinese Community Different from Others Elsewhere: Pm Lee,” Today Online, May 30, 2019 from https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/

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singapore-chinese-community-different-from-others-pm-lee-chinese-newyear-message. Moore, Malcolm. “Singapore’s ‘Anti-Chinese Curry War’.” The Telegraph, Aug 16, 2011. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/singapore/8704107/ Singapores-anti-Chinese-curry-war.html. Murphy, Katharine. “Australians’ Trust in China at Lowest Point in Survey’s History.” The Guardian, Jun 25, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/ jun/25/australians-trust-in-china-at-lowest-point-in-surveys-history. Newendorp, Nicole DeJong. Uneasy Reunions: Immigration, Citizenship, and Family Life in Post-1997 Hong Kong. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008. Nonini, Donald M, and Aihwa Ong. “Chinese Transnationalism as an Alternative Modernity.” Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism (1997): 3-33. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203426661-5. O’Callaghan, John and Kevin Lim. “Strike by China Bus Drivers Tests Singapore’s Patience.” Reuters, November 28, 2012. https://www.reuters.com/article/ uk-singapore-strike/strike-by-china-bus-drivers-tests-singapores-patienceidUSLNE8AR01J20121128. Ong, Aihwa. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1999. “People’s Republic of China.” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2020, accessed November 20, 2020https://www.mfa.gov.sg/SINGAPORES-FOREIGN-POLICY/ Countries-and-Regions/Northeast-Asia/Peoples-Republic-of-China. Pink, Sarah, Horst, Heather, Postill, John, Hjorth, Larissa, Lewis, Tania. and Jo Tacchi. Digital ethnography: Principles and practice. London: Sage Publications Ltd, 2015. Richard, Alba and Victor Nee. Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003. RuoQin. “[Discussion] Pro-Chinese Government Propaganda.” Singapore Hardware Zone, November 23, 2019, accessed May 21, 2020,https://forums.hardwarezone. com.sg/eat-drink-man-woman-16/%5Bdiscussion%5D-pro-chinese-governmentpropaganda-6153525.html. Seow, Bei Yi. “Parliament: Chinese Direct Investments in Singapore Rose 10 Per Cent Per Year on Average since 2010.” The Straits Times, Feb 11, 2019. https:// www.straitstimes.com/politics/parliament-chinese-direct-investments-insingapore-rose-10-per-cent-per-year-on-average. Shih, Shu-mei. “Gender and a New Geopolitics of Desire: The Seduction of Mainland Women in Taiwan and Hong Kong Media.” Signs 23, no. 2 (1998): 287-319. www. jstor.org/stable/3175092. Silver, Laura, Devlin, Kat and Christine Huang. 2019. “U.S. Views of China Turn Sharply Negative Amid Trade Tensions.” Pew Research Center, August 13, 2019.

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https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/08/13/u-s-views-of-china-turnsharply-negative-amid-trade-tensions/. Silver, Laura. “How People in Asia-Pacif ic View China.” Pew Research Center, August 15, 2021. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/16/ how-people-in-asia-pacific-view-china/. Sim, Dewey. “Singapore Renews Military Bases Pact with Us Amid Deepening Defence Ties with China.” South China Morning Post, September 24, 2019. https:// www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3030111/china-will-be-wary-ussingapore-deal-military-bases. Sim, Fann. “Fury over 6.9 Million Population Target for Singapore.” Yahoo! News, Jan 30, 2013. https://sg.news.yahoo.com/fury-over-6-9-million-population-targetfor-singapore-103503070.html. Sim, Royston. “LKY School Professor Huang Jing Banned, Has Pr Cancelled, for Being Agent of Influence for Foreign Country.” The Straits Times, Aug 7, 2017. https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/lky-school-professor-huang-jingbanned-has-pr-cancelled-for-being-agent-of-influence-for. Siu, Lok CD. “Diasporic Cultural Citizenship: Chineseness and Belonging in Central America.” Social Text 19, no. 4 (2001): 7-28. Stanley, Timothy J. 2011. Contesting White Supremacy: School Segregation, AntiRacism, and the Making of Chinese Canadians. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Tan, Eugene KB. “Re-Engaging Chineseness: Political, Economic and Cultural Imperatives of Nation-Building in Singapore.” The China Quarterly 175 (2003): 751-74. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741003000432. Tan, Ee Lyn. “Migrants in Singapore Mostly from Malaysia.” The Straits Times, Jan 19, 2020. https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/migrants-in-spore-mostlyfrom-malaysia. “Worries Grow in Singapore over China’s Calls to Help ‘Motherland’.” TODAY Online, August 6, 2018. https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/worries-growsingapore-over-chinas-calls-help-motherland. Tsuda, Takeyuki. Diasporic Homecomings: Ethnic Return Migration in Comparative Perspective. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Tsuda, Takeyuki. Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Tu, Wei-ming. “Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center.” Daedalus 120, no. 2 (1991): 1-32. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20025372. Vasantkumar, Chris. “What Is This “Chinese” in Overseas Chinese? Sojourn Work and the Place of China’s Minority Nationalities in Extraterritorial ChineseNess.” The Journal of Asian Studies 71, no. 2 (2012): 423-46. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0021911812000113.

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Waldman, Peter. “Mistrust and the Hunt for Spies among Chinese Americans.” Bloomberg, Dec 10, 2019. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-12-10/ the-u-s-government-s-mistrust-of-chinese-americans. Wang, Bingyu. New Chinese Migrants in New Zealand: Becoming Cosmopolitan? Roots, Emotions, and Everyday Diversity. Chinese Worlds. London: Routledge, 2018. Wong, Pei Ting. “Us Think Tank Highlights Channels for China’s ‘Influence Operations’ in Singapore.” TODAY Online, July 17, 2019. https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/ us-think-tank-highlights-channels-chinas-influence-operations-singapore. Wong, Loong. 2003. “Belonging and Diaspora: The Chinese and the Internet.” First Monday 8, no.4 (2003). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v8i4.1045. Wong, Chun Wai. “Anti-China Sentiments Will Do No Good: The Star Columnist,” The Straits Times, May 5, 2020. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/ anti-china-sentiments-will-do-no-good-the-star-columnist Wu, Frank H. “A Note to Asian-American Activists About New Arrivals.” HuffPost, May 23, 2017. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/a-private-note-to-asian-americanactivists-about-new_b_58cd2d3fe4b0537abd957102. Yeoh, Brenda SA, and Shirlena Huang. “Sexualised Politics of Proximities among Female Transnational Migrants in Singapore.” Population, Space and Place 16, no. 1 (2010): 37-49. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.579. Yeoh, Brenda SA, and Weiqiang Lin. “Chinese Migration to Singapore: Discourses and Discontents in a Globalizing Nation-State.” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 22, no. 1 (2013): 31-54. https://doi.org/10.1177/011719681302200103. Yeoh, Brenda SA, and Katie Willis. “Singaporean and British Transmigrants in China and the Cultural Politics of ‘Contact Zones’.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31, no. 2 (2005): 269-85. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183042000339927. Yim, Ching Ching. 2011. “Transnational Social Spaces and Transnationalism: A Study on the New Chinese Migrant Community in Singapore.” PhD Thesis, University of Hong Kong. Zheng, Yongnian and Fook Lye Liang. Singapore-China Relations: 50 Years. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2015. Zhou, Min, and Roberto G. Gonzales. “Divergent Destinies: Children of Immigrants Growing up in the United States.” Annual Review of Sociology 45, no. 1 (2019): 383-99. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-073018-022424.

1

Who’s Chinese? Abstract This chapter explores how Singapore acts as an important lens to study the anxieties toward China’s ascent. As a postcolonial hybrid society which has a majority-ethnic-Chinese population, Singapore is both an insider and outsider in its relationship to China. It provides an overview of the Singaporean context and its relationship with China and Chinese identity. It discusses the institutional and social context of Singapore and analyses how the state has constructed an imaginary of Chineseness to homogenise the Singaporean-Chinese population. The arrival of new Chinese migrants in recent years has forced Singaporean-Chinese to question the state’s imaginary of Chinese identity and Chinese homogeneity. This chapter critically explores the assumption that blood and descent predetermine shared cultural consciousness. Keywords: Chinese heterogeneity, Sinicization, postcolonial, state imaginary, huaren, huaqiao

I met John through a historical walkabout in Singapore. He was a volunteer guide in his late forties and showed immense passion for history and in preserving Singapore’s heritage. He was interested in my research and we arranged to meet near his home on a weekday night. We sat by the swimming pool at the private condominium he resides in and I found out that John’s eloquence was related to his work: he was a lawyer by day. We conversed mostly in English and I was surprised to find out later in the conversation that John was originally educated in a Chinese curriculum in Singapore. No wonder that he seemed so well-versed in Chinese history; a trait not often found amongst most Singaporean-Chinese. As we chatted about Chinese identity, John told me that he sees himself as a descendant of China’s f ive-thousand-year-old culture and he feels an “emotional connection” when he reads about Chinese culture and history. Unlike British history, which he reads only for intellectual curiosity, he told

Ang, Sylvia, Contesting Chineseness: Nationality, Class, Gender and New Chinese Migrants. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463722469_ch01

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me that his interest in Chinese history is “visceral … it feels like you are reading your own history.” I asked if he felt the same kind of connection to mainland Chinese migrants. He expressed that he felt “sad” as he “feel[s] a sense of kinship towards them, but I don’t feel connected to them”. He felt however, that the new Chinese migrants are good for Singaporean society as the “injection of new blood” will bring about a renewal of appreciation for Chinese culture. This, he felt, was very important, as in his words, Singaporean-Chinese have become “cultural orphans”. John’s fervour for Chinese history and culture was almost contagious throughout the conversation. I was caught in surprise, however, when John pointed out that there was a specific Chinese identity he identified with: the Chinese before the Cultural Revolution. He said, When I read about the 1911 Sun Yat Sen Revolution, it’s not just an event in history. To me, it’s the encapsulation of all the ideals that we, the Chinese, wanted to have for China? After so many, you know the humiliation of the wars with Britain, USA right, it captures, how should I say, it captures the dream of that moment? That the Chinese should come back on their feet, that sort of thing? I feel as if I’m living in that era when I read about them.

Although John felt that there are few like him, his passion about the “dream” of “Chinese com[ing] back on their feet” was a familiar one and the reason behind my surprise; a dream that has been echoed by Xi Jinping, the president of the People’s Republic of China. Since Xi Jinping came to power, he has articulated the “China Dream” (zhongguo meng), that is, “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation [Zhonghua minzu de weida fuxing]”.1 We see echoes of John’s words in Xi Jinping’s speech which was made at the 7th Conference of the World Federation of Chinese nationals overseas and ethnic Chinese overseas (Huaqiao Huaren) Associations in 2014: A united Chinese nation is the common root of the sons and daughters of China within and outside China; the rich Chinese culture is the common soul of the sons and daughters of China; to realize the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is the common dream of the sons and daughters of China. Common roots make us deeply rooted, a common soul makes 1 Leo Suryadinata, The Rise of China and The Chinese Overseas: A Study of Beijing’s Changing Policy in Southeast Asia and Beyond (Singapore, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, 2017).

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us remember each other, a common dream makes us have one heart; we will be able to jointly write a new chapter in the development of the Chinese nation.2

China’s “dream” and its diasporic policies have increasingly blurred the distinction between Chinese citizens and huaren (ethnic Chinese overseas with foreign citizenship). While some huaren, as this book will show, are unlikely to embrace the China dream and may experience a shudder at the thought, some Singaporean-Chinese like John could very well be tempted to. This chapter details how the imaginaries of Chineseness have evolved with the politics of China and Singapore respectively. The forms Chinese identity take are contingent on the practical needs of capitalism and geopolitics, whether in China or Singapore. I show that Singapore’s Chinese identity is interwoven with China and is a responsive identity that feeds off China’s evolution. Singapore’s Chinese identity is pragmatically constructed, superficial and fragile; it has since come under scrutiny with the arrival of new Chinese migrants, compelling Singaporean-Chinese to question the state’s version of Chinese identity and Chinese homogeneity.

Once a Chinese, always a Chinese For much of China’s history, the dominant belief was that one does not stop being Chinese by being away from China. Until the late 1800s, there was little acknowledgement that there were Chinese who left China.3 Chinese who left the country without approval, from the 1370s till 1893, were even criminalized and punishable upon return.4 As exponential numbers of Chinese left China, however, the Qing court was forced to acknowledge such departures. The view, existing since the 10th century, that Chinese who went abroad did not leave China permanently, however persisted.5 While the Qing (1644-1912) court initially enforced exit controls in the 18th century to prevent what they thought

2 Ibid., 19. For the original text, see Renmin Wang-Renmin Ribao, “Xi Jinping huijian di qijie shijie huaqiao huaren shetuan lianyi dahui daibiao” 7 June 2014, accessed 7 August 2021 from http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2014-06/06/content_2695778.htm. 3 Gungwu Wang, The Chinese Overseas: From Earthbound China to the Quest for Autonomy (Harvard University Press, 2002) 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid.

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was the possible collusion of emigrants with foreigners,6 the ban on foreign travel was lifted in the late 1800s.7 The emigrants were increasingly recognized by the Qing government as potential sources of financial support and Western technological knowledge. To access the emigrants’ capital, the Qing government sought to recognize the Chinese abroad and to encourage them to identify beyond their foreign homes with China and Chinese civilization.8 It also set up a nationality law in 1909 to recognize all children born to Chinese parents as nationals; it did not matter where they were born. A new term emerged to address overseas Chinese as huaqiao, the Chinese sojourner. As Chinese scholar Wang Gungwu observed, calling the Chinese abroad huaqiao involved a “normative exercise that affirmed a national consciousness, a faith in the rejuvenation of China, and a name to be worn as a badge of pride.”9 The huaqiao responded warmly to the Qing’s government’s courtship for financial support and sojourner nationalism grew fervently.10 Ironically, sojourner nationalism was to eventually play a significant role in toppling the Qing dynasty and supported Sun Yat-Sen’s subsequent Republican regime in 1911. Sun Yat-Sen, a sojourner himself who spent many years abroad, valued Chinese emigrants and diasporic descendants. He gave huaqiao in Southeast Asia important roles in political decision-making and they bore administrative functions to handle the affairs of the Chinese abroad.11 Like the Qing government, Sun’s political party Kuomintang China was aware of the value of the overseas Chinese.12 Efforts to link the overseas Chinese to China intensified. In 1929, the nationality law of the Republic of China reinforced jus sanguinis to claim all Chinese, regardless of birthplace, as Chinese nationals.13 Measures were also taken to support Chinese education throughout Southeast Asia. So long as the Southeast Asian countries were colonial, Chinese nationalism was encouraged and posed no challenge. After all, Chinese nationalism was basically anti-Western colonialism and could co-exist with Southeast Asian nationalisms. Issues were to emerge only after these countries attained independence.14 6 Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho, Citizens in Motion: Emigration, Immigration, and Re-Migration across China’s Borders (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019). 7 Wang, The Chinese Overseas, 46. 8 Ho, Citizens in Motion, 22 9 Wang, The Chinese Overseas, 70. 10 Ibid. 11 Ho, Citizens in Motion, 19. 12 Leo Suryadinata, “China’s Citizenship Law and The Chinese in Southeast Asia,” in Law and the Chinese in Southeast Asia, ed. M Barry Hooker (Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2018). 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 174.

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Post-independence, many overseas Chinese were caught between nationality claims. China’s continued claim on overseas Chinese as Chinese nationals became problematic. In 1955, Premier Zhou Enlai embarked on his good-neighbour policy and initiated the dual-nationality agreement with Southeast Asian countries, which had sizeable Chinese populations.15 Zhou hope to assuage the new Southeast Asian governments’ suspicions; an ethnic Chinese could choose only one nationality in this agreement, including Chinese nationality. The agreement was unpopular, and most ASEAN states introduced a one-nationality policy towards the Chinese.16 Many ethnic Chinese had acclimatized to their host countries and many took on the nationalities of their newly independent nations.17

Realizing the China dream It was only in 1980 that China issued a new nationality law which officially disclaimed the ethnic Chinese foreign citizens.18 Deng Xiaoping was eager to show his willingness to follow international practices and befriend other countries, especially the Southeast Asian countries which had a significant number of ethnic Chinese. Deng’s visit to Southeast Asia in 1978 may also have caused him to realize many Southeast Asian Chinese identified as Southeast Asians, rather than Chinese nationals. Following Deng’s visit, the term huaren (ethnic Chinese with foreign citizenship), instead of the previously more popular term huaqiao (Chinese nationals overseas) proliferated in Chinese official documents.19 Deng Xiaoping’s Open Door Policy included policies to encourage Chinese abroad to invest in their ancestral land and to contribute to China’s capitalist development.20 The Chinese abroad were framed as patriots and their relationship to China as inseparable, as one patriotic book huaqiao huaren yu guogong (Overseas Chinese and Nationalist Party-Communist Party Relations) wrote: “If Chinese people were bullied locally [overseas], that 15 Ibid 16 Ibid 17 Ho, Citizens in Motion, 20 18 Suryadinata, “China’s Citizenship Law and The Chinese in Southeast Asia,” 175 19 Ibid., 178. 20 Ho, Citizens in Motion; ​William A. Callahan, “Beyond Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism: Diasporic Chinese and Neo-Nationalism in China and Thailand,” International Organization, 57, no. 3 (2003): 481-517.

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was because China received no respect internationally”.21 Between 1979 and 1997, the ethnic Chinese overseas contributed an estimated two-thirds of all foreign capital to China.22 The ethnic Chinese investors were predominantly from Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Southeast Asia.23 Chinese diasporic descendants in Southeast Asia were not only valued by China for their co-ethnic ties but also as “emblems of soft power” since China has strategic military interests in the region.24 The Open Door Policy eased the right of Chinese citizens to leave and return to the country.25 An estimate suggested that more than two million new emigrants left China from 1979 to 2003 (excluding Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan).26 By 2007-8, it was estimated that 7 to 8 million emigrants has left China.27 Those who left China after the 1980s were termed “new migrants” or xinyimin and increasingly targeted by China’s overseas Chinese policy alongside the huaren. 28 The xinyimin is a large and burgeoning group and is viewed by China as integral to its development strategy.29 The xinyimin are different from the earlier Chinese migrants in several ways. Instead of the developing cities of Southeast Asia where the old migrants headed for, about eighty per cent of new migrants have migrated to developed countries such as the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Singapore.30 Unlike earlier waves of less or uneducated migrants, they are highly educated, skilled and have more capital; they also come from all parts of China, rather than the South. The xinyimin are also less permanent in their migration than previous waves, with many opting to return to China or circulate between China and other countries.31 Nevertheless, China’s diaspora policies have sought to woo them all, older or new emigrants. For instance, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office launched the “Developing Motherland and Benefiting-Assisting Overseas 21 Callahan, “Beyond Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism,” 493 22 Ho, Citizens in Motion, 29 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., 29. 25 Guofu Liu, The Right to Leave and Return and Chinese Migration Law (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2007). 26 Hong Liu, “New Migrants and the Revival of Overseas Chinese Nationalism,” Journal of Contemporary China 14, no. 43: 291-316. 27 Suryadinata, The Rise of China and The Chinese Overseas, 10 28 Xiang Biao, “Emigration from China: A Sending Country Perspective,” International Migration 41, no. 3(2003): 21-48. 29 Ibid. 30 Suryadinata, The Rise of China and The Chinese Overseas, 9 31 Biao, “Emigration from China: A Sending Country Perspective.” 28

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Chinese” (xingguo li qiao-zhu qiao) plan in 2002 to promote links between overseas Chinese (Chinese citizens abroad), ethnic Chinese overseas (ethnic Chinese with foreign citizenship), and “new migrants” on a global scale.32 Overall, due to significant influence by the xinyimin, the overseas Chinese associations are building closer relations with the Chinese government than ever before. More recently, Xi Jinping’s China dream addressed the Chinese diaspora all over the world. While he initially only included “Chinese nationals” in his 2012 speech,33 he changed tack in 2014. Upon his proposal of the “One Belt One Road” strategy in 2014, he defined the sons and daughters of China (zhonghua ernü) to refer to both Chinese nationals and the ethnic Chinese overseas: There are tens of millions of Chinese overseas compatriots [haiwai qiaobao], all of whom are members of one big Chinese family [Zhonghua da jiating]. For a long time, Chinese overseas compatriots, generation after generation, inherited the excellent tradition of the Chinese nation: they did not forget their fatherland, they did not forget their ancestral province, they did not forget that in their body there is Chinese blood, they have passionately supported the Chinese revolution, China’s construction, and the reform of China.34

The term haiwai qiaobao has since been used in various initiatives to refer to both huaqiao and huaren, including appealing to the ethnic Chinese overseas to share their cultural expertise of their “host countries” (zhuzaiguo) in the One Belt strategy.35 China’s efforts to engage ethnic Chinese overseas has since multiplied. Since the 1980s, China has set up China Cultural Centers worldwide to engage ethnic Chinese overseas as well while extending its soft 32 Ibid. 33 “shixian zhonghuaminzu weida fuxing shi zhonghuaminz jingdai yilai zuiweida de mengxiang” (the Chinese nation’s biggest dream is to realize the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation) Chinese Communist Party website, November 29, 2011, accessed on May 2, 2020 from http://cpc.people. com.cn/xuexi/n/2015/0717/c397563-27322292.html 34 I added my own translation to Suryadinata’s translation: Suryadinata, The Rise of China, p.20. For the original text, see Renmin Wang-Renmin Ribao, “Xi Jinping huijian di qijie shijie huaqiao huaren shetuan lianyi dahui daibiao” 7 June 2014, http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2014-06/06/ content_2695778.htm (accessed 7 August 2021) 35 “qiaowei weiyuan: haiwaiqianbao kezai ‘yidaiyilu jiansezong fahui dudezuoyong” (Committee: Overseas compatriots have unique abilities to help the One Belt One Road construction” Xinhua net, March 12, 2016, accessed on May 2, 2020 from http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2016-03/12/ content_5052638.htm

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power. At the time of writing, there were thirty centers worldwide including ten in Asia. This is in addition to the five hundred and forty-eight Confucius Institutes as well as more than a thousand Confucius classrooms (based in primary and secondary schools) around the world.36 Since 2018, China also launched a new five-year visa for foreigners with Chinese ancestry, in a bid to lure ethnic Chinese overseas back to China to “participate in China’s economic development”.37 The Chinese state’s appeal to ethnic Chinese overseas may be linked to China’s economic and political needs, but the appeal can be tempting to ethnic Chinese overseas who have been inculcated in Confucian teachings and China’s history. China, as scholars have suggested, is a civilizationstate38 or “a civilization pretending to be a nation-state”.39 China is the oldest continuously existing country in the world and the Chinese are highly connected to their history. As scholar Martin Jacques put it, “there are no other people in the world who are so connected to their past and for whom the past – not so much the recent past but the long-ago past – is so relevant and meaningful.”40 Many Han Chinese accept that they are “the children of the Yellow Emperor”; a symbol constantly re-enacted in Chinese literature and more recently, in popular media. 41 In other words, many Han Chinese believe in sharing a common, distinct lineage which is preserved through biological continuity and blood descent. These beliefs define the Han Chinese as both a race and a nation. 42 Another persisting continuity in the Chinese’s long collective memory is Confucius’ influence including his teachings about the state. Confucius was deeply concerned with governance and taught that virtuous men should lead by moral example. This has led to the state being viewed as the embodiment and guardian of Chinese civilization. 43 Like a parent, the state leadership takes 36 “Confucius Institutes: The Growth of China’s Controversial Cultural Branch,” Pratik Jakhar, BBC, Sept 7, 2019, accessed on May 2, 2020 from https://www.bbc.com/news/ world-asia-china-49511231 37 “China to Issue 5-year Visas for Foreigners of Chinese Origin,” Danson Cheong, The Straits Times, February 1, 2018, accessed on October 29, 2019 from https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/ east-asia/china-to-issue-5-year-visas-for-foreigners-of-chinese-origin 38 Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order (United Kingdom: Penguin, 2009); Tu Wei-ming, “Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center,” Daedalus, 120, no.2(1991): 1-32. 39 Lucian W. Pye, “China: Erratic state, frustrated society,” Foreign Affairs 69, no. 4(1990): 56-74. 40 Jacques, When China rules the world, 197. 41 Tu, “Cultural China” , 3 42 Jacques, When China Rules the World. 266 43 Ibid.

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on ideological and moral authority to rule a people of common descent, a race-nation. 44 Selective aspects of China’s history and Confucianist teachings have been appropriated by the Singaporean state in defining its Chinese identity. That most, if not all, of my Singaporean-Chinese respondents are proud of their Chinese “roots”, despite their disassociation with contemporary Chinese nationals, is proof of Singapore’s successful Sinicization; a Sinicization that may be becoming a problem in the wake of China’s ascent.

De-Chineseness in Singapore Unlike China, Singapore has a short history, gaining independence only in 1965. Singapore inherited a varied immigrant population, including a highly heterogeneous ethnic Chinese population. The arrival of Chinese immigrants onto Singapore shores predates its independence. Since the 16th century, Chinese immigrants have settled in the Straits of Malacca. 45 Many married the natives where they settled and formed the Straits Chinese (or Baba) community. The Straits Chinese speak mostly English and the native language of Malay. Many were loyal to the British and were considered wealthy political elites. 46 It was not until the early 1900s that an unprecedented number of Chinese migrants arrived in Malaya. They were termed the sinkeh (sojourners). Most came from southern China, specifically the coastal provinces of Kwangtung and Fukien. 47 They were mostly peasants or small business owners and craftsmen. Their reasons for emigration from China were diverse. Some were political refugees, others fortune-seekers and many were contract coolies. 48 My maternal grandfather was one of them; a fortune-seeker who eventually set up a small business. The sinkeh spoke a variety of Chinese vernaculars including Kheh, Teochew, Hailam and Hokkien. 49 Most were adult males, taking on manual labour as coolies and led hard lives in order to survive. Although most sinkeh had the intention 44 Tu, “Cultural China,” 16. 45 Catherine G. S. Lim, Gateway to Peranakan Culture (Singapore: Asiapac Books Pte Ltd, 2003). 46 Jürgen Rudolph, “Reconstructing Collective Identities: The Babas of Singapore,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 28, no. 2(1998): 203-232. 47 Ng Siew Yoong, “The Chinese Protectorate in Singapore, 1877-1900,” Journal of Southeast Asian History 2, no. 1(1961): 76-99. 48 Maurice Freedman, “Immigrants and Associations: Chinese in Nineteenth-century Singapore,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 3, no. 1(1960): 25-48. 49 Ng, “The Chinese Protectorate in Singapore.” 76

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to return to China, many ended up staying for long periods of time and ultimately settled down in Malaya. The heterogeneity of the ethnic Chinese population was further complicated by the different education systems. There was no uniform educational system in the colonial era and the Chinese community took charge of their own education. Descendants of Chinese immigrants were educated in Chinese and the curriculum was focused on China.50 English education, on the other hand, served the primary purpose of drafting locals into the lower ranks of the colonial civil service.51 A divide between the “Chinese-educated” and the “English-educated” Chinese population began to grow. The two groups differed not only in their everyday language use but also in terms of cultural knowledge, political orientation, and occupational status.52 Since the 1920s, the Chinese have made up more than three-quarters of Singaporeans.53 At the time of Singapore’s independence, the Chinese made up seventy-five per cent of the population. The population also consisted of seventeen per cent Malay, seven per cent Indian and the rest as a small residual category of “Others”.54 To manage the inheritance of a multiracial population, the state appropriated the colonial system of racial management: the CMIO (Chinese, Malay, Indian, Others) model which presupposes that each “race” possesses its own “culture” and “mother tongue”.55 The “mother tongue” of the “Chinese” was officially deemed Mandarin, contrary to the diverse Chinese vernaculars used by the ordinary person. Despite its maintenance of a “Chinese” category, however, the newly independent Singapore was eager to avoid being viewed as a third China.56 The Chinese settlers and their descendants have been maintained as the dominant group and control much of the economic and political power in the island-state since colonial times;57 Singapore was to tread carefully around its Chinese identity for fear of antagonizing its Malay neighbors. Between 1965 to 1979, the state was wary of communism and was heavy-handed 50 Tong Chee-kiong and Chan Kwok-bun, “One Face, Many Masks: The Singularity and Plurality of Chinese Identity,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 10, no.3(2001): 361-389. 51 Kwok Kian-Woon, “Chinese-educated Intellectuals in Singapore: Marginality, Memory and Modernity,” Asian Journal of Social Science 29, no.3(2001): 495-519. 52 Ibid., 496. 53 Ibid. 54 Chua Beng Huat, “Being Chinese under Off icial Multiculturalism in Singapore,” Asian Ethnicity 10, no.3 (2009): 239-250. 55 Kwok, “Chinese-educated Intellectuals in Singapore.” 495 56 Eugene K. B. Tan, “Re-engaging Chineseness: Political, Economic and Cultural Imperatives of Nation-building in Singapore,” The China Quarterly 175(2003): 751-774. 57 Chua, “Being Chinese under Official Multiculturalism.” 245

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towards the communists and Chinese chauvinists. Many who were identified as communist or pro-communist were detained indefinitely without trial.58 English was also institutionalized as a common working language shortly after Singapore’s independence. The Chinese-educated were further marginalized and could not compete with the English-educated in the job market. Subsequently, enrolments in the Chinese-stream schools fell drastically, and they were eventually closed in the 1980s. Nanyang University (Nantah), widely helmed as the bastion of Chinese culture in Southeast Asia, was also gradually made irrelevant and eventually closed in 1980.59 The state sought to further marginalize powerful ethnic Chinese leaders and businessmen, such as those in clan associations, who had considerable resources and influence on local politics.60 Through co-opting multinational companies and government-linked companies in Singapore’s economic modernization, the state reduced their reliance on the ethnic Chinese business community and restricted the latter’s political clout.61 The process of “de-Chineseness” was complete.

Re-sinicizing Singapore China’s opening up in 1979 and Singapore’s growing need to legitimize oneparty rule resulted in a re-Sinicization of Singapore. To maintain relevance to China’s economy, Singapore sought to brand itself through its apparent cultural affinity to China as well as its ability to straddle the East and West. To profit from business opportunities in China, the SingaporeanChinese needed Chinese language skills as well as an understanding of the Chinese mentality. A slew of policies followed in the 1980s, amongst them the Confucian campaign. The Confucian campaign “Asianized” Singapore, and Chineseness was increasingly associated with Confucianism. Narratives of SingaporeanChinese as natural Confucians were rife in the 1980s. As the then-Prime Minster Lee Kuan Yew commented in 1986: Looking back over the past 30 years, one of the driving forces that made Singapore succeed was: The majority of the people placed the importance 58 Kwok, “Chinese-educated Intellectuals in Singapore.” 505 59 Ibid. 60 Tan, “Re-engaging Chineseness.” 756 61 Ibid.

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of the welfare of the society above the individual, which is a basic Confucianist concept. The society is more important than the individual. The family is the most important unit and all the families together form society. There is a willingness to sacrifice individual gains for a common good. It means a certain social cohesion that enables us to avoid industrial strife, which has plagued so many countries, even developing ones.62

From 1982 to the early 1990s, the state tried to market Confucianist campaigns to the citizenry The attempt, however, was unpopular especially with ethnic groups of non-Chinese descent.63 Confucianism was subsequently veiled under “Asian values” or “Shared Values”. The newly marketed “Shared values” did not include the chauvinist tendencies seen in the previous Confucianist campaigns but had room to retain some Confucianist values such as junzi (rule by virtuous men).64 “Shared Values” later evolved into “Asian Values” which were deliberately constructed to justify elite rule and to counter “undesirable” elements of Westernization such as democracy. The state constructed Asian and Western spheres as separate: Western learning was constructed as necessary for material advancement while Eastern learning was for spiritual essence.65 Lee Kuan Yew, in particular, popularized the notion of “Asian values” through frequently juxtaposing the East against the West. He claimed that “[a] people steeped in Chinese values had more discipline, were more courteous, and respectful to elders” as contrasted to the West where “values were diluted by an English education, the result was less vigor and discipline and more casual behavior”.66 The popularity of Asian values coincided with the rise of the East Asian economies. Singapore’s economic miracles and the Asian values discourse subsequently elevated Lee Kuan Yew’s reputation as an “Asian values” spokesperson and successfully marketed Singapore as a bridge between the East and the West; a gateway for Western investors keen to access China’s markets. Singapore’s version of Chineseness increased emphasis on the Chinese language, Mandarin. The “Speak Mandarin Campaign” was launched in 1979 and persists today (see Chapter Five). Authorities claimed they were concerned that Singaporean-Chinese were “becoming too Westernized and 62 Excerpted from Lee Kuan Yew’s interview with The New York Times on December 16, 1986 at Istana. For a full transcript of the interview, see The Straits Times, January 8, 1987, pg. 11 63 Neil A. Englehart, “Rights and Culture in the Asian Values Argument: The Rise and Fall of Confucian Ethics in Singapore,” Human Rights Quarterly 22, no. 2(2000): 548-568. 64 Ibid., 558. 65 Ibid. 66 Tan, “Re-engaging Chineseness.” 756

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[that] the Chinese language would act as a cultural ballast for the Chinese”.67 It soon became clear, however, that the tentative opening of China and its promise of potential economic advantages served as a key inspiration for the campaign.68 The slogans for the campaign evolved from “Make Mandarin the Common Tongue of our Chinese Community” (1979) to “Use Mandarin in Your Workplace” (one of many slogans in 1982) to “Speak Mandarin, Explore New Horizons” (1996-1997) and “Speak Mandarin, It’s An Asset” (1998-2000).69 The latter two slogans can be read as referring to culture as an asset and to push one’s cultural horizons. They were more likely to be read, however, as indicating the value of Mandarin and how it can enable access to China. The campaigns may have worked: a study in 1996 found that Singaporeans valued the economic and practical benefits of Mandarin more than its cultural value.70 Measures were also taken to ensure young Singaporean-Chinese could be nurtured to access China’s markets effectively. In 1979, the Special Assistance Plan (SAP) was introduced to develop effectively bilingual students who were taught traditional Chinese values.71 The Bicultural Studies Program was also established in schools in 2005 to cultivate a bicultural elite who could understand and engage China as it rose in importance.72 Links between Singaporean-Chinese and Chinese civilization grew in mentions by the political leaders. On the topic of Mandarin, for instance, Lee Kuan Yew suggested that Mandarin “reminds us that we are part of an ancient civilization with an unbroken history of over 5000 years … Through Mandarin, their children can emotionally identify themselves as part of an ancient civilization whose continuity was because it was founded on a tried and tested value system.”73 Politicians also appropriated history and made tenuous links between Singapore and Sun Yat Sen, the leader of the 1911 Chinese revolution. In the 1990s, orientation towards China spurred the restoration 67 Tong and Chan, “One Face, Many Masks.” 383 68 Tan, “Re-engaging Chineseness.” 757 69 Peter Teo, “Mandarinising Singapore: A critical analysis of slogans in Singapore’s ‘Speak Mandarin’ campaign,” Critical Discourse Studies 2, no. 2(2005): 121-142; Nirmala Srirekam PuruShotam, Negotiating language, constructing race: Disciplining difference in Singapore (Germany: Walter de Gruyter, 2011). 70 Ibid. 71 “Special Assistance Plan Schools,” Cheryl Sim, Singapore Infopedia, accessed on October 29, 2019 from https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_2016-07-21_154021.html 72 Charlene Tan, “Change and Continuity: Chinese Language Policy in Singapore,” Language Policy 5, no.1 (2006): 41-62. 73 Wendy Bokhorst-Heng and Lionel Wee, “Language planning in Singapore: On pragmatism, communitarianism and personal names,” Current Issues in Language Planning 8, no. 3(2007): 324-343.

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of the neglected and dilapidated Sun Yat Sen Villa which would be restored as “a cultural shrine for all ethnic Chinese Singaporeans”.74 Lee Kuan Yew opened the villa, which had been transformed into the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall, on 12 November 2001. The occasion marked Sun’s birthday and the 90th anniversary of the Chinese revolution.75 The villa soon became included as a national institution within the compulsory National Education program and became a Singapore national monument in 1994.76 Then Trade and Industry Minister George Yeo commented on the state’s changed tactics: For a long time, we refused to gazette it [Sun Yat Sen villa] as a national monument because we thought it had nothing to do with independent Singapore. Now we approach it differently. Singaporeans played a significant role in the Chinese Revolution of 1911 which was not only a political revolution but also a cultural revolution which changed the way Chinese all over the world saw themselves.77

The Chinese migrants in Singapore then, before Singapore’s independence, were painted as having contributed to diasporic and local nationalisms. Chinese migrants then, however, were sojourners and identified as Chinese rather than Singaporeans. It is unclear if the Singaporean-Chinese accepted this clumsy misappropriation of history although John, whom we met at the start of this chapter, certainly did. Singapore also welcomed new Chinese migrants as a strategy to further connect with Chinese capitalism. From the 1990s, Singapore’s reputation in China rose considerably. Deng Xiaoping was filled with praise for Singapore in his 1992 visit and hailed Singapore as a model of authoritarian modernism to follow. His obsession with the “Singapore model” was so strong that hundreds of official trips between the two countries were subsequently organized to encourage Chinese bureaucrats and academics to learn from Singapore.78 The two countries’ bilateral ties were also deepened through 74 The villa was used as Sun as his temporary headquarters in South-East Asia between 1900 and 1911; Speech by George Yeo on 12 November 1996, Press Release 33 Nov/03B-1/96/11/12; The Straits Times 13 and 15 November 1996 cited in Huang Jianli and Lysa Hong, “History and the Imaginaries of ‘Big Singapore’: Positioning the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35, no. 1(2004): 65-89. 75 Tan, “Re-engaging Chineseness.” 765 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid. 78 “How Deng and His Heirs Misunderstood Singapore,” Mark R Thompson, New Mandala, February 1, 2019, accessed on May 2, 2020 from https://www.newmandala.org/how-deng-andhis-heirs-misunderstood-singapore/

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the construction of the Suzhou Industrial Park in 1994. Singapore’s growing reputation attracted increasing numbers of new Chinese immigrants (xinyimin) and Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew was eager to welcome them. He said in October 2001, In order to better understand Chinese people, I decided to recruit intelligent Chinese from China to work and study in Singapore so they can understand Singaporeans and become part of Singapore. When Singaporeans invest in China and there are Chinese who reside in Singapore among the company’s team, they can help us understand the situation in China. It will then be easier to see results from the Singaporean company’s investment.79

Singapore’s relationship with China has since been greatly deepened, whether economically, politically or in terms of the large presence of Chinese businesses and new Chinese migrants in Singapore. However, China’s diasporic policies to engage ethnic Chinese overseas for its own benefit have rattled Singapore. In 2018, retired diplomat Bilahari Kausikan warned against “Beijing’s psychological manipulations”80 and commented that “When the Chinese try to impose a Chinese identity on Singapore, we must resist, because modern Singapore is based on the idea of being a multiracial country.”81 In 2019, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke at length on the evolution of the Singaporean Chinese identity and how they “have become distinct from Chinese communities elsewhere, both the Chinese societies of China, Hongkong and Taiwan, and the overseas Chinese minorities in the diaspora in Southeast Asia and the West.” He also reminded the new arrivals to “adjust their social norms to our local context”.82 Singaporean-Chinese also show conflicted feelings when it comes to China. In a 2017 survey on ethnic identity in Singapore, one question asked was “How important is it for you to be able to pass on the practice of 79 Lee Kuan Yew speaking at the Q&A session during the “Ministerial Forum” held at the National University of Singapore, Lianhe Zaobao, 16 October 2001 80 “Manipulation, Chinese Style,” Bilahari Kausikan, Nikkei Asian Review, August 22, 2018, accessed on May 2, 2020 from https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Manipulation-Chinese-style 81 “Singaporeans should be Aware of China’s ‘Influence Operations’ to Manipulate Them, says Retired Diplomat Bilahari,” Charissa Yong, The Straits Times, June 27, 2018, accessed on May 2, 2020 from https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/singaporeans-should-be-aware-of-chinasinfluence-operations-to-manipulate-them-says 82 “Chinese New Year Message 2019,” Prime Minister’s Office Singapore, ­February 4, 2019, accessed on May 2, 2020 from https://www.pmo.gov.sg/Newsroom/Chinese-New-Year-Message-​ 2019-by-PM-Lee-Hsien-Loong

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having connection to ancestral homeland to your children/grandchildren?” Out of the one thousand, one hundred and thirty-one Singaporean-Chinese respondents surveyed, about forty per cent still found ancestral connection to China important.83 Eighty-four per cent of Singaporean-Chinese indicated that they were closest in culture to Malaysian-born Chinese. The same survey found only sixty-four per cent of Singaporean-Chinese felt closest in culture to the China-born.84 The proportion of Singaporean-Chinese who identify as closest to Malaysian-born Chinese may be relatively higher than those who felt closest to the China-born but nevertheless indicated a high level of felt connection to China.

Hostage to China’s rise and fall Returning to John whom we met at the start of this chapter, we see that he is a Singaporean-Chinese who feels close to China, like the sixty-four percent of Singaporean-Chinese in the survey. John’s Chinese-stream education and immersion in the Singapore state’s social imaginary of Chineseness have built a life trajectory that intersects with the evolution of China’s history and Chinese civilization; it is why he found so much of China resonating with him despite his Singaporean nationality. Chinese identity was appropriated and manipulated by each state for its own purpose. China’s varying claims on Chinese nationals and ethnic Chinese overseas as well as Singapore’s selective appropriation of Chinese identity has culminated in variegated imaginaries of Chineseness. As this book will show, Singaporean-Chinese and Chinese migrants negotiate Chinese identity on an everyday basis and on many fronts, whether in terms of language or culture, or in terms of class and gender. Social imaginaries of Chineseness, whether in China or Singapore, are contingent on economics and politics. Singapore’s inherited multiracial population at independence has compelled it to embrace multiracialism but its dominant ethnic Chinese population has obliged it to reinforce selected aspects of Chinese identity. Over the course of Singapore’s evolution, it has steered clear of Chinese communism before eventually embracing Chinese 83 “CNA-IPS Survey on Ethnic Identity in Singapore,” Mathew Mathews, Leonard Lim, S. Shanthini and Nicole Cheung, IPS Working Papers No. 28 (2017), accessed on May 2, 2020 from https://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/docs/default-source/ips/wp-28_cna-ips-survey-on-ethnic-identityin-singapore.pdf?sfvrsn=4952600a_2 84 Ibid.

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capitalism. Singapore’s Chinese identity is fraught with responses to geopolitics and to China’s fall and rise. China’s previous poverty led to Chinese fleeing to Southeast Asia, including Singapore, to seek better livelihoods; China’s rise led to a re-sinicization of Singapore. Singapore’s embrace of China’s ascent especially in its initial welcome of new Chinese migrants has, however, been a difficult one. As this book will show, new Chinese migrants are less than welcome by Singaporean-Chinese. Importantly, the arrival of new Chinese migrants has compelled Singaporean-Chinese to question the state’s version of Chinese identity and Chinese homogeneity. Assumptions that blood and descent predetermine shared cultural consciousness are now being challenged.

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Ho, Elaine Lynn-Ee. Citizens in Motion: Emigration, Immigration, and Re-Migration across China’s Borders. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019. Jacques, Martin. When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2009. Jakhar, Pratik. “Confucius Institutes: The Growth of China’s Controversial Cultural Branch.” BBC News, September 7, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/ world-asia-china-49511231. Jianli, Huang, and Hong Lysa. “History and the Imaginaries of ‘Big Singapore’: Positioning the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35, no. 1 (2004): 65-89. www.jstor.org/stable/20072557. Kausikan, Bilahari. “Manipulation, Chinese Style.” Nikkei Asian Review, August 22, 2018. https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Manipulation-Chinese-style. Kian-Woon, Kwok. “Chinese-Educated Intellectuals in Singapore: Marginality, Memory and Modernity.” Asian Journal of Social Science 29, no. 3 (2001): 495-519. https://doi.org/10.1163/156853101X00217. Lee, Hsien Loong. “Chinese New Year Message 2019.” Prime Minister’s Office Singapore. February 4, 2019. https://www.pmo.gov.sg/Newsroom/ChineseNew-Year-Message-2019-by-PM-Lee-Hsien-Loong. Excerpted from Lee Kuan Yew’s interview with The New York Times on December 16, 1986 at Istana. For a full transcript of the interview, see The Straits Times, January 8, 1987, pg. 11. Lim, Catherine GS. Gateway to Peranakan Culture. Singapore: Asiapac Books Pte Ltd, 2003. Liu, Hong. “New Migrants and the Revival of Overseas Chinese Nationalism.” Journal of Contemporary China 14, no. 43 (2005): 291-316. https://doi. org/10.1080/10670560500065611. Mathews, Mathew, Lim, Leonard, Shanthini, S. and Nicole Cheung. CNA-IPS Survey on Ethnic Identity in Singapore, November 2017. https://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/docs/ default-source/ips/wp-28_cna-ips-survey-on-ethnic-identity-in-singapore. pdf?sfvrsn=4952600a_2. Ng, Yoong Siew. “The Chinese Protectorate in Singapore, 1877-1900.” Journal of Southeast Asian History 2, no. 1 (1961): 76-99. https://doi.org/10.2307/20067320. PuruShotam, Nirmala Srirekam. Negotiating Language, Constructing Race: Disciplining Difference in Singapore. Contributions to the Sociology of Language, Volume 79. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1998. Pye, Lucian W. “China: Erratic State, Frustrated Society.” Foreign Affairs 69, no. 4 (1990): 56-74. https://doi.org/10.2307/20044496. Rudolph, Jürgen. “Reconstructing Collective Identities: The Babas of Singapore.” Journal of Contemporary Asia 28, no. 2 (1998): 203-32. https://doi.org/­ 10.1080/00472339880000131.

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Not the lower classes Abstract This chapter explores migrants’ claims to belonging and citizenship, and the host society’s denial of such claims. It shows that contrary to claims from mainland Chinese professional migrants that they are like Singaporeans, Singaporean-Chinese segregate between a “middle-class” us and a “working-class” them. This chapter analyses how Singaporean-Chinese imagine the Chinese, especially female migrants, as marked by bad dressing, poor hygiene and sexual immorality. For Singaporean-Chinese, these markers are imagined to be Chinese migrants’ embodiment of the “third world” status of their country and which construct Chinese migrants as of the lower classes. This chapter concludes with a critical consideration of how migrants’ middle-class background or the possession of formal citizenship may not indicate a right to belong. Keywords: social class, taste, hygiene, morality, sensory disturbance, cultural citizenship

“The Chinese people Singaporeans don’t like, we don’t like too.”

Xixi had just arrived at the interview with her boyfriend Teddy and said this to me before she had even sat down. Hailing from Shanghai and Anhui respectively, Xixi and Teddy were both in their early thirties and made a handsome couple. They were both tall and well-dressed: She was decked in a red flowery dress while he was in pants and a T-shirt, matched with a large trendy-looking watch. It had been difficult to secure an interview with XiXi and Teddy. As professionals in the IT industry, they travelled frequently overseas for work and pleasure. They had in fact just spent a couple of weeks in Germany and then Sydney. Xixi’s comment caught me off-guard. I had previously informed Xixi and Teddy that the interview would be about their experiences as migrants in Singapore and their interaction with locals; no stereotypes were hinted at or mentioned. Xixi seemed aware of the stereotypes of Chinese migrants in Ang, Sylvia, Contesting Chineseness: Nationality, Class, Gender and New Chinese Migrants. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463722469_ch02

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Singapore and was quick to state her stance: she is not like them. Importantly, it was also an act to identify with Singaporeans. By stating that they did not like the “Chinese people” whom she later described as people who “spit, talk loudly on their mobile phones and litter”, she wanted it known that she was more like Singaporeans, who according to her, are more civilized. Over the course of my research in Singapore, I talked to Chinese professionals like Xixi and found some similar sentiments. Ying Ying and Matthew, for instance, both have PhDs and work at a higher education institute in Singapore. They were introduced to me by a respondent, and we met at a café at the institute. Ying Ying and Matthew did not know each other beforehand although both were born in Shanghai. Ying Ying studied in Singapore for a decade before spending eight years in the U.S., while Matthew had lived in the U.S., Canada and Japan. Both Ying Ying and Matthew spoke American-accented English and were generous in sharing their experiences with travel as well as other cultures with me. As academics themselves, they were curious about my research and were very forthcoming with their responses. Before long, we were talking about the discrimination faced by some Chinese migrants in Singapore. I asked what they thought about such discrimination and Ying Ying surprised me by responding with a laugh, “I think people like us don’t care”. Matthew concurred and said “Yeah, I don’t encounter any discrimination at all.” They both subsequently communicated to me that discrimination neither affected them or happened to them because in their own words, they were “more Westernized” and they “left [China] too early”. Their explanation also justified what they expressed as a lack of camaraderie with Chinese nationals. As Matthew quipped, “I see all people as equal in a way. So I don’t have a particular tendency towards a particular race [not even the Chinese].” As Chinese professionals, Xixi, Teddy, Ying Ying and Matthew are welltravelled cosmopolitans who de-emphasize their Chinese identity. As they told me, they do not choose the countries they live in based on whether there is a large Chinese population. I observed their American-accented English as they shared their globe-trotting experiences and their easiness when speaking of years living abroad in several countries. I noticed their sense of cosmopolitanism and saw that they imagined themselves as part of an affluent, globally oriented middle class. As scholar Hagen Koo suggested, the global middle class consists of people who enjoy western lifestyles, speak English, are comfortable in foreign cultures, and display a global orientation in both work and leisure.1 Xixi’s desire to be identified with Singaporeans 1 Hagen Koo, “The Global Middle Class: How Is It Made, What Does It Represent?,” Globalizations 13, no. 4 (2016): 440-453, P442

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more than with the Chinese people Singaporeans do not like, is a claim to the global middle class. Her comfort with English and globally oriented lifestyle made her feel she has more in common with Singaporeans than ill-behaved Chinese nationals. However, as I found out from some of my other respondents, professional Chinese migrants’ claims to a global middle class are denied by many Singaporean-Chinese. Min Hui, for instance, is a thirty-two year old scientist who has lived in Singapore for more than a decade and received Singaporean citizenship a couple of years ago. She told me that despite her professional background, she “finds it hard to avoid discrimination” and frequently experienced Singaporean-Chinese shooting her dirty looks in public. One time, Min Hui told me, she was browsing in a mall when an aged Singaporean-Chinese lady said to her in an offensive tone out of the blue, “You must be from China”. Although she held her tongue, Min Hui told me she felt so angry that she wanted to retort,”You are from China too. You merely arrived a few decades before me”. Min Hui informed me that other than her fairer skin tone, she felt what marked her as a Chinese migrant was “the way you carry yourself may be a little different”. She posited that she was unlike Singaporeans who have a penchant for dyed hair and trendy fashion styles. She, however, is “not like that and will not be like that”. Min Hui’s reflection matched my research observations: SingaporeanChinese frequently marked Chinese migrants as different, as sensorially disturbing and even repulsive, whether in terms of dressing, hygiene or morality. Despite Min Hui’s official Singaporean citizenship, she is made to feel like she does not belong. Min Hui reminded me that even as Chinese migrants’ professional status may expedite their claims to formal Singaporean citizenship, Singapore-Chinese’s everyday imaginaries can manifest to deny them cultural citizenship: the right to be different and to belong.2 This is perhaps why I found Min Hui and many of my Chinese respondents would identify as Chinese migrants or Chinese nationals (zhongguo yimin/ zhongguoren) only for me to find out later that they have lived for decades in Singapore and possess Singaporean Permanent Residency (PR) or even Singaporean citizenship. Through tracing how Singaporean-Chinese detail being sensorially disturbed and even repulsed by Chinese migrants, this chapter shows how Singaporean-Chinese deny Chinese migrants’ belonging to a global middle class and therein cultural citizenship. I show how Singaporean-Chinese 2 Renato Rosaldo, “Cultural citizenship and educational democracy,” Cultural Anthropology 9, no. 3 (1994): 402-411.

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judgments of Chinese migrants’ dressing and hygiene are linked to imaginaries of Chinese migrants as embodying China’s developing status. I discuss how “dirt” can operate both literally and metaphorically in the context of Singapore to render Chinese migrants unhygienic and Chinese migrant women as sexually immoral. Consequently, Singaporean-Chinese link Chinese migrant women’s immorality to un-deservingness for Singaporean citizenship. I conclude with a critical consideration of how migrants’ middleclass background or the possession of formal citizenship may not indicate a right to belong.

“We won’t go overly dressed” Janet is an attractive woman in her early twenties who works in the financial industry. She is fair skinned with soft facial features and long straight black hair. Dressed casually in a white t-shirt, denim shorts and sandals, she appeared to relish the opportunity to dress down for the weekend. An acquaintance of mine had introduced her as a friend. As Janet is relatively young, I was curious as to what she thought of Chinese migrants. Some of my Chinese respondents had told me that the older generation of Singaporeans seemed to be more prejudiced than the young and I wanted to find out if this was true. Despite her young age, Janet had been working full-time since she was eighteen years old and seemed mature beyond her age. She told me that she has often been mistaken for a Chinese migrant in Singapore. While people try to appease her by attributing the mistake to her fairness and beauty, she often felt “insulted”. She spoke to me about the difference between Singaporean-Chinese and Chinese migrants, making several references to dressing including the following: Like walking style, or dressing style. Singaporeans like to wear flip-flops, shorts and tee-shirts. We won’t go overly dressed or underly-dressed … So, compared to a China lady, a China lady probably will just wear jeans, slippers and tank tops. Then she probably either flock too much make-up, or she just go very messy.

I asked Janet if she has taken any measures to avoid being mistaken for a Chinese migrant. She said she has, by “dressing properly” and wearing “shoes”. I must have appeared baffled at the mention of “shoes” as she quickly laughed and informed me that “China girls don’t wear shoes”. I was curious: “What do they wear?” “Slippers or sandals”, Janet tells me, “in a very weird dress style”.

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The way Chinese migrants dress was an issue that turned up repeatedly in my research. Mary, for instance, is a sales associate at a large department store. She deals intimately with clothes on an everyday basis. She told me that she was very familiar with the many Chinese migrants who worked alongside her or who were customers. While talking with Mary, I had mentioned that I personally found it hard to tell a Chinese migrant from a Singaporean-Chinese, to which she conf idently replied: “We can mostly tell. It’s easy. Chinese like to wear socks [with sandals].” I was surprised, “Really?” Mary said, “Singaporeans won’t wear like that, it’s quite ugly. I’ve asked, they [Chinese migrants] said they are afraid of the dust and dirt.” Mary’s narrative reminded me that my confession of not being able to tell Chinese migrants apart from Singaporean-Chinese was almost always met with Singaporean-Chinese respondents assuring me that “we can tell”. Benjamin, for instance, is a sales manager who told me that he can tell if one is a Chinese migrant through looking at “the way they walk” and their “dressing”. He was certainly dressed to the nines for a weekday afternoon: white starched shirt, pleated black trousers, shiny leather shoes and a designer briefcase. As he described the way Chinese migrants dressed, he made clear distinctions between, in his own words, “China Chinese” and “Chinese”, the latter referring to Singaporean-Chinese. Benjamin informed me that tell-tale signs of a “China Chinese” were in the “malfunction … way they dress”. He assured me that while Singaporeans may not be the best dressers, Chinese migrants were worse off as they “mismatched” their clothes. He explained that Chinese migrants “are all out” (dress their best) because they “came from the village”, insinuating that Chinese migrants overdress since they are unfamiliar with citydwellers’ dress styles.

“I don’t dare to eat their food” Other than the lack of taste, hygiene was a recurring theme in my research. I recalled a Singaporean-Chinese respondent who told me that he would never order food from a stall helmed by a Chinese migrant. He did not elaborate why except that “it would not be good”. Insights from my other Singaporean-Chinese respondents helped me understand what he may have meant. Alongside Mary, whom we met above, I spoke with Jia Hua and Carrie; the three are friends in their late fifties. We met at Carrie’s house one weekday night. Carrie is an office administrator who lives alone and

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has a tastefully decorated house with souvenirs from her travels all over the world. Jia Hua arrived a little late as she had rushed over from her work at a food court. She was humbly dressed in slippers, bermuda shorts and a polo tee embroidered with her company’s logo. Jia Hua is experienced with the food business and informed me that there are Singaporeans who would be unhappy to be served by Chinese migrants at a food stall. I asked why and Carrie interrupted to say “They are very dirty” to which Jia Hua quipped, It’s true … I used to do business next to a food store owned by a Chinese national. He dumps the pig stomach on the floor and then washes it randomly. It’s not right. You can’t see what he does and you think it’s fine … they do everything on the floor. It’s really dirty … If you saw what happened, you wouldn’t want to eat the food they prepare too. I don’t dare to eat their food.

“Dirty”, for my respondents, however, was not only linked to how Chinese migrants prepared food but also to “smell”. Kenneth is an engineer in his thirties who was upfront with acknowledging that he is anti-immigration. Bespectacled with a gentle demeanour, he was surprisingly strong in his sentiments against foreigners. Having to spend considerable time on the train to commute to and from work every day, he is unhappy with how crowded the transport facilities have become. In particular, he informed me that he does not like squeezing on the train with what he perceived as numerous immigrants, especially the “smell” “if you happen to be in [the train] with some mainland [Chinese] people”. While “smell” is more commonly used in discriminatory remarks against South Asian migrants in Singapore, Kenneth’s remark reminds us that markers of difference circulate, not just geographically such as colonial racism which travelled from Britain to Singapore but from one marginal group to another.3 Jia Hua, Carrie and Kenneth’s imaginaries are also influenced by the circulation of “news” online about Chinese nationals that reinforce imaginaries about their hygiene. Kenneth is a case in point as he told me he is tuned into local online forums that are known for admonishing immigrants in Singapore. Popular Singaporean alternative news websites such as All Singapore Stuff and The Independent circulate headlines that associate Chinese nationals with dirt and poor hygiene. Examples include “PRC 3 David Theo Goldberg, “Racial Comparisons, Relational Racisms: Some Thoughts on Method,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 32, no. 7 (2009): 1271-1282.

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hotel cleaners exposed. Dirty towels used to clean bath areas, toilets”4 and “Property agent: Tenants from China are the worst”.5 Such stories are subsequently picked up by local forums and circulate stereotypes of Chinese migrants who apparently “do not know how to keep the rental flats clean” and will cause a “bad smell [even when you stand outside the door]”. These stories have manifested into real discrimination in Singapore’s rental market where rental advertisements blatantly state “no PRCs”.6

“Dirty” women My Singaporean-Chinese respondents used “dirty” not only to refer to Chinese migrants in general but specif ically with regards to Chinese migrant women. “Dirty” can refer to one who is literally dirty but also promiscuous, especially sex workers or women. The English term “dirty woman” is not commonly used in Singapore, but its Mandarin counterpart is. In Mandarin, “dirty” translates to “angzhang” and has been used by my Singaporean-Chinese respondents to refer to Chinese migrant women. As one of my Singaporean-Chinese male respondents commented, “dirty Chinese migrant women” may still connote meanings of literal dirt while “angzhang Chinese migrant woman” immediately conjured for him the image of “an illicit sex worker”. It was no wonder then that the predominantly Mandarin conversation with Mary and Jia Hua turned from literal dirt to immorality, and from Chinese migrants in general to Chinese migrant women. On the topic of Chinese migrant women, Mary claimed to know much about the women’s misdeeds. One of Mary’s stories was of a Chinese migrant woman who is married in Singapore: “I know a Chinese girl who is married. She says she can be with many men in a day. She lies to her husband that she is going out with friends while she is with another man. All [her affairs] are [with] rich doctors and lawyers.” Mary’s most remarkable story, however, was a personal one. She feistily related how a Chinese migrant woman had once 4 “PRC Hotel Cleaners Exposed! Dirty Towels Used to Clean Toilets, Bath Area,” Farhan, All Singapore Stuff, May 14, 2015, accessed on April 25, 2020, from https://www.allsingaporestuff. com/article/prc-hotel-cleaners-exposed-dirty-towels-used-clean-toilets-bath-area 5 “Property agent: Tenants from China are the worst,” Andrew Ezekiel, The Independent, August 31, 2016, accessed on April 25, 2020, from http://theindependent.sg/property-agenttenants-from-china-are-the-worst/ 6 “‘No Indians No PRCs’: Singapore’s rental discrimination problem,” Helier Cheung, BBC News, May 1, 2014, accessed on April 25, 2020, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26832115

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called her house, looking for her brother who has a disability. Mary was suspicious and asked what the woman wanted, and the woman responded that she desired to be friends with Mary’s brother. Mary rehashed the scene for me: she pretended to use her hand as a phone and screamed into it, “You want to be friends with him?! He’s dying, do you want to die with him?!” before slamming the phone down. Mary’s stories were not unusual, they fitted with many other stories of Chinese migrant women in Singapore who snatch husbands and seduce ill or old men for their money. Such stories are not only circulated amongst my respondents but also online. A Google search on the terms “PRC woman Singapore” will render the following top results: “Beware PRC woman married me to get PR and scam me $300, 000”7 and “Affair with PRC woman”.8 Like Mary, Jia Hua also had her share of stories including a detailed one of a Chinese migrant woman she observed at a lottery shop in Singapore: Jia Hua: She took a piece of the lottery paper and wrote down her number. She gave it to one elderly man who ignored her. She went on to eye another person. There was another elderly man who had just finished buying lottery. She tailed him to the supermarket where he stopped to look at a cake. The girl pretended to bump into him, and walked away, then turned back and looked at the man. He then started to follow her. I: Does she select the older men? Jia Hua: The older ones have money. The women also look in your wallet when you open it to buy lottery and see if there’s much money in it. I: You saw all of that? Jia Hua: I saw it when I was shopping. I: Is this commonplace? Jia Hua: Some sell socks at coffee shops. They pretend to ask if you want to buy socks. If you say yes, they’ll tell the man to go to the back [to have sex]. I: Really? Jia Hua: Perfume too. If you want, they ask you to go to the back. I: Where? Jia Hua: So many … at Tampines [a suburb] so many … I: Really? 7 “Beware, PRC Woman Married Me to Get PR & Scam Me $300,000,” Farhan, All Singapore Stuff, May 26, 2017, accessed on April 25, 2020, from https://www.allsingaporestuff.com/article/ beware-prc-woman-married-me-get-pr-scam-me-300000 8 “Affair with Prc Woman” Angst, Singapore Motherhood, February 14, 2013, accessed on April 25, 2020, https://singaporemotherhood.com/forum/threads/affair-with-prc-woman.3892/

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Jia Hua: Also those who sell free-lance lottery. They tell you they have a good number and negotiate the price with you [for sex] … $30, $40 … I: And where is this? Jia Hua: Hawker centers … Everywhere! hawker centers, coffee shops … This happens everywhere!

Sensory disturbances, repulsion, and class Sociologist Kelvin Low suggested that complaints about sensory disturbances are sociocultural expressions of rejection.9 Anthropologist Mary Douglas also noted that values on cleanliness, physical surroundings and food bring forth feelings of disgust that are fundamental to our sense of collective identity. In other words, sensory disturbances or disgust can serve to demarcate “us” versus “them”.10 It is no coincidence that my SingaporeanChinese respondents’ sensory disturbances implicated Chinese women migrants more than men, and led to discussions of Chinese migrant women’s “immorality”. As scholar Danielle Taylor Phillips observed in her work on English servants during the industrial revolution, women servants were perceived as biologically prone to immorality through excessive sexual desires because they were in contact with dirty substances such as meals and chamber pots.11 Mary, Benjamin and Janet implied that Chinese migrants’ dressing was an affront to their sense of sight. Mary indicated that Chinese migrants wearing socks is “ugly” while Benjamin suggested that Chinese migrants’ dressing was “malfunction”, indicating that Chinese migrants’ dressing was abnormal. Janet took deliberate measures to “dress properly” in order not to be mistaken for a Chinese migrant and made references to Chinese migrants’ “weird dress style”, whether over-dressed or under-dressed. Jia Hua, Carrie and Kenneth expressed that their senses were disturbed by Chinese migrants, whether in terms of “dirty” food preparation or “smell”. Their articulations are part of a greater imaginary where Chinese migrants are generalized to be dirty and in general, to have poor hygiene. 9 Kelvin EY Low, “Sensing cities: the politics of migrant sensescapes.” Social Identities 19, no. 2 (2013): 221-237. 10 Mary Douglas. Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. (London: Routledge, 2003) 11 Danielle Taylor Phillips, “Moving with the women: Tracing racialization, migration, and domestic workers in the archive,” Signs: Journal of women in culture and society 38, no. 2 (2013): 379-404.

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This imaginary is so pervasive that rental advertisements in Singapore discriminate explicitly against Chinese nationals. The link between sensory disturbances or dirt and immorality was also not lost with my SingaporeanChinese respondents whose talk about literal dirt evolved to refer to “dirty” Chinese migrant women. They remind us that the link between “sanitary” and “moral” may have been consolidated from late-nineteenth-century America where the social hygiene movement evolved to tackle prostitution alongside venereal disease and moral “purity”12 but is still deeply prevalent today. Feminist scholar Sara Ahmed posited that emotions are simultaneously sensory.13 My respondents’ complaints of sensory disturbances are linked to their repulsion to Chinese migrants. As Ahmed observed, repulsion can be a “visceral” state where sensation and sentiment can overwhelm a body at the same time.14 My respondents were not only repulsed by Chinese migrants’ dressing and hygiene; they were also repulsed by Chinese migrant women’s perceived immorality. Mary expressed an annoyed tone when she told me, “Singaporean women won’t snatch people’s husband! These [Chinese migrant women] come here for money”. Jia Hua and Mary also held indignant tones as they told their stories, conveying a sense of disgust for the women and injustice for the men preyed on. Jia Hua’s voice rose as she spoke about Chinese migrant women, especially at the words “many” and “everywhere”. Certainly, I saw Mary swell with anger and her face redden as she told her stories of Chinese migrant women especially about the Chinese migrant woman who, in Mary’s words, “Dared to call my brother!” Sensory disturbances and repulsion are sociocultural expressions of rejection that are tightly linked to class. As George Orwell noted, “no feeling of like or dislike is quite so fundamental as a physical feeling. Race-hatred, religious hatred, differences of education, of temperament, of intellect, even differences of moral code, can be got over; but physical repulsion cannot.”15 Orwell understood physical repulsion to be so strong that he adds that it may not matter so much if a middle-class person is nurtured to believe that the working classes are dishonest or boorish; “it is when he is brought up to believe that they are dirty that the harm is done.”16 12 Kristin Luker, “Sex, Social Hygiene, and The State: The Double-edged Sword of Social Reform,” Theory and Society 27, no. 5 (1998): 601-634. 13 Sara Ahmed. Cultural politics of emotion. (Edinburgh, United Kingdom: Edinburgh University Press, 2014). 14 Ibid. 15 Emphasis mine, George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier [1937] (London: Penguin, 1975) pp.112 16 Ibid.

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My Singaporean-Chinese respondents’ expressions of rejection also matched sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s observation that people can be constructed as different, not primarily on a lack of material resources but a lack of “taste”, knowledge, and the “right ways of being and doing”.17 Bourdieu pointed out that taste acts as a status marker and can be used by the upper classes to exclude the lower classes. Chinese migrants’ apparent bad dressing, poor hygiene and immorality both literally and metaphorically left a bad taste in Singaporean-Chinese’s mouths. Singaporean-Chinese’s imaginary of Chinese migrants as distasteful positions them into the lower classes; a class position that fits into a greater imaginary about Chinese migrants in Singapore. This greater imaginary imagines Chinese migrants as of the lower classes because they came from the “village” and embody the developing status of their country China. As nationals of a developing country, so the imaginary goes, they have bad taste (in dressing), poor hygiene and would do anything for money (immorality). This imaginary does not only feature Chinese migrants but more specifically Chinese migrant women. As Phillips noted on her work on servants, dirt and immorality has been traditionally associated with women servants or specifically, lower classes of women.18 The lower classes, of course, are also imagined as dressing badly. Singaporean-Chinese mark Chinese migrants with bad dressing, poor hygiene and immorality to differentiate them as the lower classes; a class that does not deserve to belong in Singapore. It also allows Singaporean-Chinese to recognize who is a Chinese migrant. Chinese migrants and Chinese migrant women in particular are, according to my Singaporean-Chinese respondents, ubiquitous. Whether it is calling one’s brother out of the blue, dealing with food sold to Singaporeans, at the lottery shop, hawker centers or coffee shops, they are everywhere. Sociologist Stephanie Lawler in her study of class suggested that the middle class sees the working class as a swarming mass which threatens the middle class’s individualism.19 Individualism is important to the middle class as it marks out the bearer of taste as unique. The middle class is afraid to lose their individualism and therein distinction. As such, the middle class finds it necessary to identify the “mass”. In this case, the “mass” consists of Chinese migrant women. They are not just “everywhere” but also promiscuous and/or sex workers – the line between the two 17 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984) 18 Phillips, “Moving with the women.” 19 Stephanie Lawler, “Disgusted Subjects: The Making of Middle-Class Identities,” The Sociological Review, 43, No. 3 (2005): 429-446.

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often a blurred one.20 Chinese migrant women as a “mass” are threatening because they could easily blend in with Singaporean-Chinese. By portraying the Chinese migrant woman as sensory disturbances: bad dressing, poor hygiene, immoral, she is made recognizable. The Chinese migrant woman’s recognizability helps to counter anxieties that my Singaporean-Chinese respondents have. As Janet expressed, “Singaporean-Chinese are mistaken for China people wherever they walk on the street. But where is the Singaporean, if every Chinese here is assumed to be from China?” Janet’s anxiety is not only in being mistaken for the badly dressed, immoral Chinese migrant woman but also of Singaporeans being engulfed by the Chinese migrant masses. At the heart of Singaporean-Chinese anxieties lie immigration and citizenship.

Denying cultural citizenship Chinese migrant women and their imagined repulsiveness are at the heart of debates about granting Permanent Residence and citizenship in Singapore. In May 2015, a video featuring two Chinese migrant women and a local man went viral.21 The video showed the two women having a conflict with a Singaporean man over acquiring an additional access card to a private condominium. The women were residents of the condominium while the man was a staff member. They had an argument, and the women could be seen spitting, swearing at and hitting him. He did not have kind words for them either. The video, accompanying screenshots and commentaries have since reappeared on various websites and online forums. Numerous online comments and discussions have also emerged in response. The video garnered more than 70,000 views in just three days of being published.22 Across various websites, headlines and comments were quick to identify those involved as “PRC women”. Another focus was the unseemly behaviour of the women involved. Spitting, hitting and hurling vulgarities are antisocial and even criminal in Singapore and are further frowned upon if committed by women. 20 Joan Sangster, “Domesticating Girls: The Sexual Regulation of Aboriginal and Working-Class Girls in Twentieth-Century Canada,” in Contact Zones: Aboriginal and Settler Women in Canada’s Colonial Past, ed. Myra Rutherdale and Katie Pickles (Vancouver, Canada: UBC Press, 2014). 21 “Tang Bei & Tang Lei @ Simei Green EC,” YouTube video, October 4, 2017, accessed on April 25, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQp7NxVI-P8&app=desktop#menu 22 “Women Split, Slap and Splash Drink on Condo Staff Member,” David Sun, The New Paper, May 7, 2015, accessed on April 25, 2020, from https://www.tnp.sg/news/singapore/ women-spit-slap-and-splash-drink-condo-staff-member

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On STOMP, an alternative news website’s Facebook page, 517 comments on the video were quick to make references to the women as “prostitutes”, “mistress” and “whores”.23 Since the incident happened at a private condominium which is substantially more expensive than public housing, online commentators quickly took to postulating how the Chinese migrant women could afford to live there. At Sam’s Alfresco Coffee, a forum thread titled “(PRC?) Women hurl vulgarities at Uncle, hit and even spit at him in heated argument” had 150 posts.24 One user suggested the conflict with the condominium manager happened because the women were in a hurry to access their apartment in order to “service” (provide sex to) another man she was with. At the alternative news website All Singapore Stuff, a “netizen” wrote in to claim one of the women was the mistress of a local taxi-driver.25 As news emerged that the women were Singapore Permanent Residents (PR), one online commenter on Sam’s Alfresco Coffee wondered how they could qualify for Permanent Residence: do they sell fake designer goods, faked their degrees or were they “streetwalkers”?26 Out of the 517 comments on STOMP’s Facebook page, many also took issue with the Chinese migrant women’s Singapore PR:27 I think the government needs to look into this matter seriously. Singaporean are sick of this trash. Please revoke their PR or citizenship, and send them back to where they’re from, in order to prevent more problems from these foreigners again. I urge you [relevant government departments] to take actions as soon as possible. This is what happens when Disgruntled Ex PRC mistresses & prostitutes were given Singapore PR or citizenship 23 “Women Hurl Vulgarities, Hit and Even Spit at Man in Heated Argument,” Stomp, May 3, 2015, accessed on April 26, 2020 from https://www.facebook.com/straitstimes.stomp/photos/a. 228017343896382/983029215061854/?type=3 24 “(PRC?) Women Hurl Vulgarities at Uncle, Hit and Even Spit at Him in Heated Argument,” Makapaa, The Sammyboy Times, May 3, 2015, accessed on April 26, 2020, from https://www. sammyboy.com/threads/prc-women-hurl-vulgarities-at-uncle-hit-and-even-spit-at-him-inheated-argument.205994/ 25 “PRC Women Who spit and Hit SG Man are Menace to Society,” Farhan, All Singapore Stuff, May 5, 2015, accessed on April 26, 2020, from https://www.allsingaporestuff.com/article/ prc-women-who-spit-and-hit-sg-man-are-menace-society 26 “(PRC?) Women hurl vulgarities at Uncle”. 27 “Women hurl vulgarities, hit and even spit at man in heated argument,” Stomp, May 3, 2015, accessed on April 26, 2020 from https://www.facebook.com/straitstimes.stomp/photos/a.22801 7343896382/983029215061854/?type=3

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Most of the comments revolved around the women’s source of income and how they managed to obtain Singaporean PR including calls for the state to remove their PRs. The comments presented a similar imaginary: the Chinese migrant women should not have qualified for Singapore Permanent Residence since they were apparently “mistresses”, “streetwalkers” and “trash”. In other words, as Chinese migrants who apparently could not have proper jobs or degrees and could only make money from selling fake designer goods, through faking their degrees or as sex workers, Chinese migrant women are of the lower classes. Singaporean-Chinese have said it explicitly with regards to this incident: “They are low-class scumbags”28, “Low class PRC”29 “animal low-class women who spit anywhere they like”.30 It does not matter that the Chinese migrant women have Singapore PR, the pervasive questioning of how they acquired PR reinforces that they do not belong. Furthermore, their “lower class” status is reiterated throughout the comments, functioning to not only label the women as “lower class” but also to justify claims that their lower-class status should not have allowed them to gain Singapore Permanent Residence. The underlying imaginary is that Singaporean citizens and Permanent Residents are already or should be of the higher classes. Comments that question their PR status and which relegate them to the lower classes deny Chinese migrants cultural citizenship. As anthropologist Aihwa Ong observed, “cultural citizenship” refers to “cultural practices and beliefs” that emerge from “negotiating the often ambivalent and contested relations with the state and its hegemonic forms that establish the criteria of belonging within a national population and territory”.31 Cultural citizenship involves self-making but also “being made” within the nation-state as well as civil society.32 In this case, the state may have granted the women PR but civil society denies them cultural citizenship; they are imagined as different and do not belong in Singapore. Anxieties pertaining to the incoming Chinese migrants and their taking up of Singapore PR and citizenship have manifested into the crudely coined term “open-leg policy”. The term is widely used on online forums and commentaries.33 Often conjured alongside criticisms of Chinese migrant 28 “(PRC?) Women hurl vulgarities at Uncle”. 29 “Women hurl vulgarities, hit and even spit at man in heated argument”. 30 Ibid. 31 Aihwa Ong, “Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making,” Current Anthropology 37, no. 5 (1996): 737-762. 32 Ibid. 33 Some examples are “Our Govt’s Open Leg Policy of Letting FTs in Reaping its Rewards. Well Done,” All Singapore Stuff, January 31, 2019, accessed on April 26, 2020 from https://www.facebook.

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women, the term refers to the state’s liberal immigration policy. The term certainly has disturbing connotations, suggesting that the state is like a promiscuous/prostituting woman who is opening her legs to the invasion of migrants. It is a reflection of the sexist views many Singaporeans hold: that women should not be promiscuous, and neither should the state. The state’s “promiscuity” is deeply linked to the imaginary of a rising China. In 2018, the court came to a verdict on the fight between the two Chinese migrant women and the Singaporean man. Channel News Asia, a Singapore’s news outlet, published an article headlined “Twin sisters in viral 2015 Simei Green condo fight fined”. The article was replicated on their Facebook page and garnered 383 comments,34 most of which were unhappy with the verdict: Only fine $2000?? So lenient to foreigners? Today I read one 21yr man assault one train staff and he may be sentenced to 2 years jail … hmm … Because China has a big economy … Singapore don’t dare to offend … Singapore is all about money … Justice n love come second … Have to think hard not to offend China. Must give face

The lenient fine of the Chinese migrant women was seen by many Singaporeans as the state’s tolerant treatment of Chinese migrants. Many comments expressed that Singaporeans in a similar situation would have been punished more severely. Speculation arose that the leniency meted out to the Chinese migrant women were because of China: its “big economy” and the fear of “offend(ing) it”.

Marked as a Chinese migrant This chapter has shown how Singaporean-Chinese use sensory disturbances and repulsion to differentiate Chinese migrants as the lower classes. com/allsgstuff/posts/our-govt-s-open-leg-policy-of-letting-fts-in-reaping-its-rewards-welldone/2868560579951319/; “Open legs policy is responsible for SG high rates of nCoV infections?” Singapore Hardware Zone, February 9, 2020, accessed on April 26, 2020 from https://forums. hardwarezone.com.sg/eat-drink-man-woman-16/open-legs-policy-responsible-sg-high-ratesncov-infections-6203961.html 34 “Three Years After A Video of Tang Bei and Tang Lei Attacking Condo Employees Went Viral, the Twins were Slapped with Fines,” ChannelNewsAsia, August 28, 2018, accessed on April 26, 2020 from https://www.facebook.com/ChannelNewsAsia/posts/10155832760032934?comment_ id=10155832886802934&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R%22%7D

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Through marking Chinese migrants with bad dressing, Singaporean-Chinese constructed Chinese migrants as different not primarily on a lack of material resources but a lack of “taste”. Since taste acts as a status marker, Singaporean-Chinese use taste as the upper classes to exclude Chinese migrants, the lower classes. My Singaporean-Chinese respondents also showed that they were repulsed by Chinese migrants’ “dirty” food preparation and “smell”; a rejection that again demarcates Chinese migrants as a different class. Finally, my Singaporean-Chinese respondents linked dirt and immorality to Chinese migrant women; a link consolidated since historical times where dirt and immorality were imagined to be associated with lower classes of women. Chinese migrants’ perceived lower-class status is linked to SingaporeanChinese denial of their cultural citizenship. We saw with the case of the viral video, how Chinese migrant women’s Singaporean PR are questioned and their “lower class” status reiterated to claim they are not worthy of PR. Through labelling Chinese migrants as unworthy of belonging to Singapore, Singaporean-Chinese label the state as “promiscuous” and associate the state’s “promiscuity” to a rising China. In this imaginary, Chinese migrants are welcomed to Singapore and treated leniently despite their bad behaviour because the state welcomes China’s wealth and is afraid of offending a rising China. Returning to Min Hui whom we met in the introduction to this chapter, we see that despite having lived in Singapore for decades and even acquiring Singapore citizenship, she does not feel like she belongs, not only in a visceral or intellectual sense but also visually. After all, as she said, despite her professional background, her fairer skin tone, her undyed hair and non-trendy fashion style will almost always mark her as a Chinese migrant. As we have seen, imaginaries of Chinese migrants’ dressing, hygiene and morality are intimately tied to imaginaries of their class status and whether a Chinese migrant is as worthy as a Singaporean-Chinese. Professional Chinese migrants may possess Singaporean PR or citizenship and even aspire to depart from a social imaginary of Chineseness to one that is beyond ethnicity and nationality. Yet, Singaporean-Chinese imaginaries of Chineseness do not differentiate Chinese migrants from where they were born. In this imaginary, Chinese migrants do not belong, whether as Singapore PR or citizens, or of the global middle class. Chinese migrants have been set up against the benchmark of Singaporean-Chinese, whose social imaginaries of Chineseness place them as the higher class. Xixi, Ying Ying and Matthew may imagine themselves as members of a global middle class but in Singaporean-Chinese imaginaries, their Chinese nationality renders them among the lower classes.

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References All Singapore Stuff. “Our Govt’s Open Leg Policy of Letting Fts in Reaping Its Rewards. Well Done.” Facebook, January 31, 2019. https://www.facebook.com/ allsgstuff/posts/our-govt-s-open-leg-policy-of-letting-fts-in-reaping-its-rewardswell-done/2868560579951319/. Ahmed, Sara. Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality. London: Routledge, 2013. Ahmed, Sara. Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Angst. “Affair with Prc Woman.” Singapore Motherhood, Feb 14, 2013, accessed May 21, 2020, https://singaporemotherhood.com/forum/threads/affair-withprc-woman.3892/. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Cheung, Helier. “‘No Indians No Prcs’: Singapore’s Rental Discrimination Problem.” BBC News, May 1, 2014. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26832115. CNA. “Three Years after a Video of Tang Bei and Tang Lei Attacking Condo Employees Went Viral, the Twins Were Slapped with Fines.” Facebook, August 28, 2018. https://www.facebook.com/ChannelNewsAsia/posts/10155832760032934?comment_ id=10155832886802934&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R%22 %7D. Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge, 2003. Ezekiel, Andrew. “Property Agent: Tenants from China Are the Worst.” The Independent, August 31, 2016. http://theindependent.sg/property-agent-tenantsfrom-china-are-the-worst/. Farhan. “Beware, Prc Woman Married Me to Get Pr & Scam Me $300,000.” All Singapore Stuff, May 26, 2017, accessed May 21, 2020, https://www.allsingaporestuff. com/article/beware-prc-woman-married-me-get-pr-scam-me-300000. —. “Prc Hotel Cleaners Exposed! Dirty Towels Used to Clean Toilets, Bath Area.” All Singapore Stuff, May 14, 2015, accessed May 21, 2020, https://www.allsingaporestuff.com/article/prc-hotel-cleaners-exposed-dirty-towels-used-cleantoilets-bath-area. —. “Prc Women Who Spit and Hit Sg Man Are Menace to Society.” All Singapore Stuff, May 5, 2015, accessed May 21, 2020, https://www.allsingaporestuff.com/ article/prc-women-who-spit-and-hit-sg-man-are-menace-society. Goldberg, David Theo. “Racial Comparisons, Relational Racisms: Some Thoughts on Method.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 32, no. 7 (2009): 1271-82. https://doi. org/10.1080/01419870902999233.

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Green, Dr. “Tang Bei & Tang Lei @ Simei Green Ec.” YouTube, October 4, 2017. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQp7NxVI-P8&app=desktop#menu. Koo, Hagen. “The Global Middle Class: How Is It Made, What Does It Represent?”. Globalizations 13, no. 4 (2016): 440-53. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2016.11 43617. Lawler, Stephanie. “Disgusted Subjects: The Making of Middle-Class Identities.” The Sociological Review 53, no. 3 (2005): 429-46. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467954X.2005.00560.x. Low, Kelvin EY. “Sensing Cities: The Politics of Migrant Sensescapes.” Social Identities 19, no. 2 (2013): 221-37. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2013.789218. Luker, Kristin. “Sex, Social Hygiene, and the State: The Double-Edged Sword of Social Reform.” Theory and Society 27, no. 5 (1998): 601-34. https://doi. org/10.1023/A:1006875928287. Makapaa. “(Prc?) Women Hurl Vulgarities at Uncle, Hit and Even Spit at Him in Heated Argument.” The Sammyboy Times, May 3, 2015, accessed May 21, 2020, https://www.sammyboy.com/threads/prc-women-hurl-vulgarities-at-unclehit-and-even-spit-at-him-in-heated-argument.205994/. Ong, Aihwa. “Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making: Immigrants Negotiate Racial and Cultural Boundaries in the United States.” Current Anthropology 37, no. 5 (1996): 737-762. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2744412. Orwell, George. The Road to Wigan Pier. London: Penguin, 1937. Rosaldo, Renato. “Cultural Citizenship and Educational Democracy.” Cultural Anthropology 9, no. 3 (1994): 402-11. www.jstor.org/stable/656372. Sai Jai Lalit. “Open Legs Policy Is Responsible for Sg High Rates of Ncov Infections?”. Singapore Hardware Zone, Feb 9, 2020, accessed May 21, 2020, https://forums. hardwarezone.com.sg/eat-drink-man-woman-16/open-legs-policy-responsiblesg-high-rates-ncov-infections-6203961.html. Sangster, Joan. “Domesticating Girls: The Sexual Regulation of Aboriginal and Working-Class Girls in Twentieth-Century Canada.” In Contact Zones: Aboriginal and Settler Women in Canada’s Colonial Past, edited by Myra Rutherdale; Katie Pickles. Vancouver, Canada: UBC Press, 2014. Stomp. “Women Hurl Vulgarities, Hit and Even Spit at Man in Heated Argument.” Facebook, May 3, 2015. https://www.facebook.com/straitstimes.stomp/photos/a. 228017343896382/983029215061854/?type=3. Sun, David. “Women split, slap and splash drink on condo staff member.” The New Paper, May 7, 2015. https://www.tnp.sg/news/singapore/women-spit-slap-andsplash-drink-condo-staff-member. Taylor Phillips, Danielle. “Moving with the Women: Tracing Racialization, Migration, and Domestic Workers in the Archive.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 38, no. 2 (2013): 379-404. https://doi.org/10.1086/667449.

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A better Chinese man Abstract This chapter details how digital media interact with and shape Chinese men’s sense of identities. Drawing on the author’s text chats, phone chats and meet-ups with Chinese migrant men initiated on the mobile media app WeChat and on internet forums frequented by Singaporean-Chinese men, it analyses the fluid meanings of being a Chinese man. This chapter analyses low-wage Chinese migrant men’s feelings of displacement and how they are positioned by Singaporean-Chinese men into the bottom rung of a hierarchy of Chinese masculinities. Yet low-wage Chinese migrant men do not submit entirely to their perceived subordinate status and reimagine ethnicity, gender and class to reposition themselves as better people than the host society. Keywords: WeChat, masculinities, Chinese masculinities, suzhi, hierarchy of masculinities, performing gender

I met Yuan at a bus stop outside the factory he works at. It was just after 9pm and the street was mostly deserted. Other than some fluorescent light from the factory behind us, the dull orange streetlamps were the only sources of light around us and illuminated Yuan in an old cream-colored polo shirt and grey Bermuda shorts with a black washed-out backpack slung over one shoulder. Yuan must have been taller than he appeared as he had a considerable slouch, coupled with a sense of jadedness. His tired eyes examined me, and he seemed mildly surprised that I had turned up. As with most low-wage migrant workers in Singapore, Yuan works long and late hours as a store man and has limited interaction with Singaporean-Chinese women. It was only after several days of text-messaging on WeChat – a messaging and social media application which I had used to “discover” Yuan – that he agreed to meet me. “Aren’t you afraid to meet a stranger at so late an hour?” This was the first thing he said to me when we met. It sounded like Yuan was concerned about me, but I thought that he may be wary of me. I assured him that I was familiar

Ang, Sylvia, Contesting Chineseness: Nationality, Class, Gender and New Chinese Migrants. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463722469_ch03

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with the area and suggested that we go to a coffee shop a few minutes’ walk away. Yuan, however, grew increasingly apprehensive as we walked. Not seeing the coffee shop, he began to glance furtively and suspiciously at me and our surroundings. By then, I was sure that Yuan was not worried about me. He was worried about himself; that I could be a scammer after his money. Over other similar encounters with Chinese migrant men that followed, I realized that what I initially thought was a simple misunderstanding was reflective of larger discourses of ethnicity, gender and sexuality. Yuan’s distrust of Singaporean-Chinese women reflected the complex and problematic hierarchies of masculinities that operated within Singapore society. A Singaporean-Chinese woman’s interest in low-wage Chinese migrant men’s lives was suspicious because of their marginalization in Singapore. This chapter will firstly show how mainland Chinese men, in general, are imagined by Singaporean-Chinese men as less masculine and accordingly, as less sexually desirable. Low-wage Chinese migrant men, however, have strategies which they use to reimagine and reposition their masculinities. My discussion will focus on the use of suzhi by my respondents. The discourse is used predominantly in China to point to rural workers’ “low quality” as associated with the lack of formal education and civility and is internalized by some of my respondents. Other respondents, however, use suzhi subjectively to position themselves as of higher suzhi or disregard the discourse altogether. I will then allude to the use of the social media platform, WeChat, by Chinese migrant men to navigate their masculinity. WeChat provided opportunities for them to talk to and meet women in a context where they are emasculated by Singaporean society’s perception of their lowly status as low-wage Chinese migrant men. Such explorations allow them to reimagine and reposition themselves as good or better Chinese men.

Hierarchy of Chinese Masculinities Construction workers are the largest group of migrant labour in Singapore, numbering 280,400 in 20181 and are often sighted in groups such as being shuttled like cattle at the back of trucks between work-sites and dormitories. In recent decades, low-wage workers from the People’s Republic of China have been on the rise and joined the South Asian workers who used to dominate the construction sector. While South Asian low-wage workers do 1 “Foreign workforce numbers,” Ministry of Manpower Singapore, 2018, accessed on December 2, 2018 from https://www.mom.gov.sg/documents-and-publications/foreign-workforce-numbers

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suffer discrimination by the local population, Chinese workers are arguably treated worse. As my Singaporean-Chinese male respondent who works as an engineer in a shipyard with regular contact with both South Asian and Chinese low-wage workers suggested, “Chinese workers are the worst … Because they know the language [Mandarin], they think they can talk back to their supervisors”. Perceptions of insubordination have led this Singaporean-Chinese respondent, alongside others, to suggest that Chinese workers thus require “more” disciplining than workers of other nationalities. Certainly, my Chinese low-wage respondents often find themselves subordinate to male supervisors, some of whom are local, who may physically or verbally abuse them. How low-wage Chinese migrant men are imagined in Singapore can be glimpsed from my Singaporean-Chinese respondents who imagine Chinese migrant men to be lower in status than them. Benjamin, a nearly middle-aged Singaporean-Chinese, for instance, was open with his views on Chinese migrants as we chatted over coffee in a Starbucks cafe. He had chosen the location as he was a regular there. The cost of the Starbucks coffee Benjamin enjoys daily is equivalent to or more than what a Chinese migrant construction worker earns an hour (US$3.40-$5.50). Benjamin had arrived before me and tucked his laptop away into a designer briefcase upon my arrival. A friend had introduced him to me. He was confidently dressed in a starched white shirt, pleated black trousers, and polished leather shoes, and was quick to settle comfortably into the sofa. As a well-to-do sales manager who is familiar with rich Chinese clients and has travelled to several parts of China, Benjamin expressed pride in his ethnic Chinese heritage. He claimed that ethnic Chinese were the “best businessmen in the world” as “we are very hardworking”. He joked, however, that ethnic Chinese’s weaknesses were in gambling and womanizing – weaknesses which he was clearly not too concerned about, laughing heartily as he said it and casually moving onto the next topic. The conversation turned, however, when I asked him more specifically about Chinese nationals. While Benjamin had much to say about Chinese nationals in general, his most striking remarks were about low-wage Chinese male workers in Singapore. Benjamin told me that he thinks Chinese “foreign workers” – colloquially used to refer to low-wage workers – are more likely to commit “Murder and some robbery. Because in China you rob already, you get away.” Shocked by his bluntness, I could not immediately respond. Sensing perhaps my disbelief, he sought to convince me and elaborated, “Yes, it’s just normal because they brought the culture from there [China] right? Of course, there are many other factors. If I came here

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as a construction worker, I would have paid large sums of money to my agent and have no money left. I may borrow money and have large debts. So I am desperate.”

Benjamin does not, however, only think of Chinese foreign workers as criminals. He also began talking about Indian foreign workers in Singapore who he suggests are more likely to “rape”. Importantly, he referred to both Chinese workers’ and Indian workers’ “difference” as “cultural”. Despite identifying with ethnic Chinese all over the world as being “the best businessmen” and “hardworking”, Benjamin imagines the low-wage Chinese migrant worker to be as different from him as an Indian migrant worker. Construction work in Singapore is seen in general to be of the lowest status, both in terms of wages and respectability, in a hierarchy of jobs in Singapore. Although Chinese nationals occupy all levels of occupations in Singapore – higher-wage and low-wage – and are rather diverse even in the low-wage jobs, Benjamin was quick to think of Chinese low-wage workers as construction workers (who in the context of Singapore are unequivocally male). As per my experience with other respondents, criticism of Chinese “foreign workers” almost always translates to criticisms on low-wage Chinese male construction workers. In reality then, low-wage Chinese male construction workers bear the brunt of criticisms directed at Chinese foreign workers in general. Singaporean-Chinese’s online discussions suggest as much that mainland Chinese men – migrant or not – were less ideal than Singaporean-Chinese men. Sam’s Alfresco Coffee, for instance, is a popular online forum in Singapore. As of February 2020, it has more than 400,000 members with more than 200,000 threads and nearly 3 million messages. The forum does not log IP addresses and is known by Singaporeans to be an uninhibited space. Euphemistically, the forum allows freedom of speech not usually permissible in offline Singapore, but the consequences are that racist, homophobic and generally offensive content is not moderated in the forum. While it is possible that users may be more offensive than usual on this forum, much of what is said on the forum matches my offline research where snide remarks about Chinese migrants are made off the record. Taken with a pinch of salt, discussions on the forum still reflect to a large extent the views of many Singaporeans who may be too polite or afraid of the state to utter in public. Various threads on the forum reflected what Singaporean men think of Chinese men who are colloquially and pejoratively termed “Ah Tiong” or “PRC”. “Ah Tiong” is derived from Tiong Kok (Hokkien vernacular referring to “China”). The term connotes a backward country bumpkin from

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China. Since “Chinese” is more colloquially used in Singapore to refer to Singaporean-Chinese, “PRC” has become a recent slang term used to refer to Chinese nationals and commonly used in discriminatory remarks. Thread titles include “Switzerland teaches inferior Ah Tiong [PRC Chinese man] how to use a toilet”,2 “Ah tiong threatens to kill uncle after told not to lean on MRT [train]pole”.3 One thread titled: “Rising trend of sinkie [Singaporean] women pairing up with Ah Tiong men” was particularly telling.4 The thread involved fifteen authors with twenty posts. As shown below, one post listed a hierarchy of men which placed the “PRC” man way below the “local Chinese” and depicted as “poor guy from 3rd world country”. The post suggested that Singaporean-Chinese women are “ok” to marry Singaporean-Chinese men but not so with other men, including the “PRC”. The post reads: Local Chinese woman marry(:) Local Chinese: OK (Singaporean-)Malay: Lazy Bum (Singaporean-)Indian: Drunken Wife beater Ang Moh (Caucasian): Big Wallet big dick Japanese and Koreans: Male Chauvinist PRC: Poor guy from poor 3rd world country India Indians: Rapist All other Asian countries: Poor guy from poor 3rd world country

The post clearly places Singaporean-Chinese men on top. While racism is clearly present against other groups of men including Singaporeans of other ethnicities, ethnicity also intersects with nationality and class in the ranking of each group of men. As men of Chinese ethnicity from the developed economy of Singapore (nationality and class), the user claims Singaporean-Chinese men are superior to immigrants that are mostly from “poor 3rd world country” including mainland Chinese men as well as Singaporeans of other ethnicities. Singaporean-Chinese men imagine their 2 “Switzheland Teaches Inferior Ah Tiong (PRC Chinese Man) How to Use a Toilet,” HonkieSingie, The Sammyboy Times, April 23, 2016, accessed on May 3, 2017 from https://www.sammyboy.com/ threads/switzheland-teaches-inferior-ah-tiong-prc-chinese-man-how-to-use-a-toilet.228579/ 3 “Ah Tiong Threatens to Kill Uncle After Told Not to Lean on MRT Pole,” Rogue Trader, The Sammyboy Times, September 10, 2013, accessed on Feb 1, 2020 from https://www.sammyboy. com/threads/ah-tiong-threatens-to-kill-uncle-after-told-not-to-lean-on-mrt-pole.162530/ 4 “Rising trend of sinkie women pairing up with Ah Tiong men,” Sam’s alfresco coffee, August 12, 2013, accessed on May 1 2015 from https://www.sammyboy.com/threads/rising-trend-of-sinkiewomen-pairing-up-with-ah-tiong-men.159575/

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nationality and ethnicity intersect to make them of a higher class than men of other ethnicities and nationalities, and therefore the best kind of men to marry. In the same thread, another user stated: “The PRC gals I meet who work in the nightlife scene tells me PRC men are beasts! Even their own vege [women] avoids them. Those who have been overseas for a long time, maybe you stand a better chance having being exposed to first world mannerism etc.” Mainland Chinese men, despite their actual backgrounds, are seen by Singaporean-Chinese men as embodying the developing status of their country, China, and as such, of questionable masculinity. In the imaginaries of Singaporean-Chinese men, Chinese men “stand a chance” of being civilized only if they spent a long time outside of China. Whether Chinese men are imagined to be murderers, robbers or beasts, such discussions show that Singaporean-Chinese men see mainland Chinese men’s masculinity as less than ideal. Singaporean-Chinese men imagine their own masculinity as the benchmark and at the top of a hierarchy of masculinities, with mainland Chinese men’s masculinity falling way below the Singaporean-Chinese. As scholar Anne Mclintock suggested, race, and in this case ethnicity, gender and class do not exist in isolation from each other. They come into existence in and through relation to each other. As the above discussion shows, there are intimate relations between class and the developing/developed status of a nation; the status of a nation and gender or masculinity; masculinity and ethnicity.5 This hierarchy of masculinities affects the perception of migrant workers’ sexuality. Low-wage Chinese migrant men’s sexuality is often put in the spotlight in Singapore, especially in the online sphere. Online media stories in Singapore circulate stereotypes of Chinese migrant men as sexually repressed, and resorting to desperate acts such as masturbation in public6 and peeping.7 The undercurrent of such stories suggests that low-wage Chinese migrant men are unable to access the opposite sex in Singapore, leading to such behaviour. These stories stem from knowing the marginal conditions of low-wage male migrant workers who in the construction sector are unequivocally male and are not allowed to bring their wives or 5 Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995). 6 “Prc Man Stares at My Girlfriend and Masturbates in Woodlands Library,” Redwire Singapore, October 15, 2014, accessed on May 1, 2015 from http://redwiretimes.com/letters/ prc-man-stares-girlfriend-masturbates-woodlands-library/ 7 “Prc Peeping Tom Disguised as Woman to Record Woman Showering at Sentosa,” ST Review, November 17, 2015, accessed on December 21, 2015 from http://statestimesreview.com/2015/11/17/ prc-peeping-tom-disguised-as-woman-to-record-woman-showering-at-sentosa/ (now defunct)

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families into Singapore, unlike higher-wage expatriates.8 Instead of using this knowledge to improve low-wage male migrants’ lives, however, these stories reinforce the men’s marginalization. The circulation of stories and stereotypes of mainland Chinese men as sexually repressed and as sexually aggressive fuels the dominant discourse about the legal sex trade in Singapore as a “necessary evil” to meet the “needs” of the large transient migrant male population. Assumptions that mainland Chinese men are sexually repressed and cannot access women on their own was reiterated by one Singaporean-Chinese male respondent who suggested that migrant workers “necessarily” patronize red-light districts “to resolve [their sexual needs]”. So dominant are these discourses that the Singaporean authorities, foreign embassies, NGOs and charities, hold campaigns to educate migrant men about safe sex;9 with their efforts concentrated on the red-light district. While there is certainly some truth to this narrative, insofar as some Chinese migrant men, and other migrant men do patronize the sex trade,10 the discourse stigmatizes migrant men. After all, local men patronize the sex trade too. Singapore society’s discourses on low-wage Chinese migrant men emasculate them by suggesting they are less manly and accordingly less attractive sexual partners. Such discourses compel my respondents to construct alternative masculinities to redefine themselves as men.

“We are of low quality” The emasculation of low wage migrant workers does not only come from Singaporean men. It also comes from pressures within China. In 2011, a music video admonishing men for not having a car or a house went viral in China, receiving more than 20 million views. It included lyrics such as “A man after all should be like a man; Without a car, without a house, forget about f inding a bride”. The music video was made by 8 Higher-wage expatriates can only bring family members over if they earn more than $4420 per month. See Ministry of Manpower Singapore, “Passes for family of Employment Pass holders,” July 16, 2019, accessed on May 9, 2020 from https://www.mom.gov.sg/passes-and-permits/ employment-pass/passes-for-family 9 Pattana Kitiarsa, The “Bare Life” of Thai Migrant Workmen in Singapore (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2014). 10 Huailu Li, Kevin Lang and Kaiwen Leong, “Does Competition Eliminate Discrimination? Evidence from the Commercial Sex Market in Singapore,” The Economic Journal 128, no. 611 (2017): 1570-1608.

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well-to-do single Chinese women in response to a previous video made by bachelors confessing that they had neither a car nor a house but wished to win women’s affection. The video propped up particular ideals of “being a man” that paralleled China’s modernization and globalization. As the founder of China’s biggest dating website Jiayuan suggested, “The key things women search for on our site are a man’s height, salary and whether or not he owns a car or a house … It’s very hard to satisfy women in China these days”.11 Working-class men such as my low-wage respondents are excluded from these ideals of a “successful man”. In addition, many of my respondents also faced downward mobility when they migrated to Singapore for work. 12 Some of my respondents were, for instance, chefs or drivers before coming to work in Singapore as construction workers, occupying the lowest status of a hierarchy of occupations in Singapore. In China, my respondents are likely to already be considered as “losers of modernization”.13 In Singapore, their “failed masculinity”14 may be felt even more keenly as their Chinese nationality becomes an additional source of discrimination. However, this does not mean that my respondents necessarily submit to their subordinate positions in Singapore. Liu, for instance, showed that low-wage migrant men can develop strategies to perform and reposition themselves as manly or good Chinese men. I met Liu at a shopping mall after “discovering” him on WeChat and having text-chatted with him for several days. Liu was in his 30s and worked at a construction site in the west of Singapore. We met on a Saturday afternoon at a fast-food restaurant when he did not have work. Liu is tanned and thin with a wrinkled face. Dressed in an old shirt, trousers and sandals, he was generous with his smiles. Although Liu was friendly, he was adamant that I would not audio-record him, clearly worried that his words would be used against him. This fitted with my experience with low-wage workers in Singapore who were frequently afraid that their behaviour would be 11 Sarah Keenlyside, “You Do Not Want To Be A Single Lady Over 28 In China,” Business Insider, July 30, 2012, accessed on August 2, 2016 from https://www.businessinsider.com/ you-do-not-want-to-be-a-single-woman-over-28-in-china-2012-7?IR=T 12 Gillian Creese and Brandy Wiebe, “‘Survival Employment’: Gender and Deskilling Among African Immigrants in Canada,” International Migration 50 no. 5 (2012): 56-76. 13 Xiaodong Lin, Gender, Modernity and Male Migrant Workers in China: Becoming a ‘modern’ man (New York: Routledge, 2013). 14 Yi’En Cheng, Brenda SA Yeoh and Juan Zhang, “Still ‘Breadwinners’ and ‘Providers’: Singaporean Husbands, Money and Masculinity in Transnational Marriages,” Gender, Place & Culture 22, no. 6 (2015): 867-83.

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misconstrued as “misconduct”15 and cause them to be sacked from work and/or deported. After all, low-wage workers often incurred large debts back home in order to facilitate their migration for work overseas. Many were afraid that they would be forced to leave Singapore before profiting from their migration, having paid recruitment fees ranging from $4500 to $6000.16 Liu had paid similar sums. Liu spoke of himself as of low suzhi (quality of personhood). Suzhi is a discourse that originated from China after 1978. In this discourse, rural workers who lack formal education are seen to be lacking in civility, discipline, initiative and cosmopolitanism. Their low suzhi or low quality is associated with their “disadvantaged” status.17 Migrant workers see themselves as having to suffer low wages and discrimination through internalizing that they are of low suzhi. They do not see that the state and existing structures that disadvantage them could be responsible for their plight. Liu appeared to be both aware of and resigned to his status of low suzhi and low socio-economic status, conditions of which are highly emasculating in an era where high suzhi and wealth defines a successful man. He does not suggest looking for better jobs but only hopes to continue to da gong (do manual labour). He said that he decided to migrate to earn more wages to send his daughter to a better school. He grew excited as he talked about his daughter and told me he communicated with her almost daily through WeChat. He showed me pictures of her and told me how much he missed her. He said that wages in his hometown, Harbin, are currently comparable to that in Singapore. He emphasized that he was however, compelled to work in Singapore because Harbin’s extreme weather made it too cold to work for half of the year. Liu was implying that Harbin and accordingly, China’s economy was not far behind and may even parallel Singapore’s. He was repositioning his migration decision as prompted not by the developing status of China but by uncontrollable circumstances such as seasonal changes. I did not ask why he did not then choose to work in other parts of China. I knew already from my research that while wages in China were catching up with Singapore, 15 The Ministry of Manpower Singapore states that “Misconduct is the failure to fulfil the conditions of employment in the contract of service. Examples include theft, dishonesty, disorderly or immoral conduct at work and insubordination,” see Ministry of Manpower Singapore, “Termination due to Employee Misconduct,” October 29, 2019, accessed on May 9, 2020 from https://www. mom.gov.sg/employment-practices/termination-of-employment/termination-due-to-misconduct 16 Haolie Jiang, “Recruitment Costs – China,” Research Report, TWC2, July 2016, accessed on June 5, 2019 from http://twc2.org.sg/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Recruitment-Costs-China.pdf 17 Hairong Yan, “Neoliberal Governmentality and Neohumanism: Organizing Suzhi/ Value Flow Through Labor Recruitment Networks,” Cultural Anthropology 18, no.4(2003): 493-523.

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the phenomenon was slow and certainly not widespread yet. There would not otherwise be so many Chinese workers who were willing to migrate to Singapore for low-wage work. I asked him about his future plans: would he be continuing his work in Singapore? He said he would go anywhere in the world for high wages, none of them would be home anyway. In the more than an hour that we spoke, Liu’s focus on his family and his daughter dominated the conversation. He articulated frequently his aspirations for his daughter’s future; aspirations that he said could only be fulfilled through his work migration. Through expressing that he was prepared to take risks in relocating anywhere in the world so long the wages are high, Liu emphasized his strong sense of responsibility as a provider and breadwinner for his family, an important aspect of constructing his masculinity.18 Liu may have said that he was of low suzhi but his overall narrative dwarfed his “confession”. Through stressing the importance he assigned to his role as a provider and breadwinner, Liu underscored masculine traits that were beyond suzhi and wealth and which helped him to regain his masculinity. While Liu tried to reposition his masculinity by emphasizing his role as a father, breadwinner and provider, I “met” respondents on WeChat who internalized so much of their marginalized socio-economic status that they did not attempt to resist or construct an alternative masculinity. Wang was one of them. Wang was one of the first WeChat users I encountered. He had messaged me with the indication that he would like me to be his girlfriend barely a few minutes into the conversation. Wang’s first text to me actually read, “I like your smile. Be my woman!” (wo xihuan nidexiao zuowode nuren). He told me that he had been in Singapore for two and a half years and works as a construction worker. I attempted to find out what he thought about Singaporeans, but he was reticent. I asked if he found locals to be warm, he said no. I asked if he thought they were mean. He said yes, everywhere. Could he share some examples? He replied that there were too many. While I had explained to Wang that I was researching migrants for my PhD right at the start of the conversation, he only came to terms with it later in the conversation. As the conversation stretched, I proceeded to explain my research in greater detail which brought up my graduate studies again. He appeared to be in disbelief, and I saw his disbelief manifest in how he doubly sought clarification on my educational status. Once it was clear to him that I was indeed doing my PhD, Wang quickly changed tact. Wang’s 18 Cheng, Yeoh, and Zhang. “Still ‘Breadwinners’ and ‘Providers’.”

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messages became curt, and he seemed no longer interested to chat with me. While he was initially adamant that we meet, he now said that he did not want to anymore. I asked why and he responded in a brusque one-liner: “we are from different circles” (women shi butong quanzi deren). He went on to say that he has never known anyone so highly educated before and stopped responding to my messages altogether. Wang’s response upon learning of my education level suggested that he may have internalized his marginal socio-economic status. Unlike Liu, Wang did not attempt to construct an alternative masculinity. Wang neither persisted in his masculinist language of asking me to “be his woman”, nor considered me suitable even as a chatting acquaintance. Although Wang did not explicitly voice it, his narrative resonated with Liu’s: “we are of low quality [di suzhi]”. This was, however, not always the case, as my other respondents showed.

Higher suzhi makes a better man While some low-wage migrant workers may internalize that they have low suzhi, others such as Dong use suzhi to reposition themselves as better men than Singaporean-Chinese men. Dong is forty-two years old and originated from Shandong, China. He worked late hours as a store man in a factory, getting home daily after ten pm. He expressed difficulties in meeting me in person. Finally, I secured a phone-call with him on WeChat, at eleven pm on a weekend night. Dong told me that he has been in Singapore for six years and spends his little leisure time playing with his mobile phone and reading novels. He goes to Geylang (see Chapter Five) every now and then to meet his hometown friends for hotpot – a Chinese-style fondue with broth. Perhaps because of the anonymity provided by the phone, Dong was quickly candid and talkative, and the phone conversation stretched over two hours. Dong opened up on his interaction with Singaporean-Chinese. He told me that he had little interaction with Singaporean women; the only ones he knew were an accountant at work and his boss. He told me that Singaporean-Chinese women are very clever and would not be interested in Singaporean-Chinese men. I asked Dong why and he responded by contrasting himself with Singaporean-Chinese men. He claimed he sent all the money he earned to his wife, unlike Singaporean-Chinese men who do not. He also criticized what he perceived as Singaporean couples’ individualistic habits of eating separately and paying for their meals separately which was to him,

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unbecoming of a family. In contrast, he claimed he would always ask his wife for her preferences before ordering dishes at the restaurant, unlike Singaporean-Chinese men. He found Singaporean-Chinese men’s habits of going Dutch embarrassing. He told me that he would always pay for everything when he goes out with a woman and said being good to women is a sign of high “suzhi” (dui nushi bijiahao shi gaoshuzhi). Accordingly, he rated not just himself but Chinese men’s suzhi as 10/10 while Singaporean-Chinese men are only at eighty per cent. Dong’s evaluation of Singaporean-Chinese men as of lower suzhi due to the way they treat women f its with studies that have found that the use of suzhi can be highly subjective. 19 Anthropologist Vanessa Fong found, for instance, that in order to justify claims to high suzhi, individuals emphasized def initions of suzhi that favoured their own strengths. 20 She noted that those who were wealthier def ined suzhi in terms of the cosmopolitanism associated with urban modernity, a wide range of expensive hobbies, talents, and experiences; while those who were academically unsuccessful def ined suzhi in other ways. Suzhi is also a value coding, as scholar Tamara Jacka suggested.21 It can be used to differentiate and point out gaps between, for example, the good and bad, civilized and uncivilized, and in this case, the manly and unmanly. Following such observations, one can see that Dong imagines himself of higher suzhi than Singaporean-Chinese men as he believes that he treats women better. The different and subjective readings of suzhi presented Dong with an opportunity to redefine a good man. Since Dong could not meet mainstream standards of a successful man in the form of possessing wealth, he de-emphasized Singaporean-Chinese men’s ability to spend but emphasized the manner in which they spent, which according to him, was “individualistic” and inconsiderate of women. As such, he represented not only himself, but all Chinese men as of higher suzhi, therein repositioning Chinese men’s masculinity as superior to Singaporean-Chinese men. While Dong emphasized his treatment of women as a mark of his masculinity, my other respondents showed a greater diversity of strategies in defining themselves as men. 19 Vanessa L. Fong, “Morality, Cosmopolitanism, or Academic Attainment? Discourses on “Quality” and Urban Chinese‐Only‐Children’s Claims to Ideal Personhood.” City & Society 19, no.1 (2007): 86-113. 20 Ibid. 21 Tamara Jacka, “Cultivating Citizens: Suzhi (Quality) Discourse in the PRC,” positions: east asia critique 17, no.3 (2009): 523-535.

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Performing Chinese masculinity Other than suzhi, there are other ways to articulate masculinities, such as performing alternative forms of masculinities. Bao was one respondent I “discovered” while scrolling through WeChat in Geylang. Bao was thirty years old and worked as a construction worker in Singapore. He had responded to my status (“seeking Chinese migrants for research”) enthusiastically and we text-chatted daily for a week before meeting up. He was friendly and generous: he offered to gather his friends and introduce them to me over a meal. We arranged to meet in Geylang, at a restaurant catering for food from his hometown in Northeast China. Bao has been in Singapore for over two years and was extremely familiar with Singapore. Although we were meeting in Geylang which was near his workplace, he had gone to Chinatown beforehand to remit some money as he knew that the exchange rates were better. When I mentioned that I was unfamiliar with where the restaurant was, he gave me detailed instructions on the various ways I could reach there. He was considerate that I would not have to meet his friends on my own and rushed to meet me by taking a taxi from Chinatown. Bao was going to considerable expense for my sake though he did not mention it. While taxi fares are generally affordable in Singapore, migrant construction workers earn low wages, and a taxi ride would be a rare indulgence. Baos’s appearance defied locals’ perception of migrant workers as ill-dressed. Both he and his three other friends were dressed in their Sunday best. Bao wore a polo shirt tucked into bell-bottom jeans, sported a conspicuous gold watch and wore leather shoes; clothes that were a far cry from what they wear on a daily work basis. They did not look pleased when I turned up in a T-shirt and Bermuda shorts. We sat alfresco at a round table placed on the pavement outside the restaurant and Bao proceeded to order more food than the table could hold. I could tell that this was a rare indulgence and the men seemed to have made a festival out of the dinner. The men were comfortable with me quickly as they included me in their conversations loudly and animatedly. Throughout the evening, Bao and his friends smoked and drank incessantly, having brought Chinese cigarettes and a potent Chinese spirit, Maotai, with them. They chorused as they drank: men who don’t drink or smoke are not men! They commented gleefully that they might skip work tomorrow since it may rain, even though officially, their work did not provide rest days. They claimed that rainy days made them feel lazy and they might take the day off. The conversation steered to the topic of sex workers, a natural topic as we were after all in the red-light district. I asked if the men patronized sex

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workers. Bao’s friend Bu told me matter-of-factly that as men, they have needs and of course they do. He went on to suggest they prefer Vietnamese sex workers amongst various nationalities. Bao and another friend Yang nodded their heads in agreement. Bu elaborated that Vietnamese sex workers were the most “economical” ( jingji you shihui) while Yang chipped in to say Chinese sex workers were the worst as they were expensive and provided lousy services. The rest also told me excitedly that Bu had a Chinese hostess girlfriend who worked near the restaurant, despite earlier information that Bu has a thirteen-year-old son and wife in China. Later, Bu left the dinner table to buy a snack from a renowned food-stall nearby for his girlfriend. The topic of women soon led to a discussion on Singaporean-Chinese women, who according to the group, could not compare to Chinese women. Shun, for instance, commented, “Singaporean-Chinese girls are either too big-sized or thin like bamboo”. Shun’s critique was confirmed by the rest of the group who pitched in to chorus: “Chinese women are more beautiful than Singaporean-Chinese!” Bu may have been concerned that I, a SingaporeanChinese woman, would be offended and quickly added that “[of course Chinese women are more beautiful] … China has a population of 1.3 billion while Singapore only has 5 million”. From drinking to smoking to retelling of their visits to sex workers, the whole night was almost theatrical. To help us understand “performativity”, gender theorist Judith Butler suggested that gender is not a stable identity but is performed through the body. That is not to say, however, that individuals perform only when there is a stage/public or when they are on a stage/in front of the public. Rather, what one does, the very act that is performed is an act that has been on-going before one arrived on the scene. We are all, in our daily lives “performing” our gender unconsciously.22 The public nature of one’s performance is however, consequential – it reproduces the social laws of gender and in the case of my respondents, masculinities. The men may not be overtly conscious of their performance of masculinity but the contrast between their behaviour and the suspicious behaviour of my other respondents was stark. As scholar Xiao Suowei reminded us, “the accomplishment of an individual’s gendered identity often occurs through the recognition, validation, affirmation, celebration, and consolidation provided by others in interaction”.23 By smoking, drinking and declaring 22 Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal 40, no.4 (1988): 519-531. 23 Suowei Xiao, “The “Second-Wife” Phenomenon and the Relational Construction of Class-coded Masculinities in Contemporary China,” Men and Masculinities 14, no. 5 (2011): 607-627.

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that men necessarily do so; by suggesting that they can arbitrarily take the day off work- debunking popular perceptions that they as low-wage workers have little control in their work- , Bao and his friends were performing alternative masculinities. Studies on gender also recognize that gender is relational and that women play an important role in male performances of masculinities.24 However, it was not only my role as a woman that enabled them to perform their masculinities, talking about women also enabled them to show that they are men. Whether it was Vietnamese sex workers, Singaporean-Chinese women, Chinese women or Bu’s hostess girlfriend, talking about women allowed them to “do gender” in a traditionally masculine way.25 Comparing Chinese women’s beauty with Singaporean-Chinese women’s lack thereof is also a nationalist project at work. Studies have long established that women are viewed as symbolic bearers of the nation.26 In other words, beautiful Chinese women represent the superiority of their nation and in this case, superior to Singapore with its less appealing women. The Chinese nationalism shown here is important as it points to how the men are not only performing and repositioning their masculinities through traditional ways but also through asserting their nation i.e. China’s superiority. The imaginary of a rising China and its growing or already established superiority to Singapore is one that many of my Chinese respondents expressed throughout my research. The men also appealed to other forms of masculinities such as respectable manhood: what Susanne Choi and Yinni Peng suggested is a sense of masculinity based on a man’s effort to provide and care for his family and make them happy.27 Respectable manhood values morality and emotional well-being of family members over material wealth. Bu, for instance, spoke to me several times about Bao’s skills as an ex-chef. The men emphasized Bao’s cooking skills and caring nature to suggest he is a good man; a man who cares for his family in ways other than material means. Bao was happy to concur. Respectable manhood is an alternative masculinity that was more 24 Jeff Hearn, “From Hegemonic Masculinity to the Hegemony of Men,” Feminist Theory 5, no. 1 (2004): 49-72; Mimi Schippers, “Recovering the Feminine Other: Masculinity, Femininity, and Gender Hegemony,” Theory and Society 36, no. 1 (2007): 85-102. 25 Timothy Jon Curry, “Fraternal Bonding in the Locker Room: A Profeminist Analysis of Talk About Competition and Women,” Sociology of Sport Journal 8, no. 2 (1991): 119-35. 26 Deniz Kandiyoti, “Identity and Its Discontents: Women and the Nation,” Millennium 20, no. 3 (1991): 429-43.; Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger, Nationalisms & Sexualities (London: Routledge: 2018). 27 Susanne Yuk-Ping Choi and Yinni Peng, Masculine compromise: Migration, family, and gender in China (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2016).

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attainable by my low-wage respondents; it did not require a car, house or money to be legitimate. I also noticed the low suzhi rhetoric which punctuated their conversations all evening. For instance, while referring to the local perception that Chinese migrants talk loudly, Bao suggested that this is accurate and that in China, everyone goes about talking loudly on their phone, hence they all have di suzhi (duiah women jiushi disuzhi). Before long, the rhetoric was reiterated so many times and nearly always accompanied with a smirk that its use was clearly ironic. To return to studies on suzhi which suggest that low-wage migrants internalize the low suzhi discourse, I ask: do all migrant workers internalize that they have low suzhi? Anthropologist Andrew Kipnis has been exceptional to suggest otherwise.28 He suggested that the dominant low suzhi discourse may be used ironically by migrant workers who are aware of dominant constructions of them as low suzhi but may not internalize or agree with the discourse. Certainly, as my respondents Bao and his friends reminded me frequently through the evening: a rising China is all about money and kuanxi (networks or who you know), nothing else matters. From their ironic use of suzhi, I could see that suzhi certainly did not matter to them. Rather than use suzhi to reposition their masculinity, as Dong did, Bao and his friends repeated the rhetoric till it no longer held meaning. Instead, Bao and his friends performed and repositioned their masculinity in other ways: through alcohol, smoking, emphasizing their agency at work, talking about women, appealing to alternative masculinities such as respectable manhood and establishing China’s superiority, whether in terms of its ascent or its beautiful women.

Seeking solace on WeChat Singapore looks like heaven from afar Singapore looks like church in proximity Once one starts work, one is like a forced labourer Back to the dormitory, one sees only cockroaches29 28 Andrew Kipnis, “Neoliberalism Reified: Suzhi Discourse and Tropes of Neoliberalism in the People’s Republic of China,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13, no. 2 (2007): 383-400. 29 Yuakan xijiapo jiantiantang, jingkan xinjiapo jianjiaotang, zuoqigonglaixianglaofan, huidaoshushekanzhanglang

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This satirical poem was shared by Yuan whom we met at the start of the chapter. He told me that the poem is widely circulated amongst his Chinese co-workers as a mark of their disillusionment with Singapore. Many of my low-wage Chinese respondents came from less-developed cities in China and had imagined Singapore to be a highly developed country where they would have no problems fitting in. They imagined earning good wages in Singapore, with little to no integration issues since “we are all Chinese”.30 They imagined good work conditions and not to be forced to live in rooms overcrowded by up to sixteen people at a time and infested by bugs. These were conditions they did not imagine was possible in the “heaven” of Singapore. Most of all, they did not imagine that not knowing English and being from China would cause them so much difficulty in a “Chinese”-majority country. Yuan’s disillusion with Singapore, felt through his isolation and marginalization, has compelled him and many others like him to seek solace through digital media such as WeChat. As migrants, WeChat has become an integral part of their lives not only to maintain contact with family and friends in China but also to seek out friends, companions and lovers in Singapore. Other than working long and late hours with few to no days-off and curfews at their dormitories, low-wage migrants also have few resources to spend on consumption. As one of my low-wage Chinese male respondents iterated to me, tempted as he was to patronize sex workers, a visit would cost him a week’s wages. Many have chosen to immerse themselves in WeChat with the little leisure time they have. The male migrant respondents discussed in this chapter were all recruited through the WeChat app. Commonly used in China under the name of “Weixin”, WeChat is similarly popular among Chinese migrants in Singapore, although it appears to be more commonly used not just between friends but by men looking to meet women. Although I set my “status” on WeChat to read: Seeking Chinese migrants for research purposes, I was more than once offered indecent proposals on WeChat. Both my experience online and offline suggested to me that my respondents, for lack of contact with locals and specifically, local women, were keen to talk or meet up with a local woman for a variety of reasons. Yes, sex may be on some of their minds, as Wang’s text message (“Be my woman!”) showed but even their access to sex through WeChat was limited by their language capacities. One respondent, for instance, was interested to chat with Singaporean-Chinese women but found that their conversations could not progress much due to 30 women doushi zhongguoren/huaren

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his limited English and her limited Mandarin. Resultantly, his lovers were all Chinese migrant women. Not all Chinese migrant men, however, are only after sex. As I text-chatted with more and more Chinese migrant men, most of whom were low-wage, I realized that they used WeChat for a myriad of purposes, often just for someone to talk to, and it appeared a “bonus” to be able to speak with a Singaporean-Chinese. I was often the first and only Singaporean-Chinese woman they had spoken extensively to, a fact I could not quite believe initially. Singapore is after all, a small and dense island state, how could my respondents have such limited interaction with Singaporean-Chinese women? I asked my respondents if they did not interact for instance, with the food vendors or the supermarket cashiers, they responded that those staff were also from mainland China. This was especially the case in Geylang. The few respondents that had some contact with Singaporean-Chinese women reported that their interaction was extremely limited; it may be a service person that they briefly purchase something from or a clerk that sits in the air-conditioned office while they worked on the factory floor. Considering that foreigners make up one-third of Singapore’s workforce and take up jobs that locals shun, it dawned on me that there were few opportunities for my respondents to interact with Singaporeans, let alone Singaporean-Chinese women, in their daily shuttle from work to dormitory. My respondents’ emasculation is compounded by Singaporean-Chinese men and Singapore society in general where their lowly status including lack of English education has limited their interaction with SingaporeanChinese women. It was no wonder that Yuan, whom we met at the start of the chapter, was suspicious of my interest to talk to him. Yet Yuan has found some solace from WeChat, having used the platform to chat with women and even men. WeChat is an important part of low-wage Chinese migrant men’s lives but not only as a means to seek out lovers, friends and companions; WeChat has also become an important platform for them to reimagine and reposition their masculinities.

Reimagining the better Chinese man This chapter has examined the social imaginaries of Chineseness through the perspectives of low-wage Chinese male migrants. Exploring how mainland Chinese migrant men’s masculinities relate to Singaporean-Chinese masculinities fills an important gap in extant studies where masculinity

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hierarchies are often focused on inter-ethnic hierarchies.31 This chapter points to the heterogeneity of Chinese men and masculinities as well as how nationality and class can “lower” a man’s position on the hierarchy of masculinities, despite sharing ethnicity with the dominant group. The concept of hierarchical masculinities stems from understanding that not all masculinities are equal, as gender theorists Raewyn Connell and James Messerschmidt explain through “hegemonic masculinity”.32 “Hegemonic masculinity” refers to the gold standard of “being a man” and sits at the top of a hierarchy of masculinities. Connell and Messerschmidt suggests that hegemonic masculinity is not that which all men can live up to but rather only a small minority, while the rest can only aspire to it. My respondents show that while they may not be able to live up to hegemonic ideals of being a Chinese man, there are other ways of imagining themselves as good Chinese men. Through meeting respondents like Yuan who shared his poem of disillusionment, we saw that migration not only displaced low-wage workers like Yuan physically but also imaginary-wise. Even as low-wage male Chinese workers like Yuan must grapple with their displacement in Singapore, they also have to contend with being positioned into the bottom rung of a hierarchy of Chinese masculinities. WeChat becomes an important tool for my respondents to perform masculinity and reposition themselves as good men. My respondents use WeChat to “discover” women in proximity to them, text-chat or phone-chat with women and sometimes, though not all the time, meet up with women. As gender specialists tell us, gender is relational: gender roles and characteristics do not exist in isolation, and femininity and masculinity only make sense in relation to each other. My low-wage Chinese male respondents use WeChat to access users of the opposite sex, enabling interactions that allow my respondents to perform, reimagine and reposition their masculinities. Liu, for instance, acknowledged his low suzhi status but actively repositioned his masculinity through emphasizing his role as a father who migrated solely to benefit his daughter’s education. Dong used suzhi subjectively, defining high suzhi as belonging to men who treat women well, such as himself. His definition of suzhi favoured his acquiescence to women’s food 31 Raymond Hibbins and Bob Pease, “Men and Masculinities on the Move,” in Migrant Men: Critical Studies of Masculinities and the Migration Experience, ed. Mike Donaldson, Raymond Hibbins, Richard Howson and Bob Pease (New York: Routledge, 2009) p.1-19. 32 Robert W Connell and James W Messerschmidt, “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept,” Gender and Society 19 no. 6 (2005): 829-59.

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choices and for always paying the bill when out with women. Accordingly, Dong claims his higher suzhi makes him a better man than SingaporeanChinese men. Finally, we met Bao, Bu, Shun and Yang who used suzhi so frequently and unapologetically to render the term meaningless. Rather than use suzhi to reposition their masculinity, as Dong did, Bao and his friends showed off that they were men through performativity. Through alcohol, chain-smoking, talking about women, showing off agency with missing work and performing respectable manhood, Bao and his friends established that they were men. Appealing to alternative masculinities was their way of repositioning their subordinate masculinity in Singapore. Importantly, low-wage Chinese migrant men’s imaginaries of Chinese masculinities also entail the imaginary of a rising China. Even as Liu was emphasizing his role as a provider, he reminded me that wages in his hometown are currently comparable to that in Singapore. He also implied it was the seasonal changes, rather than China’s developing status, that compelled his work migration. Dong, in attributing treatment of women to high suzhi, represented not only himself, but all Chinese men as of higher suzhi. As such, he repositioned Chinese men’s masculinity as superior to Singaporean-Chinese men. Bao and his friends similarly reminded me of China’s superiority: the beauty of Chinese women as contrasted to the less attractive women of Singapore as well as the omnipotence of money and kuanxi in a rising China, so much so that suzhi has become an outdated discourse for them. My respondents remind us that masculinity is an important part of the social imaginaries of Chineseness: what kind of a Chinese man is one and where does one fit in the imaginary hierarchy of Chinese masculinities? The politics of the hierarchy of Chinese masculinities is also the politics of nation-states. Where one fits on the hierarchy of Chinese masculinities is intimately tied to the status of one’s nation-state. Singaporean-Chinese men may imagine mainland Chinese men as “third world” and occupying the bottom rung in the hierarchy of Chinese masculinities, but Chinese migrant men reimagine and reposition themselves in ways that establish their masculinity. With China’s ascent in the backdrop, they reimagine themselves even as better Chinese men than the Singaporean-Chinese.

References Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (1988): 519-31. https:// doi.org/10.2307/3207893.

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Cheng, Yi’En, Brenda SA Yeoh, and Juan Zhang. “Still ‘Breadwinners’ and ‘Providers’: Singaporean Husbands, Money and Masculinity in Transnational Marriages.” Gender, Place & Culture 22, no. 6 (2015): 867-83. https://doi.org/10.1080/096636 9X.2014.917282. Choi, Susanne Yuk-Ping, and Yinni Peng. Masculine Compromise: Migration, Family, and Gender in China. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016. Connell, Robert W, and James W Messerschmidt. “Hegemonic Masculinity Rethinking the Concept.” Gender & Society 19, no. 6 (2005): 829-59. https://www.jstor. org/stable/27640853. Creese, Gillian, and Brandy Wiebe. “‘Survival Employment’: Gender and Deskilling among African Immigrants in Canada.” International Migration 50, no. 5 (2012): 56-76. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.2009.00531.x. Fong, Vanessa L. “Morality, Cosmopolitanism, or Academic Attainment? Discourses on “Quality” and Urban Chinese-Only-Children’s Claims to Ideal Personhood.” City & Society 19, no. 1 (2007): 86-113. https://doi.org/10.1525/city.2007.19.1.86. Hairong, Yan. “Neoliberal Governmentality and Neohumanism: Organizing Suzhi/ Value Flow through Labor Recruitment Networks.” Cultural Anthropology 18, no. 4 (2003): 493-523. https://doi.org/10.1525/can.2003.18.4.493. Hearn, Jeff. “From Hegemonic Masculinity to the Hegemony of Men.” Feminist Theory 5, no. 1 (2004): 49-72. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700104040813. Hibbins, Raymond and Bob Pease. “Men and Masculinities on the Move.” In Migrant Men: Critical Studies of Masculinities and the Migration Experience, edited by Raymond Hibbins, Mike Donaldson, Richard Howson and Bob Pease 1-19. New York: Routledge, 2009. HonkieSingie. “Switzheland Teaches Inferior Ah Tiong (Prc Chinese Man) How to Use a Toilet.” The Sammyboy Times, April 23, 2016, accessed May 21, 2020, https://www.sammyboy.com/threads/switzheland-teaches-inferior-ah-tiongprc-chinese-man-how-to-use-a-toilet.228579/ Jacka, Tamara. “Cultivating Citizens: Suzhi (Quality) Discourse in the PRC.” positions: east asia critique 17, no. 3 (2009): 523-35. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/364982. Jiang, Haolie. Recruitment Costs – China. TWC2, July 2016. http://twc2.org.sg/wpcontent/uploads/2016/08/Recruitment-Costs-China.pdf. Jon Curry, Timothy. “Fraternal Bonding in the Locker Room: A Profeminist Analysis of Talk About Competition and Women.” Sociology of Sport Journal 8, no. 2 (1991): 119-35. https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.8.2.119. Kandiyoti, Deniz. “Identity and Its Discontents: Women and the Nation.” Millennium 20, no. 3 (1991): 429-43. https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298910200031501. Keenlyside, Sarah. “You Do Not Want to Be a Single Lady over 28 in China.” Business Insider, July 30, 2012. https://www.businessinsider.com/you-do-not-want-to-bea-single-woman-over-28-in-china-2012-7?IR=T.

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Kipnis, Andrew. “Neoliberalism Reified: Suzhi Discourse and Tropes of Neoliberalism in the People’s Republic of China.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13, no. 2 (2007): 383-400. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2007.00432.x. Kitiarsa, Pattana. The “Bare Life” of Thai Migrant Workmen in Singapore. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2014. Li, Huailu, Kevin Lang, and Kaiwen Leong. “Does Competition Eliminate Discrimination? Evidence from the Commercial Sex Market in Singapore.” 128, no. 611 (2018): 1570-608. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12476. Lin, Xiaodong. Gender, Modernity and Male Migrant Workers in China: Becoming a ‘Modern’ Man. New York: Routledge, 2013. McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge, 1995. “Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Pandemic.” World Health Organization, 2021, accessed May 21, 2020, https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novelcoronavirus-2019. Parker, Andrew, Russo, Mary, Sommer, Doris, and Patricia Yaeger. Nationalisms & Sexualities. London: Routledge, 2018. “PRC Peeping Tom Disguised as Woman to Record Woman Showering at Sentosa.” ST Review, November 17, 2015, accessed May 21, 2020, http://statestimesreview. com/2015/11/17/prc-peeping-tom-disguised-as-woman-to-record-womanshowering-at-sentosa/. Schippers, Mimi. “Recovering the Feminine Other: Masculinity, Femininity, and Gender Hegemony.” Theory and Society 36, no. 1 (2007): 85-102. https://doi. org/10.1007/s11186-007-9022-4. “Foreign Workforce Numbers.” Ministry of Manpower, December 2, 2018, accessed May 21, 2020, https://www.mom.gov.sg/documents-and-publications/ foreign-workforce-numbers. “Passes for Family of Employment Pass Holders.” Ministry of Manpower, July 16, 2019, accessed May 21, 2020, https://www.mom.gov.sg/passes-and-permits/ employment-pass/passes-for-family. Redwire Singapore. “Prc Man Stares at My Girlfriend and Masturbates in Woodlands Library.” Redwire, October 15, 2014, accessed May 21, 2020, http://redwiretimes. com/letters/prc-man-stares-girlfriend-masturbates-woodlands-library/. “Termination Due to Employee Misconduct.” Ministry of Manpower, October 29, 2019, accessed May 21, 2020, https://www.mom.gov.sg/employment-practices/ termination-of-employment/termination-due-to-misconduct. Trader, Rogue. “Ah Tiong Threatens to Kill Uncle after Told Not to Lean on Mrt Pole.” The Sammyboy Times, September 10, 2013, accessed May 21, 2020, https:// www.sammyboy.com/threads/ah-tiong-threatens-to-kill-uncle-after-told-notto-lean-on-mrt-pole.162530/.

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—. “Rising Trend of Sinkie Women Pairing up with Ah Tiong Men.” The Sammyboy Times, August 12, 2013, accessed May 21, 2020, https://www.sammyboy.com/ threads/rising-trend-of-sinkie-women-pairing-up-with-ah-tiong-men.159575/ Xiao, Suowei. “The “Second-Wife” Phenomenon and the Relational Construction of Class-Coded Masculinities in Contemporary China.” Men and Masculinities 14, no. 5 (2011): 607-627. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X11412171.

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When a Chinese does not speak Chinese Abstract This chapter analyses the online narratives of locals and migrants to argue that state constructions of ethnicity can become a site of contestation for people on the ground. It shows how Chinese migrants imagine SingaporeanChinese as “not Chinese enough” by deriding their weak Mandarin proficiency. In defence, Singaporean-Chinese claim Chinese migrants as “not Singaporean enough” by focusing on their “culture” of being loud and not queueing. Challenging extant studies on immigrant incorporation which take for granted host societies’ sense of belonging, this chapter reflects broadly on the unstable belonging of both migrants and hosts in this age of migration. Keywords: culture, language, internet, Mandarin, belonging

In 2012, the internet in Singapore erupted. In February, Sun Xu, a Chinese scholar funded by the Singaporean government wrote a Chinese blog post that read: “It’s so annoying to have gangster Singapore uncles stare at you when you bump into them. There are more dogs than humans here in Singapore.”1 His blog post was widely replicated on Singaporean websites and popular online forums. Singaporeans were outraged and went online to retaliate: a Facebook group called “NUS [education institute] should revoke Sun Xu’s scholarship” was set up and it gathered 3,580 “Likes”. The alternative news website Temasek Times’ article on the subject titled “China’s netizens rally behind Sun Xu and agree with him that Singaporeans are DOGS” garnered a total of 122 comments with a majority being hostile towards Chinese nationals.2 Some of the comments read: 1 “S’poreans outraged over PRC scholar’s ‘dog’ comment,” Clarence Chen, Yahoo! News, February 22, 2012, accessed on April 19, 2020 from https://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporescene/ poreans-outraged-over-prc-scholar-dog-072146916.html 2 “China’s netizens rally behind Sun Xu and agree with him that Singaporeans are ‘DOGS’!!!,” The Temasek Times, March 1, 2012, accessed on April 19, 2020 from https://temasektimes.wordpress.

Ang, Sylvia, Contesting Chineseness: Nationality, Class, Gender and New Chinese Migrants. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463722469_ch04

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Wow, with people in the PRC like that I’m so glad my ancestors decided to leave that hell hole. We are dogs, loyal dogs to our country. They are cockroaches, like pests of the world.

Less than one week after the Sun Xu saga, Chinese national Ares Lin who was studying in Singapore posted on Shichengwang, an online forum popular with Chinese migrants in Singapore. He was unhappy with a Singaporean over a staring incident and vented his anger on the forum: “Please be reminded Singaporeans, you are all descendants of Chinese and the Chinese blood flow in you. Don’t think you can be arrogant because you have transformed from ‘Chinese’ to ‘Singaporean’. You are nothing, not even a fart!” His post was replicated on several websites including Temasek Times;3 the article provoked a total of 146 comments including the following: Yes, I would agree that we Chinese Singaporeans are the descendants of Chinese from China … the only difference is that our ancestors are just smarter to pursue a new life in Singapore We are Singaporean Chinese, not China Chinese. That makes a world of difference. We don’t kill our own babies with fake milk powder … we don’t go to China to eat/live/study/shit for free, and then call you dogs. We’re civilized that way.

Singaporeans were not only reactive to Chinese migrants’ online retorts in 2012. In May, Singaporeans found their outlet to initiate online vitriol: a mainland Chinese driver in a US$1.4 million Ferrari had run a red-light and killed himself, a Singaporean-Chinese taxi-driver and his passenger in Singapore. 4 The Ferrari crash was recorded on video and went viral on Youtube, enraging many Singaporeans. One commented online, “They are com/2012/03/01/chinas-netizens-rally-behind-sun-xu-and-agree-with-him-that-singaporeansare-dogs/ 3 “Another PRC man after Sun Xu insults Singaporeans: You are not worth even a ‘fart’,” The Temasek Times, February 29, 2012, accessed on April 19, 2020 from https://temasektimes. wordpress.com/2012/02/29/another-prc-man-after-sun-xu-insults-singaporeans-you-are-notworth-even-a-fart/ 4 “In Singapore, Vitriol against Newcomers from Mainland China,” Andrew Jacobs, The New York Times, July 26, 2012, accessed on June 26, 2014 from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/ world/asia/in-singapore-vitriol-against-newcomers-from-mainland-china.html.

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everywhere, invade and pollute many countries. Many times just hate to stand beside them, run far far away, I am a Singaporean Chinese, don’t want people to mistaken me as one of their kind.”5 In November of the same year, tensions were fanned when 171 mainland Chinese bus drivers made history by holding Singapore’s first strike in twenty-five years. The mainlanders protested against welfare and wage differentials from drivers of other nationalities. Many Singaporeans were provoked: The Singapore government doesn’t want to admit it, but PRC immigrants and workers are NOT the same as ethnic Chinese population of Singapore whose ancestors came from China before 1949. Same race, but different characters. Singapore should just get rid of PRC workers.6

Over the span of my online research, I realized that the internet had become an important site for alternative voices in the tightly controlled state of Singapore. And it was online that the voices against new Chinese migrants as well as against Singaporean-Chinese were the loudest. While the online discourses may appear disparate, I realized over time that they were negotiations of what being Chinese meant: Chinese nationals were quick to point out that Singaporean-Chinese are also ethnic Chinese while Singaporean-Chinese were quick to point out that they were Singaporeans, not Chinese nationals. As I investigated further, I found that the issues of language and culture were at the heart of these antagonisms. This chapter will show that ethnic Chinese subjects’ social imaginaries of Chineseness are contingent and contested around issues of language and culture. It shows how Chinese migrants imagine Singaporean-Chinese as less Chinese by deriding their weak Mandarin proficiency. In defence, Singaporean-Chinese claim they are more Chinese than Chinese migrants through criticizing what they imagine as Chinese migrants’ bad culture. I analyze that both groups display issues of belonging: Chinese migrants imagine a homogeneous Chinese civilization while the Singaporean-Chinese show growing fissures along the lines of class, generation, and language. Challenging extant studies on immigrant incorporation which take for granted host societies’ sense of belonging, this chapter reflects broadly on the unstable belonging of both migrants and hosts in this age of migration. 5 “Fatal Accident: Ferrari Crashed into Comfort Taxi at Bugis,” YouTube video, (12 May 2012), accessed on August 3, 2014 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GywH2zccXDE 6 “Tan Chuan-Jin: No-show by SMRT’s Bus Drivers an ‘Illegal Strike’ – 27Nov2012,” 154thmedia2013, November 27, 2012, accessed on 5 June, 2018 from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=vkZyqzRov_8

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Chineseness as Mandarin Singapore is a multiracial country with four official languages: English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. English is Singapore’s working language and Malay is the symbolic “national” language. At the same time, Mandarin, Tamil and Malay took on the status of “mother tongue” or second language as it is mandatorily taught today as the language of each majority “race”: Chinese, Indian, and Malay respectively. The Singaporean-Chinese population is highly heterogeneous, but the Singaporean state forcibly unified them under the rubric of Mandarin. In so doing, the state achieved ease of administration, ethnic management and even created what it saw as a bulwark against Westernization. At the time of Singapore’s independence, the ethnic Chinese population used a large variety of languages such as the Chinese vernaculars of Teochew, Hokkien, Hakka and Hainanese; the use of which has diminished with the state’s annual Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC). The SMC was started from 1979 and still takes place. It exemplifies the state’s strategy to champion Mandarin as the anchor for cultural values for the Singaporean-Chinese population. The state marketed Mandarin as “emotionally acceptable”7 and as cultural capital; without which Chinese Singaporeans would apparently be socially fragmented, emotionally deprived and psychologically disengaged from their history and heritage.8 In the early years of Singapore’s independence, English was promoted as a modern language with significant economic value.9 The state framed the language as a pragmatic one that allowed the different ethnicities to communicate with each other while accessing the global economy.10 The state’s instrumental language policy then can be summed up as using Mandarin to fulfil the goal of identity and tradition for the Singaporean-Chinese population and using English to be economically competitive. As it turned out, English became associated with material wealth and educational success for many Singaporeans. Singaporeans have followed the state’s pragmatism in valuing the economic benefits more than the cultural. This has resulted in large numbers of Singaporeans being monolingual in

7 Lionel Wee and Wendy D. Bokhorst-Heng, “Language Policy and Nationalist Ideology: Statal Narratives in Singapore,” Multilingua, 24, No. 3(2005): 159-183. 8 Peter Teo, “Mandarinising Singapore: A Critical Analysis of Slogans in Singapore’s ‘Speak Mandarin’ Campaign,” Critical Discourse Studies 2, no. 2 (2005): 121-142. 9 Christopher Stroud and Lionel Wee, “Consuming Identities: Language Planning and Policy in Singaporean Late Modernity,” Language Policy 6, no. 2(2007): 253-279. 10 Ibid.

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English, many of whom are Singaporean-Chinese.11 English has also become the dominant language in many young Singaporean-Chinese families,12 despite the annual SMC and its increasing ferocity to emphasize Mandarin as key to China’s economy. There currently exist many Singaporean-Chinese who cannot, or will not, speak Mandarin, culminating even in a debate on whether English should become a mother tongue.13 Nevertheless, the SMC has persisted with the state’s growing intentions to access China. Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s longest-running Prime Minster, made it clear when he started the SMC that learning Chinese had cultural benefits as well as economic ones.14 His sentiments have been frequently reiterated since, including by Ong Teng Cheong, second deputy Prime Minister in 1985: “the economic value of Mandarin is increasing, particularly after China has started its economic transformation and adopted the open-door policy.”15 Most recently, in 2019, at the campaign’s 40th anniversary, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told Singaporean-Chinese to buck up as people all over the world are picking up Mandarin since “(t)hey all know that to work in China, to build relationships with the Chinese and to grab opportunities that come with China’s development, they have to master Mandarin”.16 The pressure on Singaporean-Chinese to speak Mandarin does not, however, come only from the state. Singaporean-Chinese’s weak Mandarin proficiency is popularly derided by Chinese migrants. This derision takes on greater magnitude online as can be seen from the comments below, sourced from Tianya Club. Tianya Club is ranked eighteenth in terms of popularity amongst websites in China and one of China’s largest online forums; it has 11 Stroud and Wee, “ Consuming Identities: Language Planning and Policy in Singaporean Late Modernity.” 12 “Can English be a Singaporean Mother Tongue?” Luke Lu, Today Online, July 15, 2013, accessed on June 24, 2015 from http://www.todayonline.com/commentary/can-english-be-singaporeanmother-tongue 13 Ibid. 14 “Singapore Has Almost Wiped Out its Mother Tongues,” The Economist, Feb 22, 2020, accessed on April 19, 2020 from https://www.economist.com/asia/2020/02/22/singapore-has-almostwiped-out-its-mother-tongues 15 “Speech by Mr Ong Teng Cheong Second Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary-General of NTUC at the Launch of The Speak Mandarin Campaign at The Singapore Conference Hall on 28 September 1985,” (n.d.), accessed on April 19, 2020 from https://www.languagecouncils.sg/ mandarin/ch/-/media/smc/documents/goh-dpm-ong-teng-cheong_smc-launch-speech_280985. pdf 16 “Speak Mandarin Campaign marks 40 Years: Singapore must Guard against Losing Bilingual Edge, says PM Lee Hsien Loong,” Tee Zhuo, The Straits Times, October 22, 2019, accessed on April 19, 2020 from https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/speak-mandarin-campaign-marks40-years-with-local-lexicon-pm-lee-hsien-loong-says

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more than 142 million registered users.17 Tianya Club has a large variety of sub forums catering to all kinds of topics including dedicated forums for China nationals in various countries such as Tianya Singapore. A search for “Singaporeans speak Chinese” on Tianya came up with seventy-five pages of results including threads titled “Why don’t Singaporean-Chinese speak Chinese?”, “Singapore, Shanghai, reveres the west but in different ways”. One forum thread was titled “Singapore: Speaking Mandarin in public is considered ‘low suzhi’, my God!”18 The thread replicated an article from a Mandarin Singaporean newspaper that discussed how some Singaporeans feel that speaking Mandarin in public displays one’s “low suzhi” (low quality). Three hundred and eighty comments were posted in response, some of which I replicate here: I wish Singaporeans will quit speaking Mandarin, they insult the English when they speak English, They insult the Chinese even more when they speak Mandarin. While both are insulting, as a Chinese patriot, I prefer that they insult the Americans and British … even the Singaporeans that originate from Mandarin-speaking families pretends to be bad at Mandarin and never speak it. They will even take pride in that … Why are they so proud of being monolingual? When it comes down to it, they can’t beat the British or Americans at English … their Singlish disgusts me. Well, I actually don’t have any expectations with regards to Singapore’s language use. Singapore is an independent country … The problem is when they claim they are “Chinese” but is ashamed of the Chinese language. They keep on emphasizing that they are “Chinese”, while proudly saying, “sorry, my Chinese is very bad leh [sic]” … I once saw a kid tell his mother in Singaporean Mandarin, “Mummy, I don’t know Chinese leh [sic]”. I was shocked.

Chinese migrants’ derision of Singaporean-Chinese Mandarin skills extends to the SMC in Singapore. The comments below originated from the online forum Shichengwang, a site dedicated to Chinese migrants living in Singapore. It has more than a million registered users and its “Lion City Reservoir” forum section alone, which features all kinds of discussions on 17 “Top Sites in China,” (n.d.), accessed on April 19, 2020 from https://www.alexa.com/topsites/ countries/CN 18 “zai xinjiapo de gongkongchangshuo jianghuawen jingranshi suzhidixia de biaoxian, MY GOD! (zhuanzai)” (Singapore: Speaking Mandarin in public is considered “low suzhi”, my God!). www. tianya.cn, April 13, 2009, accessed on July 7, 2015 from http://bbs.tianya.cn/post-funinfo-1432008-1. shtml

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Singapore, has nearly two hundred thousand threads and five million posts. It featured the thread titled “Singapore’s Speak Mandarin Campaign satire” where a user posted a satirical newspaper article on the Speak Mandarin Campaign.19 Discussion ensued to discuss the campaign’s success: The [Speak] Mandarin campaign may have been around for thirty years but it is in my personal opinion, a failure. You can try grabbing any young Singaporean-Chinese on the streets of Orchard Road [shopping district in Singapore] today and ask him or her to converse with you in Mandarin that is not mixed with English and dialects- I doubt few can fulfil your request. Even Mandarin college debates in Singapore send in students from China these days. Hahaha. Singapore’s Speak Mandarin Campaign – terrible standards. It’s either too eccentric or too pedantic. It is not lively at all.

Language is a site of struggle. As Desmond Wee noted, language does not only present “who we are” but also becomes a means for others to “project their assumptions on the way ‘we must be’ or the way ‘it is supposed to be’”.20 Through using language and specifically Mandarin as a benchmark, Chinese migrants place judgement on the Chinese Singaporeans who should know Mandarin; that it is the way it is supposed to be. The assumption is that ethnic Chinese must know Mandarin. To help us understand how ethnicity is linked to national belonging, social theorist Ghassan Hage suggested that “In the daily life of the nation, there are nationals who, on the basis of their class or gender or ethnicity, for example, practically feel and are made to feel to be more or less nationals than others”.21 Hage suggested that people can make nationality claims by placing value on the capacity of certain cultural possessions to be converted to “national cultural capital”.22 In this manner, people strive to accumulate 19 “xinjiapo jianghuayu yundong gaoxiaobaodao” (Singapore’s Speak Mandarin Campaign satire), terryliew, Sgcn.com, August 12, 2009, accessed July 7, 2015 from https://bbs.sgcn.com/ forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=10263497&highlight=%E6%96%B0%E5%8A%A0%E5%9D %A1%E8%AE%B2%E5%8D%8E%E8%AF%AD%E8%BF%90%E5%8A%A8%E6%90%9E%E 7%AC%91%E6%8A%A5%E5%AF%BC 20 Desmond Wee, “Singapore language enhancer: identity included.” Language and Intercultural Communication 9, no. 1 (2009): 15-23. 21 Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (New York and London: Routledge, 2012). 22 Ibid.

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practical national belonging. Importantly, one’s level of national belonging is dependent on the judgements and reactions of others. Those who are recognized as belonging can access in-group benefits as well as possess a more settled sense of identity.23 By submitting to the discourse of “Chinese is Mandarin”, Chinese migrants make claims to belonging through their fluency in Mandarin. They demonstrate that they have the right to judge who is more or less Chinese through the benchmark of language. However, rather than Singaporean national belonging, Chinese migrants’ claims of Chineseness are based on imaginaries of belonging to “ethnic Chinese” or in other words, a Chinese civilization; a point which I will elaborate in a later part of the chapter.

Other ways to be Chinese Migrants are not the only ones who desire belonging; nationals of a host society can desire and strive to accumulate belonging too. While Chinese migrants imagine Singaporean-Chinese as less Chinese, SingaporeanChinese have come up with a variety of defences to suggest that other than speaking Mandarin, one can be Chinese in other ways. On a blog popular for its political commentaries, My Singapore News blog, a blogpost titled “I am not PRC” discussed how some Singaporean-Chinese are offended by Chinese migrants who speak to them in Mandarin.24 Sixty-three comments were posted; I replicate two here: Excuse me, not all Chinese Singaporeans speak Mandarin fluently. We prefer to speak in English and are very comfortable with our Chinese identity. We don’t need Mandarin to make us more Chinese. There are countless Singaporean Chinese who do not speak Mandarin but speak their own dialects, Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hainanese, Hakka. But does it mean they are not Chinese just because they do not or do not choose to speak Mandarin? Some of these people are more Chinese than you seem to think. 23 Michael Skey, “‘A Sense of Where You Belong in the World’: National Belonging, Ontological Security and the Status of the Ethnic Majority in England,” Nations and Nationalism 16, no. 4(2010): 715-733. 24 “I am Not PRC”, My Singapore News, June 21, 2012, accessed on April 4, 2016 from http:// mysingaporenews.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/i-am-not-prc.html

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The topic of Singaporean-Chinese Mandarin proficiency is also a popular topic on other sites including All Singapore Stuff, a popular alternative news website. Its Facebook page has more than 450,000 likes and nearly 500,000 followers. One article was featured on its Facebook page, titled “Malay Abang [brother] told to learn Chinese because PRC waitress spoke no English”. There was a response of nearly four hundred comments, mostly berating Chinese migrants, including the following: Local Singaporeans have no problem communicating with one another despite difference race and language. Everyone picks up each other’s simple lingos as we grow up together and work together. Even we speak Rojak [mixed] mixture of Malay, Indian, dialect, Singlish and Mandarin we still understand each other. Why should we adjust to PRCs … I learned Chinese in school, but I don’t understand a thing coming out from PRC’s ass mouth Anyone who can’t speak simple English can’t work [as] frontline [staff] at all!! I’m a Singaporean Chinese and took Chinese as 2nd language but I don’t understand all these PRCs’ Chinese/ Mandarin still!! PRCs Chinese speak with tongue twirled n twisted with high pitch. Only PRCs understand their own breed!25

Singaporean-Chinese’s national belonging is deeply tied to Chineseness, and by state definition, Mandarin. Since Singaporean national identity cannot be disentangled from ethnicity (see Chapter One), Singaporean-Chinese with weak proficiency in Mandarin have resorted to claiming belonging in other ways. Singaporean-Chinese defend their weak Mandarin proficiency by suggesting speaking the language well does not equate to being Chinese. Other languages such as English, Chinese vernaculars (“dialects”) and even a Singaporean version of Mandarin (“I learned Chinese in school, but I don’t understand a thing coming out from PRC’s ass mouth”) are all taken to be better than mainland Chinese migrants’ Mandarin. The “we” in the first quote and “our” in the second quote are used metonymically to stand in for all Singaporean-Chinese, and not just the speakers and their immediate audience.26 This allows the speakers to position themselves as the default 25 “Malay Abang [brother] Told to Learn Chinese because PRC Waitress Spoke no English,” All Singapore Stuff, October 23, 2015, accessed on April 4, 2016 from https://m.facebook.com/ pg/allsgstuff/posts/ 26 Skey, “‘A Sense of Where You Belong in the World.’”

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category of “Singaporean-Chinese” who are entitled to pass judgement on the non-Singaporean-Chinese or Chinese migrant. As Michael Skey noted, such statements allow the speakers to make clear and secure their membership of the national community. This sense of entitlement is not assumed but “comes from ongoing processes of imagination, categorization and interaction.”27 The constant imagining and reworking of national belonging is in this case, intertwined with language. As the sociologist Loic Wacquant commented, “linguistic relations are always relations of power (rapports de force)”.28 Whether it is to be more Chinese or a different, better kind of Chinese, Mandarin has become the heart of the battle between mainland Chinese migrants and Singaporean-Chinese.

Fragmenting identities Even as Singaporean-Chinese vitriol against Chinese migrants may appear to present a united front, however, language may actually be fragmenting the Singaporean-Chinese population. By having to ceaselessly defend themselves against the charge of speaking “poor Mandarin” by Chinese migrants, Singaporean-Chinese have mostly taken up two stances: firstly, that there is a Singapore brand of Mandarin; and secondly, criticizing Chinese migrants for not being able to speak English. They are both, however, weak stances. A Singaporean style of Mandarin was not endorsed by the state, until very recently. The state in fact, used to openly call for “standardized” Mandarin use [read Mandarin as used on the mainland].29 Although the 27 Ibid., p. 725 28 Loic J. D. Wacquant, “Towards a Reflexive Sociology: A Workshop with Pierre Bourdieu,” Sociological Theory 7, no. 1(1989): 26-63. 29 I accessed the following posts from the SMC campaign on Facebook on 5 May 2015: the first stated “nimen ruguo wangle si guben, you wushibaxian de jihui Zhong sanwan. (If you forget to put out your parking coupon, there is a fifty percent chance you will be fined) Singapore Mandarin features many words loaned from other languages. This sentence as an example, would be gibberish to those in the wider Chinese-speaking world. How do you think this should be expressed in standard Mandarin?” The second stated “Haocai wode fangjian zai jiaodou, mei name chao. (Fortunately, my room is in the corner where it is not so noisy) Haocai and jiaodou are part of the local lexicon and mean ‘fortunately’ and ‘corner’ respectively. These words are rarely used in other Chinese-speaking regions or may mean completely different things there.” The posts have since been removed and excerpts of it are now on the SMC website (accessed 1 May 2020) which now states: “While Singapore Mandarin can play a useful role as an “identity marker”, it is just as important for users to know the differences between standard and colloquial usage,

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policy has since shifted, “standard” Mandarin is still listed on the SMC website to indicate that “(w)hile Singapore Mandarin can play a useful role as an ‘identity marker’, it is just as important for users to know the differences between standard and colloquial usage”.30 Moreover, there are indeed many Singaporean-Chinese who cannot or do not speak Mandarin, Singaporean style or not. This is especially true of younger generations who were raised in predominantly English-speaking environments; a result of parents responding to state education policies that privilege English as a lingua franca.31 This contrasts with many of the older generations who may have been schooled in a Mandarin-based curriculum before the 1980s (see Chapter One). Yet Singaporean-Chinese often end up in conflicting positions when it comes to using English as a defence against Chinese migrants. This can be seen from instances where Singaporean-Chinese who openly insist on speaking only English have been heavily condemned by fellow SingaporeanChinese. For instance, one Singaporean-Chinese posted on SG Forums a thread titled “I, a Singaporean Chinese refuse to speak Mandarin”.32 His post was quickly met with more than three hundred comments consisting mostly of backlash, with netizens crying out that they “feel sorry for his ancestors” and that he has lost his “roots”. There may be Singaporean-Chinese who are eager to declare they are a different kind of Chinese but many are still unable to escape state discourses that claim Mandarin equates to Chineseness. To demonize Singaporean-Chinese who only speak English, is however, not a new phenomenon. This is a revival of tensions reminiscent of that between the Chinese-schooled and English-schooled Singaporean-Chinese even before the state’s independence – where those who spoke only English were cast as rootless and immoral.33 Another line of tension also exists between Singaporean-Chinese who advocate Chinese vernaculars over Mandarin or even English. Many who still advocate Chinese vernaculars are likely to be from older generations or from the minority of families in Singapore that still use vernaculars. These Singaporean-Chinese resist state discourses that deviations from standard grammar or convention, and how Singapore Mandarin differs from the Mandarin used in other parts of the world. Not all examples here can be considered ‘errors’ … These examples will spur readers to reflect on the Mandarin used and heard in Singapore.” In 2015, this framing was not present. 30 “Tips for Mandarin,” (n.d.). Promote Mandarin Council, accessed on April 19, 2020 from https://www.languagecouncils.sg/mandarin/en/learning-resources/tips-for-mandarin 31 Lu, “Can English be a Singaporean mother tongue?” 32 “I, a Singaporean Chinese refuse to speak Mandarin,” Ranson, May 4, 2010, accessed on July 5 2015 from https://sgforums.com/forums/8/topics/398293/. The forum is now defunct though the thread can still be found 33 Kwok, “Chinese-educated Intellectuals in Singapore: Marginality, Memory and Modernity.”

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since the 1960s have used the SMC to both ban and discourage the use of vernaculars, in favour of Mandarin.34 Instead of equating Chineseness to Mandarin use, this group claims our “real” mother tongues are vernaculars. Language is intertwined with class in the Singaporean context. The link between households’ predominant use of English and material wealth in Singapore has resulted in dominant discourses that the better-educated and better-waged have strong English language skills.35 In other words, English is highly associated with both economic capital and elites in Singapore.36 On the flip side, the lower-educated and the lower-waged are often perceived as having weaker English language proficiency and thriving more on Chinese vernaculars or Mandarin. As such, Singaporean-Chinese who suggest mainland Chinese migrants should speak English instead of Mandarin perform the role of the seemingly better-educated and better-waged i.e. the higher class. This discourse places Mandarin speakers – mainland Chinese migrants and Mandarin-speaking Singaporeans – in the lower places of the class hierarchy. There is, however, a minority of Singaporean-Chinese who speak excellent, “standard” Mandarin, in contrast to creole Mandarin spoken by most. This is the result of an elitist education policy where the curriculum of a higher standard of Mandarin termed Higher Chinese is limited to only the top ten percent of Singaporean-Chinese students in Singapore.37 The state legitimated this elitist policy by arguing that each person has limited capacity for learning languages. As such, the “burden” of learning higher standards of Mandarin, which are closer to the standards in China, should be taken on only by selected students. It is thought that this elite group of bilingual students will become the next generation of cultural elites.38 However, class in the Singaporean context is not only regulated by language. Even as mainland Chinese migrants speak excellent Mandarin and even English, they are denied the top spots in the class hierarchy (see Chapter Two).

34 Wendy Bokhorst-Heng, “Singapore’s Speak Mandarin Campaign: Language ideological debates in the imagining of the nation,” Language Ideological Debates, (1999): 235-265. 35 Lu, “Can English be a Singaporean mother tongue?” 36 Rita Elaine Silver, “The Discourse of Linguistic Capital: Language and Economic Policy Planning in Singapore.” Language Policy 4, no. 1 (2005): 47-66. 37 Wee and Bokhorst-Heng, “Language Policy and Nationalist Ideology: Statal Narratives in Singapore.” 38 Ibid; Eugene K. B. Tan, “Re-engaging Chineseness: Political, Economic and Cultural Imperatives of Nation-building in Singapore,” The China Quarterly 175 (2003): 751-774.

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My Chinese culture is better than your Chinese culture Other than suggesting that one can be Chinese by speaking languages other than Mandarin, Singaporean-Chinese also accumulate national belonging by suggesting their culture is better than Chinese migrants’ culture. Below I present two comments: one accompanied a YouTube video, and another is a comment responding to the video. The video was posted by a SingaporeanChinese and sarcastically titled: “Chinese nationals: Singaporeans are too smelly, let’s support PAP [Singapore’s ruling party] to chase Singaporeans out of Singapore!”39 It replicated a news article in February 2012 which featured a Chinese migrant bus-driver accusing a Singaporean-Chinese couple of smelling and refusing to drive on until they either move away from him or leave the bus. A hundred and forty-five comments responded to the video, many of which were by Singaporean-Chinese who wrote the comments in Chinese. For those who hold PRC nationality currently, your ancestors are deformed mutants that were created during the Cultural Revolution. Your cultural genes have changed and you are no longer Chinese … There is no traditional Chinese culture in you but your ancestors’ hybrid culture. This is the reason why no matter where you go, you defecate and pee everywhere; create trouble and is a disgrace. In terms of nationality, you who hold the PRC passport are Chinese; in terms of ethnicity, you are not Chinese … no matter where we go, we are popular as we exhibit traditional Chinese cultural values. Please do not call yourselves Chinese as that will tarnish our ancestor’s reputation. You should just call yourself PRCian. China nationals have no culture. They dare to act this way on our land. Chinese women prostitutes and despicable Chinese men are just as bad. Curse. You should smell your armpits, it’s probably even more smelly than the ones you accuse, China national. No suzhi, look at yourself before speaking of others, China man.

39 “zhongguoren: xinjiaporen shizai taichou, chici Por Alien Party ba xinjiaporen zhuchu xinjiapo” (Chinese nationals: Singaporeans are too smelly, let’s support PAP (Singapore’s ruling party) to chase Singaporeans out of Singapore), Wendyneo, YouTube, Feb 6, 2012, accessed on April 19, 2020 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9fASeCOoPY&lc=578PbHkuIIr5qO2z044Wja i4K4mXQGJTTa6mDW6ivGs

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Chinese migrants’ “culture” is a hot topic on various forums including Sam’s Alfresco Coffee where a thread replicated a Facebook post that detailed a Singaporean’s encounter with a Chinese couple who apparently attacked him and his friend at a restaurant. The forum thread was titled “Citizen of Great China Teaches Rude Sinkie [Singaporean] Some Manners!” and consisted of more than fifty posts. I replicate two below: That really doesn’t look like 5000 years of history at all. ‘Behaving like beasts’ and ‘press them down with an iron f ist’ [emphasis added]. It looks more like a fledging nation and people who have yet to learn some manners, just like a toddler. Where on earth is the 5000 years of history and culture? PRC cultural revolution has destroyed the 5000 year history that belong to all Chinese race, luckily some Chinese took the culture overseas before they destroyed it. At best these commies [communists] has 50-60 years of commie [communist] culture.

Singaporean-Chinese imagine Chinese migrants have a culture that is “no longer Chinese”, not “traditional” and even having “no culture”. Good or traditional “Chinese” people are imagined by Singaporean-Chinese as well-behaved and have good “Chinese” culture and values, like themselves. By apparently not matching these imaginaries, Chinese migrants are rendered less or even not Chinese.

Civilizational or national belonging? Singapore-Chinese may see themselves as having more Chinese culture and are accordingly, more Chinese than Chinese nationals but Chinese nationals think otherwise. The following comments which were posted as a response to a YouTube video offered some insights as to how Chinese nationals imagine Singaporean-Chinese. As mentioned in the section above, the video was titled: “Chinese nationals: Singaporeans are too smelly, let’s support PAP [Singapore’s ruling party] to chase Singaporeans out of Singapore!” The creator of the video is a Singaporean-Chinese who wrote a Mandarin commentary that accompanied the video (replicated above: “You should just call yourself PRCian”). The Mandarin title, Mandarin video and the Mandarin commentary were intended for a Chinese audience and addressed specifically to Chinese nationals. Many of the comments

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that responded were posted in Chinese and judging by content, posted by Chinese nationals:40 I get angry hearing huaren [ethnic Chinese overseas] criticizing Chinese nationals! [Curse word]. Your ancestors were peasants … What’s wrong with mainlanders? Mainlanders received Olympic gold medals, put an astronaut into space, possess nuclear weapons, and are the world’s second biggest economy. Huaren would have perished without mainlanders! Zhongguoren [Chinese nationals] are working hard to make huaren become first in the world while some huaren can’t even speak Mandarin. Haha how dare you a banana express your opinion and grand theory, how embarrassing. Singaporeans = forever traitors Don’t forget where your ancestors came from. You say zhongguoren are dogs, your ancestors were zhongguoren. Based on the theory of evolution, you are a very very very small dog. Traitor dog

Chinese nationals’ comments reflect an imaginary of Chineseness which is conflated between ethnicity and nationality. In the comments, huaren (ethnic Chinese overseas) is mixed up with zhongguoren (Chinese nationals). Singaporean-Chinese who criticize Chinese nationals are accused of being “traitors” or “bananas”. “Banana” is used to refer to an ethnic Chinese (yellow-skinned) who is white inside (westernized). The term is used to describe people of Chinese descent who have abandoned their culture and/or language and is frequently invoked by Chinese migrants berating Singaporean-Chinese. We return to Ghassan Hage who commented that legal citizenship is insufficient for analyses of belonging, and where one can be more national than the other by accumulating practical national belonging.41 In the case of Chinese nationals, however, they appear to be accumulating a different kind of belonging: civilizational belonging. As Aihwa Ong observed in dominant constructions of Chinese fraternity especially among the ethnic Chinese overseas such as Singapore’s ex-Prime minister Lee Kuan Yew: tensions remain in distinguishing between the People’s Republic of China and ethnic Chinese 40 While it is hard to tell whether the comments by Chinese nationals are Chinese migrants in Singapore, I have chosen comments that reflect some knowledge of Singapore or Singaporeans. For more details on digital ethnography, please see Introduction. 41 Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society, 52.

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overseas.42 As Ong aptly noted, dominant discourses dictate that “if they [ethnic Chinese overseas] are not part of the mainland society, they are still an extension of China, as civilization [wenhua].”43 And as Lucian Pye reminded us, “China is not just another nation state in the family of nations” but “a civilization pretending to be a state.”44 From the comments shown, we see that Chinese nationals endorse China’s civilizational discourse where blood and descent make a huaren (ethnic Chinese overseas) no different from a zhongguoren (Chinese national); the two terms are not distinguished from each other. Chinese nationals appear unable to divorce from the cultural continuity that makes Chinese everywhere the same. Even as they highlight the difference of Singaporean-Chinese, their labels of “traitor” and “banana” show that Chinese migrants still see Singaporean-Chinese as an extension of Chinese civilization. It is because Chinese migrants consider Singaporean-Chinese as part of Chinese civilization that they judge that Singaporean-Chinese have betrayed their civilization.

Regulating the internet Alternative online imaginaries emerged at a time when political dissidence was on the rise in Singapore. It is no wonder that the Singapore state has stepped up on attempts to govern the internet. For instance, while the state’s tactic of using the law against dissidents was once exclusively applied to opposition politicians, it has since 2011 been used against bloggers and internet postings. In 2015, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong even went so far as to file a defamation suit against a local blogger. Ironically, the prime minister’s move increased publicity for the blogger who went on to fundraise for his fight against the prime minister. In a show of resistance, locals provided over a thousand donations raising funds of nearly US$50,000 in just five days. This anecdote is not merely demonstrative of the support locals have for a dissident blogger but also symbolic of alternative imaginaries where Singaporeans are increasingly resisting the authoritarian tactics of the state. There have also been instances of Chinese migrants who have been punished for their online activities. Returning to Sun Xu, the Chinese scholar 42 Aihwa Ong, “Chinese Modernities: Narratives of Nation and of Capitalism,” in Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism, ed. Donald M. Nonini and Aihwa Ong (United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis, 1997). 43 Ibid. 44 Lucian W. Pye, “Tiananmen and Chinese Political Culture: The Escalation of Confrontation from Moralizing to Revenge,” Asian Survey 30, no. 4 (1990):331-347.

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who called Singaporeans “dogs”, the immense media and local attention finally caused his scholarship to be partially revoked by his education institution. He was also fined a token sum. Another Chinese student Wang Peng Fei who made an online video parody of Singaporeans was expelled from his education institute over his “gross misconduct”. He also lost his student visa because of the video. 45 The Singaporean state has been attempting to further regulate the internet. Website licensing laws were introduced in 2015 to license websites that discuss Singapore news. The broad and vague clauses underlying the law created much fear and anxiety amongst locals. More recently, laws were made against fake news. The Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act was passed in 2019 and extends regulations to social media platforms such as Facebook and even private chat groups. 46 While the internet was full of alternative imaginaries at the time this research began, its content has been increasingly limited. Popular alternative news websites such as the States Times Review and The Real Singapore have already been shut down; the latter’s founders were even jailed for charges of deliberately sowing discord between Singaporeans and foreigners. 47 Alternative online views are now less prevalent and may even cease to exist with time.

Sanitized Chineseness Even as Singaporean-Chinese and Chinese migrants contest the meanings of Chineseness, they would still rather paint the picture of the Other as less Chinese than a lesser picture of Chineseness. Both groups euphemize Chinese culture where the less Chinese can be either the migrants who “pee and defecate everywhere” or the Singaporean-Chinese who cannot speak Mandarin. What is criticized is the Other’s version of Chineseness, not Chineseness itself. Both groups’ cultural defensiveness is actually in solidarity as they uphold a sanitized view of Chineseness. And it is because both groups hold sanitized views of Chineseness that both groups want to be Chinese or 45 “Student Apologizes for Video Parody of S’poreans,” Liyana, Yahoo! News, July 26, 2011, accessed on April 19, 2020 from https://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporescene/studentapologises-video-parody-poreans-051024905.html 46 “Singapore Fake News Law Polices Chats and Online Platforms,” Tessa Wong, BBC News, May 9, 2019, accessed on April 19, 2020 from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48196985 47 “The Real Singapore Trial: Co-founded Yang Kaiheng ‘Controlled Bulk of Ad Revenue Earnings’,” Pearl Lee, The Straits Times, June 25, 2016, accessed on April 19, 2020 from https://www. straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/co-founder-controlled-bulk-of-the-ad-revenue-earnings

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more Chinese than the other, albeit according to varying definitions. China’s ascent surely has much to do with neither group disavowing Chineseness. Exploring how Chinese nationals as well as Singaporean-Chinese imagine belonging fills an important gap in extant studies where questions of belonging are often only discussed in relation to migrants. By paying as much attention to the Singaporean-Chinese as well as migrants, this chapter has shown that the host society’s sense of belonging can be as unstable as migrants’. Singaporean-Chinese’s unstable national belonging has compelled them to strive to accumulate belonging. Their strive for national belonging, however, is highly dependent on the state’s definition of Chineseness: Mandarin. Chinese migrants capitalize on this discourse to render Singaporean-Chinese less Chinese. In their defence, Singaporean-Chinese have attempted to define Chineseness in other ways, suggesting that a Chinese can speak other languages including English, Chinese vernaculars and even a Singaporean style of Mandarin. This defence is, however, a weak one as it brings out fragmentation within the group, whether in terms of language, class or generation. Singaporean-Chinese have nonetheless found other ways to reposition themselves as more Chinese than Chinese migrants, specifically through painting themselves as having a better Chinese culture than Chinese migrants. Chinese nationals’ online narratives, however, show that their social imaginaries of Chinese culture are of a different scale. While SingaporeanChinese are striving for Chineseness as tied to belonging to the Singapore nation, Chinese nationals are accumulating belonging to Chinese civilization: a civilization they imagine to be founded on ethnic Chinese descent and which overrides national borders. In this case, as fluent Mandarin speakers originating from the motherland China, Chinese nationals judge Singaporean-Chinese as less or even not Chinese, as “bananas” and “traitors”. We were able to glimpse the contestation of social imaginaries of Chineseness in a tightly controlled state because of the once lively online sphere which has allowed strong and loud voices to emerge on Chinese language and culture. Whether one is more or less Chinese, however, such social imaginaries may be harder to locate as the internet becomes increasingly regulated over time.

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5

In the new Chinatown Abstract This chapter analyses how Chinatowns and their link to Chinese identity is imagined. Through a textured description of both the new and old Chinatowns, it explores Singaporean-Chinese imaginaries of a “new” Chinatown and how it is linked to racialization discourses. It shows that the racialization discourse is subtle and reinforced by the media as well as state structures inherited from the nation’s colonial past. Chinese migrants’ response of self-orientalisation adds to the complex rubric of racialization. This chapter offers a broader reflection of how racialization of migrants can be produced by the intersection of Chinese and global capital with local modernities. Keywords: Chinatown, racialization, self-orientalisation, Geylang, media, European imaginary

On a Saturday evening at around ten pm in March 2014, I stepped into Geylang after nearly five years of not having visited the area. Geylang is Singapore’s designated red-light district and also a food haven, a district where both sex and food are consumed. The district boasts of many renowned food stalls selling a variety of food including durian: a fruit well-loved by locals but which may not sit well with foreigners. Locals frequent the area, though women are often accompanied by males or large groups to avoid being mistaken for one of the many sex workers that walk the streets of Geylang. I was not prepared for what was to come. The busy, chaotic and heavily littered streets of Geylang were a far fetch from strait-laced Singapore. Business signboards written solely in Mandarin – an unusual sight in Singapore – peppered the pavements. Throngs of migrant workers (both Chinese and other nationalities) walked the streets, crossed the roads with no heed to traffic signals, squatted or sat on the pavements, puffed away on cigarettes with cans of Red Bull and talked loudly, many drunkenly in the overcrowded open-air coffee shops or Chinese restaurants. Nervous-looking young men plied their wares of contraband cigarettes, packets of what could be male enhancement

Ang, Sylvia, Contesting Chineseness: Nationality, Class, Gender and New Chinese Migrants. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463722469_ch05

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pills, sex toys, condoms and pornographic DVDs at street corners and on the pavements. It was a scene I had never seen before in Singapore. It seemed like all the laws of the state which everyone had to abide by in all other districts were flouted vehemently in Geylang. The ubiquitous signs of “no smoking except at designated places”, “no spitting”, “no littering”, and “no loitering” were nowhere to be seen, and practised by no one. While sex workers were once confined to the even-numbered alleyways, they now openly solicited customers on the main road, outside shops and at the bus stops.1 Walking past open-air coffee shops, I could see men in their forties and fifties with their arms around much younger women. Some men even had their shirts off, receiving head and shoulder massages in public. Along the main road, there was a makeshift market making a roaring trade of used goods which attracted large numbers of migrant workers who examined the goods in detail and bargained for lower prices. Geylang, in 2014, was exciting and vibrant. The then-Police Commissioner of Singapore described it as “lawless” and a “potential powder keg”.2 The Singaporean media soon picked up on this, leading to news articles which described the district as “vice town”3 where “women solicit openly in public”. 4 If Geylang, as my respondents tell me, is the new Chinatown, it was a vastly different kind of Chinatown and bears a stark contrast to the original Chinatown. The original Chinatown is marked by freshly painted shop-houses, strategically placed “Oriental” street furniture, and squeaky clean streets. Geylang’s dirty, dusty shop-houses are in disrepair, its trash bins overflowing and its streets thoroughly littered with drink cans, plastic bags, and spit. Whereas the original Chinatown district is perhaps too well maintained by a state eager to exploit the district’s touristic potential, Geylang appeared almost abandoned. The original Chinatown is the more “presentable” one, as one of my Singaporean-Chinese respondents claimed, and the one where 1 Sex workers traditionally keep to the even-numbered alleyways while the odd-numbered alleyways house mostly eateries. The even-numbered alleyways are on one side of the main road – Geylang Road – while the odd-numbered alleyways are on the other side. The numbering of alleyways was used in the earliest days of the state’s independence to administer street names. For more on street-naming, see Brenda SA Yeoh, “Street-naming and nation-building: toponymic inscriptions of nationhood in Singapore.” Area (1996): 298-307. 2 “Geylang, not Little India, a ‘Potential Powder Keg’,” Amanda Lee, Today Online, March 25, 2014, accessed on April 27, 2020, from https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/ geylang-not-little-india-potential-powder-keg 3 “Geylang was Never This ‘Lawless’,” Zaihan Mohamed Yusof, The New Paper, April 2, 2014, accessed on April 27, 2020 from https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/geylang-was-never-lawless 4 “MP Vows to Clean Up Rowdy Geylang,” Zul Othman, The New Paper, April 2, 2014, accessed on April 29, 2020 from http://news.asiaone.com/news/singapore/mp-vows-clean-rowdy-geylang

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she would prefer to bring tourists. The official state tourism brochures do not mention Geylang, which clearly defies the state’s preferred image of Singapore. Ironically, because Geylang is antithetical to the rest of squeakyclean Singapore, it was featured in unofficial tourism guides as an “open secret,” including in TIME magazine’s “Singapore: 10 things to do”.5 I returned to Geylang several times more including to meet my mainland Chinese respondent Bao and his friends for dinner at a Chinese restaurant serving their hometown cuisine (see Chapter Three). The restaurant was nearly as chaotic as the streets outside. Diners smoked, spat, drank and talked loudly in heavily-accented Mandarin and other languages unintelligible to me, both inside and outside the restaurant, despite Singapore’s restrictions on smoking and spitting in public. As more patrons arrived, the restaurant staff pulled out more tables and chairs, which spilled outside the restaurant and onto the sidewalk – another uncommon sight in Singapore where seats are usually restricted to designated areas. This restaurant was one of many that catered to mainland Chinese cuisine in Geylang. Like many others, it featured cuisine from Northeast China which is vastly different from Singaporean-Chinese cuisine; the latter is a fusion of Southeast Asian and southern Chinese cuisine. Geylang’s reputation as the city’s red-light district provided the incentive of cheap rent for start-up businesses such as this restaurant, for migrants looking for accommodation and for companies who rented apartments to serve as migrant dormitories. As the district filled with numerous Chinese businesses, Chinese migrants from all over the city-state also congregated in Geylang for a taste of home. While migrant workers may be the most visible in Geylang due to their large numbers, I could also see migrants from all walks of life patronising restaurants and supermarkets in the district, including families with children, couples and groups of students. According to my respondents and the media, Geylang is the new Chinatown. The reasons they gave were linked to what they perceived as the large presence of mainland Chinese businesses and migrants. On closer scrutiny, however, I found that narratives of Geylang as the new Chinatown were deeply tied to imaginaries of Chinese migrants as inassimilable. This chapter argues that how my respondents and the media construct Geylang as the new Chinatown is a subtle process of racialization. As I will show, my respondents and the media’s narratives echo British colonialists’ imaginaries of the Chinese arrivals in the 1800s, when Singapore was first established 5 “Singapore: 10 Things to Do,” Daven Wu, TIME, Sep 29, 2008, accessed on January 19 2015, from http://content.time.com/time/travel/cityguide/article/0,31489,1845806_1845592_1845748,00. html

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as a British trading post. The British racialized the Chinese, that is, they assigned meaning to the Chinese’s particular biological features. As a result, individuals who were categorized as “Chinese” in the 1800s were not only grossly generalized as possessing yellow skin and slanted eyes, the “Chinese” category also indicated filth, immorality and the imaginary that the Chinese can never assimilate. Just as the British used racialization as a means to justify their rule over “lesser” peoples, Singaporean-Chinese racialize Chinese migrants to show they are the better Chinese and justify their policing of Chinese migrants. Importantly, as this chapter will show, this racialization process is not a mere emulation of history but a product of the current intersection of Chinese capital with Singapore’s modernity. Rather than resist racialization, however, I show how Chinese migrants claim Geylang as their Chinatown.

Racialization and the politics of place The idea that Singaporean-Chinese can racialize mainland Chinese migrants may appear counter-intuitive since the two groups are of the same “race”. Yet previous studies document the racialization of people who look similar to the dominant or racializing group. For example, various scholars have argued that not all whiteness is equal, citing the racialization of the Irish in Britain6 and Jews in Europe.7 The British colonialists stereotyped “outsiders” as lazy, aggressive, violent, greedy, and sexually promiscuous in relation to multiple groups of people, including Jews, Indians, and “those who lurked uncomfortably near home”, such as the Irish, the British working class or women.8 For instance, the British were horrified upon the “discovery” of apparently uncivilized peoples who looked like them. After a trip to Ireland, one British man commented, I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along the hundred miles of horrible country. … But to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much, but these skins … are as white as ours.9 6 Mairtin Macan Ghaill, “The Irish in Britain: The Invisibility of Ethnicity and Anti-Irish Racism.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 26, no. 1(2010): 137-147. 7 Cynthia Levine-Rasky, “White Privilege: Jewish Women’s Writing and the Instability of Categories,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 7, no. 1 (2008): 51-66. 8 Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London: Routledge, 2007). 9 Luke Gibbons, “Race Against Time: Racial Discourse and Irish History.” Oxford Literary Review 13, no. 1(1991): 95-117.

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Colour, as can be seen, is not the only signif ier of exclusion/inclusion. Analyses that cannot see beyond colour risks obstructing deeper insights into issues of racialization, rendering the victims of racialization invisible. Racialization is also deeply tied to place. In the case of Singapore’s modernity – how it has modernized and is still modernizing – place is integral. The scarcity of space and associated resources is a source of constant anxiety reiterated by the state and Singaporeans.10 As such, the politics of place is real and heightened in the city-state. Moreover, one will find that colonial discourse dictating the racialization of place has persisted to this day, not just in Chinatown but also in districts such as “Little India” where South Asians congregate. Definitions of places, as we shall see below, can function to render certain presences transgressive as well as to justify racialization.11 In other words, the meaning of a place can be constructed as a result of racialization as well as facilitate racialization. At the same time, the meaning of places is constantly contested, interpreted, narrated, perceived, felt, understood and imagined,12 just like Geylang and the original Chinatown. As this chapter will show, the meaning of Geylang is a contested one and its construction as a new Chinatown is symbolic of the contestation of two different imaginaries of Chineseness. The politics of Geylang is also the politics of the nation. As the ground zero of Chinese capital and its resultant flows of migrants, Geylang epitomizes the confluence of immigration, Chineseness and Chinese capitalism. This is in contrast to the original Chinatown which has stagnated with its status as an oriental Disneyland.

The original Chinatown and the European imaginary The original Chinatown is today a touristy area. Popular streets such as Pagoda Lane are lined with boutiques selling items such as Thai silk and “oriental” artefacts that have little to do with Singaporean-Chinese lives. The shop-houses are newly restored and colourfully painted, though they no longer act as residential homes; high rental prices meant that only businesses can afford to occupy them. Large tourist coaches are parked all 10 Terence Chong, “Stepping Stone Singapore: The Cultural Politics of Anti-Immigrant Anxieties,” in Migration and Integration in Singapore: Policies and Practice, ed. Yap Mui Teng, Gillian Koh, and Debbie Soon (New York: Routledge, 2014). 11 Durrheim and Dixon, “The Role of Place and Metaphor in Racial Exclusion,” as Sites of Shifting Racialization,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 24, no. 3 (2001): 433-450. 12 Thomas F. Gieryn, “A Space for Place in Sociology.” Annual Review of Sociology, 26 (2000): 463-496.

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around Chinatown, including near the newly constructed food street that purport to sell Singapore’s best delicacies at tourist prices. These bright and shiny streets have little meaning for the average Singaporean-Chinese and one may ask, in fact, can Chinatown in a predominantly ethnic-Chinese country hold any meaning for the Singaporean-Chinese? Which brings us to the question: why does a country with a predominantly ethnic-Chinese population have a Chinatown? The original Chinatown in Singapore is deeply linked with the city-state’s history. It was the initial congregating spot for newly arrived Chinese in the nineteenth century and a place conjured by the colonial imaginary. In Singapore, colonial urban planning inscribed “Chineseness” in a specific location.13 Since 1891, soon after it was established as a British port, Singapore was divided into segregated quarters organized by “race”. This included a Chinese quarter near the Singapore River which subsequently became Chinatown.14 The British perceived the Chinese as filthy, immoral and corrupt; imaginaries which were supported through health surveys and by popular opinion. The presence of opium houses, gambling houses, and brothels in Chinatown reinforced these imaginaries. Essentially, the Chinatown landscape supported the construction of Chinese as a discrete racial category.15 The racialization of the Chinese and Chinatown segregated and organized the group vis-a-vis the colonialists’ interests, and this racialization was allowed to reproduce over time. Racialized discourses regarding the Chinese did not end with Singapore’s independence. Instead, the new Singaporean state appropriated British colonial structures and transformed them to suit its purposes.16 Racial ideology was institutionalized in state policies and through territorial arrangements. These arrangements inscribed the racial category “Chinese” both on the ground and in people’s imaginaries.17 It is the state’s appropriation of colonial structures that explains the continued existence of Singapore’s original Chinatown in a city that is predominantly “Chinese.” The current touristy Chinatown is a result of Singapore’s modernization. The Singaporean state did not always see the preservation of the original 13 Lily Kong and Brenda S. A. Yeoh, “Urban Conservation in Singapore: A Survey of State Policies and Popular Attitudes,” Urban Studies 31, no. 2(1994): 247-265. 14 Ibid., 18. 15 Brenda S. A. Yeoh and Lily Kong, “Singapore’s Chinatown: Nation Building and Heritage Tourism in a Multiracial City,” Localities 2(2012): 117-159. 16 Ibid. 17 Kay Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875-1980 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991).

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Chinatown as necessary. In the 1960s, the newly independent government administration saw Chinatown as unsanitary and old, countering the state’s vision of nation-building as a modernizing state.18 The state began to implement plans to “modernize” Chinatown. By the 1970s, many parts of the old Chinatown had been demolished to make room for high-rise apartments. But in the 1980s, the state changed tack and decided to preserve parts of old Singapore, including Chinatown.19 In particular, the state no longer viewed Chinatown as simply a residential district. Instead, it was approached as a landscape that reflected Singapore’s “distinct personality” and “historic past”.20 The call for conservation coincided with a decline in tourism 21 and the mounting fear that a modernizing Singapore was losing its “Asian values” to Westernization.22 Chinatown was conserved with a primary focus on its external built environment and staged shows rather than the lives of its residents. 23 Emphasis was placed on the architecture of the shop-houses, the street benches and other public facilities, and in the overall landscape. While the resurrection of Chinatown was initially framed as necessary to nationbuilding, the later stages of its development targeted the tourist’s gaze. In the 1990s, the project of revamping Chinatown was given to the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) instead of the National Heritage Board. Not unlike the colonialists, the state essentialized Chineseness and objectif ied it. The revamp included pagoda-like bus-stops, red lanterns, and magnificently lit temples. As such, Chineseness and Chinatown were effectively commoditized.24 What constitutes Chinatown for Singaporean-Chinese is quite different from what is popularly advertised to tourists. The heart of Chinatown, for many Singaporean-Chinese like myself, is People’s Park Complex. Ironically, until 2000, the complex was not included in the Singapore Tourism

18 Joan Henderson, “Attracting Tourists to Singapore’s Chinatown: A Case Study in Conservation and Promotion,” Tourism Management 21, no. 5(2000): 525-534. 19 Ibid. 20 Cited in Brenda SA Yeoh and Shirlena Huang, “The Conservation-Redevelopment Dilemma in Singapore: The Case of the Kampong Glam Historic District,” Cities 13, no. 6 (1996): 411-422. 21 Tou Chuang Chang, “Heritage as a Tourism Commodity: Traversing the Tourist SingaporeanChinese Divide,” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 18, no. 1(1997): 46-68. 22 Tou Chuang Chang and Brenda S. A. Yeoh, “‘New Asia – Singapore’: Communicating Local Cultures Through Global Tourism,” Geoforum 30, no. 2(1999): 101-115. 23 Ibid. 24 For criticisms on the commodification of Chinatown, see Singapore Heritage Society, (2000) Rethinking Chinatown and Heritage Conservation in Singapore. Singapore.

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Board’s plans for revitalizing Chinatown.25 Other than serving as residential apartments, People’s Park Complex has a large food centre where both older residents and locals congregate to chat over food and coffee. Singaporeans are staunch believers that the tenure of the vendor reflects the quality of food. As such, the food stalls that have been in People’s Park Complex for decades are considered some of the very best in Singapore, and older Singaporeans have fond memories of this food. In this way, Chinatown acts as a place of nostalgia and evokes a sense of community. However, such sentiments have diminished as vendors retire or pass away. What is left of the original Chinatown is highly dissociated from the community valued by the older generations. A study of the revitalized Chinatown in 1994, for instance, found that many younger locals see the area as “something ‘like an antique’, distinctively charming but impractical and unaffordable.26 Likewise, more than a few of my Singaporean-Chinese respondents commented that “only tourists go to Chinatown.” The newly arrived Chinese migrants in twenty-first century Singapore also do not buy into the state’s imposed imaginary of Chineseness in Chinatown. Their alternative imaginary can be seen in their choice to congregate outside of the original Chinatown, specifically in Geylang.

Geylang: The new Chinatown David is a forty-year-old Singapore-Chinese social worker. A confident man, he appeared to be very familiar with migrant workers. He was the first respondent who described Geylang as the new Chinatown to me: Me: Don’t the Chinese migrants go to niucheshui27 [Singapore’s original Chinatown]? David: That was a hundred or two hundred years ago. These days, only tourists go to niucheshui; the new Chinese migrants don’t. You won’t see Chinese nationals in niucheshui. The new Chinese immigrants go 25 Brenda S. A. Yeoh and Lily Kong, “Singapore’s Chinatown: Nation Building and Heritage Tourism in a Multiracial City,” Localities 2(2012): 117-159. 26 Brenda S. A. Yeoh and Lily Kong, “Reading Landscape Meanings: State Constructions and Lived Experiences in Singapore’s Chinatown,” Habitat International 18, no. 4 (1994): 17-35. 27 Niucheshui is the Mandarin title of the original Chinatown in Singapore. It literally translates as “Bullock Cart Water” – a reference to the olden days where bullock carts were used to fetch water. For more details see URA, (2016). “Chinatown”. Available at https://www.ura.gov.sg/uol/ conservation/conservation-xml.aspx?id=CNTWN

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to Geylang … It’s all the same … when you go to countries like America, it has its own Chinatown too. Nowadays, Singapore’s Chinatown is not in Chinatown anymore. It’s in Geylang … It’s a natural discourse. Our ancestors used to congregate at niucheshui when newly arrived. It is natural for people to be drawn towards their own social groups … Chinese migrants seek places with their own communities. You cannot force them to integrate with the locals. It’s difficult, immigrants will be immigrants.

David’s narrative echoed many online comments about Chinese migrants’ failure to assimilate. Below, I present two of these comments: the first is taken from a 17 May 2012 Facebook post by a Singaporean-Chinese titled “Of Ferraris, PRCs and Social Integration – Putting Things Into Perspective”. The post was shared publicly with more than three thousand “likes” and three thousand shares. Its popularity was also shown when it was quickly replicated on various popular local websites and internet forums. Supporters of the government … will cite the fact that Singapore is in fact a colony where our forefathers all came from China. Absolutely, but such comparisons cannot be made, for that was generations ago, and the Singaporean today is tremendously different from his ancestor … Comparing a PRC and a Singaporean is like comparing Hematite [Iron Ore] and Stainless Steel – we are all of the same element, but many times more refined … I have had the opportunity (or misfortune) to interact with PRCs on a regular basis. I stayed in Geylang for more than a year, where PRC prostitutes peppered the streets downstairs right outside my apartment; where women would quarrel at the top of their voices in the middle of the night, keeping me up, where men walk with their bellies exposed and chatter loudly. Where men stare at me walking my dog then proudly tell me: wochi gourou de [I eat dog meat]!28

The second quote was taken from an online commentator responding to a 17 May 2015 report in The New Paper on police arrests in Geylang (“71 nabbed in week-long Geylang ops”): Well done. Please keep up the good work. “Clear Slump [slum] Campaign” should be the Number 1 Priority to ensure Singaporeans live and work in 28 “Of Ferraris, PRCs and Social Integration – Putting Things Into Perspective,” [Facebook post] Hawk Cut Weis, 2012, accessed June 5, 2015 from facebook.com.

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safe environment. Wonder why so many “foreign Chinese Females” are able to get into Singapore and Moonlight in Clubs and Geylang? Why? Should our Immigration Control be tightened to eradicate such issues? It reflects badly on Singapore!29

As mentioned, Chinatown is an imaginary conceived by colonialists, and Chinatowns in the West are often portrayed by Westerners as either forms of discriminatory segregation or the inability of migrants to assimilate, essentially as Others.30 By relating America’s Chinatown to Singapore’s new Chinatown, David referred to Chinese migrants as people that cannot be “force[d] … to integrate with locals”. David made no distinction between Chinese migrants in a predominantly white country (America) and Chinese migrants in Singapore, the latter a state with a predominantly ethnic Chinese population. David seemed to suggest that Chinese migrants are as inassimilable in America as Singapore. Similarly, the online comments justif ied the argument that Singaporeans were “many times more ref ined” than Chinese migrants (“PRC”) by narrating his encounter with Chinese migrants in Geylang. Similar to David who suggested that “immigrants will be immigrants”, the online poster thought of Chinese migrants as inassimilable. The third quote referred to Geylang as a “slum”, indicating a segregation of Chinese migrants. The quote also associated the police arrests (in the news report) with “foreign Chinese females” in Geylang as illegal sex workers – a point the second quote also brought up. Geylang has long been associated with sex workers, but in recent years, Singaporeans have come to associate the area with Chinese sex workers in particular. A search for the keywords “Geylang” and “PRC” came up with two hundred threads on the popular online forum Sam’s Alfresco Coffee. The majority of these threads associated Chinese women with sex workers including threads titled “PRC prostitute given student pass by PAP (the ruling government)” and “19 year old PRC singer moon-lighting as freelance prostitute in Singapore?” The phenomenon of Geylang as the new Chinatown is inextricable from the image of Chinese sex workers. Certainly, Singaporean-Chinese imaginaries of Chinese migrant females as (illegal) 29 Wee (2015) “71 nabbed in week-long Geylang ops” [online comment] The New Paper, May 17, 2015, accessed on June 5, 2015 from facebook.com. 30 Kevin Scott Wong, “Chinatown: Conflicting Images, Contested Terrain,” Melus 20, no. 1(1995): 3-15; Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown.

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sex workers, as “violent and vulgar”31 and “aggressive”32 is reminiscent of colonialists’ imaginaries of the native woman as “immoral, degraded”33 and of “excessive” sexuality (also see Chapter Two).34 Chinatown is a creation of the European imaginary, and when Singaporean-Chinese place new Chinese migrants in Geylang and label Geylang as a new Chinatown, they reflect this colonialist imaginary. One could say the Singaporean-Chinese have simply taken a page from the state’s book. In the same way that the state appropriated the European imaginary for its own agenda, the Singaporean-Chinese have re-appropriated the European imaginary to differentiate themselves from the newly arrived Chinese. My respondents described Geylang using a racialized language that is also present in the media. In the next section, I analyse the media’s portrayal of Geylang as the new Chinatown and suggest that it is highly complicit in influencing and disseminating racialized images of Chinese migrants.

The media’s complicity The media both consumed and disseminated the notion that Geylang is the new Chinatown. An article in LianHeZaoBao – a local Mandarin newspaper – cited three pieces of evidence that Geylang was the new Chinatown: hotpot restaurants; mobile shops catering specifically to the Chinese, and Internet cafes.35 The computers in these cafes all offered the QQ application, an instant messaging web application particularly popular with the Chinese. The simplistic three-item list took an essentialist approach to Chineseness. This essentialism continued as the author associated Geylang with entrepreneurship and mercenariness. She stated, 31 “PRC girls in KTVs and Pubs”, SG Forums, April 1, 2010, accessed July 5, 2015 from http:// sgforums.com/forums/2155/topics/395205 32 “VIDEO: Two PRC ladies scolding Singaporean old lady selling flowers at Kwan Im Tong Temple”, Wandering China, February 2, 2010, accessed July 5, 2015 from www.wanderingchina.org/2010/02/02/ video-two-prc-ladies-scolding-singaporean-old-lady-selling-flowers-at-kwan-im-tong-temple 33 Kirsten Fischer, Suspect Relations: Sex, Race, and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002) 34 Sander L. Gilman, Difference and pathology: Stereotypes of sexuality, race and madness (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985); Fischer, Suspect Relations; Lola Young, Fear of the Dark: ‘Race’, Gender and Sexuality in the Cinema (London: Routledge, 1996). 35 “suiyueran nilaishunsuo yalong caishi zhenzheng tangrenjie?” (Is Geylang the real Chinatown?),” Zhao Wanyi, LianHeZaoBao, September 21, 2009.

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[In contrast to niucheshui], Geylang has a different atmosphere. Geylang has no history, culture nor does she bear the burden of memories … My deepest impression from interviewing people in Geylang is their sharpness to change – because change equates to business opportunities … The influx of Chinese migrant workers in the past few years have met with growing trends to fulfil their consumer needs – this has made outsiders see Geylang as a Chinatown. People in Geylang, however, see only the business laws of supply and demand.36

By contrast, she argued that the original Chinatown was gradually losing out due to the dying out of traditional trades. As Daniel Williams suggested, “Old implies authentic and original, creating a standard against which we measure the appropriateness of the new.”37 In this manner, Geylang and its association with mercenariness is held to the standard of the old, the original, and the authentic: a benchmark that Geylang necessarily fails to match; a signifier that it is the inferior one. Other media sources were more hostile in their connotations. For instance, The Straits Times, Singapore’s most-read newspaper, published an article on 30 March 2014, headlined “Step up safety in Geylang, say MPs, grassroots leaders”. The article provided the following quotes from an interview with a local politician: It is difficult for grassroots-driven initiatives to address these problems, he [Member of Parliament Edwin Tong] said. As the people who descend on Geylang do not live there or are foreign workers, mostly from China, “the police have to step up”, he added.

The politician associated crime with foreign workers and especially workers from China. He contrasted foreign workers to the “grass-roots” locals, the latter whom he insinuated would, as people who live there or are not foreign workers would respond to “grassroots-driven initiatives”. In this statement, locals are controllable elements, unlike the foreign workers, “mostly from China,” who are perceived as out of control and can only be controlled through police involvement. The racialization of Chinese workers here paralleled the colonialist rhetoric of the native that requires

36 Ibid. 37 Daniel R. Williams, “Leisure Identities, Globalization, and the Politics of Place,” Journal of Leisure Research 34, no. 4(2002): 351-352.

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discipline and control.38 For instance, Ann Stoler commented, “in colonial discourse, the ‘lower orders’ – be they servants, Indos, native mothers and/ or their native lovers – were the sources of sexual arousal, moral deviance, misguided reason, and the objects of control.”39 Joanne Sharp concurred, suggesting that races other than the Europeans were seen as more natural in their instincts, which was linked “to a perceived lack of control over the senses.”40 Sharp posited that Europeans used this perceived lack of control to justify rule over the natives. As a red light district, Geylang has always been known for criminal activity such as illegal street-based sex work and illegal gambling. However, some members of the media claim that the scale has increased dramatically with the rise in foreign workers. For example, The Newpaper published an article on 20 April 2014 headlined “How do you solve a problem as big as Geylang?” It reported the following: Previously, the sex workers in Geylang were mainly Malaysian, Indonesian, Thai and South Indian. But in the mid-1990s, others, like the Vietnamese and Chinese, joined their ranks … In 2007, some 5,400 foreign prostitutes were nabbed in Geylang – a 25 per cent increase from 2006. This coincided with a growing number of foreign workers as well as an overall expansion in the country’s population.

The report named the nationalities of these foreign sex workers and related their increase in number to the growth in the number of foreign workers. Indeed, prostitution as a “necessary evil” to meet the sexual needs of foreign workers is a common state rhetoric; the absence of which, is postulated, may cause local women to be in danger of sexual assault. 41 In this rhetoric, the foreign worker is depicted as a savage Other who as mentioned before in colonial discourse, is perceived as lacking control over their senses. The Other’s need for discipline was reiterated in the 30 March 2014 article “Step up safety in Geylang” (The Straits Times) which quoted a local politician: “Crowds of foreign workers from China can cause traffic jams when too

38 Elleke Boehmer, Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995). 39 Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire, p. 149 40 Joanne Sharp, Geographies of Postcolonialism (London: Sage, 2008). 41 “Public Morality in Sex Spaces,” Vanessa Ho, S/pores, May 27, 2013, accessed April 30, 2020 from https://s-pores.com/2013/05/public-morality-in-sex-spaces-vanessa-ho/

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many of them gather on the pavements and spill onto the roads. Residents have also complained about not feeling safe at night.” Though Geylang houses workers of other nationalities, this quote focused only on foreign workers from China. Negative reporting associating Geylang with crime rates and Chinese workers naturally led to heated attention from locals. In response to coverage on crime in Geylang such as one headlined “Ex-Cop: Geylang was never this ‘lawless’” that was subsequently shared on the news outlet’s Facebook page, 42 fifty-one comments were posted in response, some of which I replicate here: All because we allowed those mainland Chinese in. In the 80s & 90s, the area was dominated by the “civilized” gangster from Malaysia or Singapore who are more “cultured” than the unruly, immoral, without respect to rule of law and the uncouth PRC, period. Look at how the PRC behave and their CCP respond post MH370. If there’s any untoward involving the arrest of their people … Your guess is as good as mine and everyone … :)They don’t reason or logic with your statement or argument. They are boorish.

Though Geylang has always had crime, the media and locals associate the current crime with the increased numbers of Chinese migrant workers into the area. Similar to Durrheim and Dixon’s analysis of blacks on South African beaches, 43 Chinese migrants are portrayed as transgressive in Geylang. Juxtaposed this way, Chinese migrants are portrayed as racialized intruders who are out of place. The image of Geylang as the new Chinatown is one the media associates with immorality and criminality. This contrasted with the newspaper article from LianHeZaoBao exalting the traditions and history of the original Chinatown. In locals’ social imaginary, Geylang is the inferior ghetto to the historically and culturally rich Chinatown. This is concurred by my Singaporean-Chinese respondents such as Steven who claimed “[Geylang] lacks the culture or legacy.” Ben similarly claimed, “[Geylang] isn’t going to be the same as the old Chinatown. It has a different culture and identity to it. A red-light district it is known to be. And better to stay as that”. Egan similarly noted “Chinatown is about culture. Can’t associate 42 “Geylang was never this ‘lawless’,” Zaihan Mohamed Yusof, The New Paper, April 3, 2014, accessed on April 27, 2020 from https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/geylang-was-never-lawless 43 Durrheim and Dixon, “The Role of Place and Metaphor in Racial Exclusion,” 448.

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any culture with Geylang.” The discourse is a subtle one but nevertheless suggested the inferiority of Geylang and its resident Chinese migrants. Further, by depicting Geylang as lawless and its resident Chinese migrants as racialized intruders, the media and accompanying commentators justified their positions as the dominant class and their calls to regulate and police the district and Chinese migrants. The increased police arrests in Geylang (as seen in the various news reports shown in this article) are arguably the result of successful racialization. At the same time, this discourse allowed the dominant group (locals) to produce difference between an otherwise outwardly indistinguishable “us” and “them”. How do Chinese migrants react to such racialization? In the next section, I suggest that Chinese migrants embrace the idea of Geylang as the new Chinatown by engaging in a discourse of self-orientalisation.

Chinese migrants react: Self Orientalisation Instead of resisting racialization, Chinese migrants have embraced the idea of Geylang as the new Chinatown. None of my Chinese respondents appeared bothered that Geylang had earned the label of the new Chinatown and did not find it an issue worth commenting about. Many even agreed that it was true. The Mandarin newspaper article (LianHeZaoBao) that discussed Geylang as the new Chinatown in 2009 had in fact been replicated and reproduced by many websites in China, several of which included the commentaries of Chinese migrants who reside in Singapore. All of these websites reproduced the news of Geylang as the new Chinatown with more than a tinge of pride, claiming Geylang as the Chinatown that is “alive” (huozhe de tangrenjie).44 This is deliberately dichotomized against the original Chinatown which is framed as “dead” – for its lack of people and a lively atmosphere. The articles were not afraid to point out that Geylang is filled mostly with Chinese migrants with limited economic capabilities such as labourers and students. As underdogs, these Chinese migrants are painted 44 “xinjiapo yalong bianbu zhongcandian huarenyiminchichu guishuga” (Singapore Geylang’s Chinese food stores help new Chinese migrants feel a sense of belonging), Zhou Yanbing, zhongguoxinwenwang, June 25, 2013, accessed June 5, 2015 from http://roll.sohu.com/20130625/ n379814463.shtml; “Chinese nationals in Singapore’s redlight district,” shikwangfeichun, xijiapo wentiguan, 12 June, 2010, accessed June 5, 2015 from https://www.sginsight.com/xjp/index. php?id=4796; (2010) “zhongguoren daoguowai yibandouyaoxun Chinatown” (Chinese nationals abroad seek Chinatown), Beibaotu, 2010, accessed June 5, 2015 from http://bbs.beibaotu.com/ thread-180667-1-1.html (now defunct)

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as the source of liveliness in Geylang, distinguishing Geylang from the “cold, lifeless lavish housing estates” that mark other districts of the Singapore landscape.45 Chinese migrants appear to be engaged in a self-Orientalizing discourse. As Arif Dirlik reminds us, cultural essentialism is at the heart of Edward Said’s thesis on Orientalism. Yet this cultural essentialism (of the Orient) does not only come from Euro-Americans; the Orientalized are also complicit in the discourse. 46 For Chinese migrants, their complicity is in essentializing themselves and their national culture. In this case, Chinese migrants do not take offence at being racialized and “assigned” to a new Chinatown. Instead, they facilitate this racialization by embracing the idea that they do belong to the new Chinatown. By embracing the new Chinatown, Chinese migrants are complicit in allowing the essentialization and homogenization of Chinese migrants which disguise differences amongst Chinese migrants, including differences in class and gender. Aihwa Ong, in her seminal work on flexible citizenship, similarly argued that migrants engage in “self-orientalisation” by manipulating popular discourses of Chinese transnationals “as thoroughly modern and yet authentically moral carriers of a ‘kinder, gentler’ form of globalization”. 47 She suggested that Chinese migrants use self-orientalisation to evade discriminations and garner acceptance in the host country. Scholars such as Pál Nyíri have also suggested that state-sponsored discourses construct Chinese migration as patriotic acts.48 Chinese elites are framed as spreading status and achievements abroad through business investments, diplomacy and international dialogues. 49 Ordinary Chinese migrants are lauded for working abroad in development projects and trade through discourses that suggest they help export “modernization” to “developing countries”.50 Pál Nyíri’s observations echoed the rhetoric of my Chinese migrant participants, especially of white-collar professions. They frequently commented 45 Zhou, “xinjiapo yalong bianbu.” 46 Arif Dirlik. “Chinese History and the Question of Orientalism,” History and Theory 35, No. 4 (1996): 96 -118. 47 Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999). 48 Pál Nyíri, “From Class Enemies to Patriots: Overseas Chinese and Emigration Policy and Discourse in the People’s Republic of China.” Globalizing Chinese Migration: Trends in Europe and Asia (2002): 208-241. 49 Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho and David Ley, “‘Middling’ Chinese Returnees or New Immigrants from Canada? The Ambiguity of Return Migration and Countervailing Claims to Modernity,” Asian Studies Review 38, no. 1(2014): 36-52. 50 Pál Nyíri, “The Yellow Man’s Burden: Chinese Migrants on a Civilizing Mission,” The China Journal, no. 56 (2006): 83-106.

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on Singapore’s “backwardness”, that “Singapore is like an olden-day China”, that “I thought Singapore was first-world and will be highly developed, but it turned out otherwise”. Such statements legitimate their Chinese patriotism in spreading their expertise and indeed “modernization” to a “backward” Singapore. My low-wage Chinese migrant respondents, on the other hand, usurp orientalisation of Chinese diligence in their rhetoric while simultaneously parroting the Singapore state’s justification of open immigration policies: “we are doing the jobs Singaporeans won’t do”, “without us, Singapore will collapse”. Chinese migrants self-orientalize for a variety of reasons. In maintaining their difference, Chinese migrants maintain their Chineseness. Many of my Chinese respondents conceive of Chineseness as inextricable from being citizens of China; they do not distinguish an ethnic sense of Chineseness from the civilizational or nationalist sense of being Chinese. For many Chinese migrants, Chinese ethnicity, Chinese civilization and Chinese nationality are one and the same. Until their arrival in Singapore, many did not recognize the meaning of “huaren” (ethnic Chinese overseas). Their imaginaries are shaped by a history and imaginary of China as the Middle Kingdom (“zhongguo”) where China is deemed central to the world. This contrasts with Singaporean-Chinese’s imaginaries of Chineseness which stem mostly from a history of escaping from poverty in China, colonialism and state-sanctioned ethnic policies. In self-Orientalizing, Chinese migrants maintain their Chineseness (the kinder, livelier version) as separate from the Chineseness of locals (the colder, lifeless version). This is complicit with many Chinese migrants’ claims that they will eventually return to their “motherland”, regardless of the number of years spent in Singapore. In other words, self-orientalism maintained their Chineseness in a global economy where being a Chinese citizen is social, cultural and symbolic capital. By claiming to prefer Geylang’s liveliness over the surrounding Singapore’s lavishness, Chinese migrants construct themselves as moral carriers of a kinder, gentler form of globalization.51 There are, however, consequences to self-orientalisation since it can help to maintain and even consolidate existing power structures.52 As mentioned earlier, self-orientalisation masks differences in class and gender amongst Chinese migrants. This is particularly relevant to low-wage Chinese migrants, whose self-orientalisation facilitates the state’s justification for importing disposable Chinese labourers. Higher-wage Chinese migrants may 51 Ong, Flexible Citizenship. 52 Dirlik, “Chinese History and the Question of Orientalism.”

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have no or less problems with claiming belonging in Geylang but low-wage Chinese migrants have to endure poor, overcrowded living conditions in old shop houses in the district. My low-wage respondents regularly tolerate bedbugs and unsanitary conditions in their accommodation in Geylang. Chinese migrants’ complicity in self-orientalisation does not, however, mean that Singaporean-Chinese’s power is all-encompassing. As Homi Bhabha in his study of colonialism tells us, colonial power is not absolute but ambivalent and anxious.53 I show, in the next section, that this is indeed the case for Singaporean-Chinese residing in Geylang. I suggest that even as locals racialize Chinese workers, their power is an unstable one. Both the congregation of Chinese migrants in Geylang and locals’ construction of Geylang as the new Chinatown has led to locals’ displacement.

Locals’ displacement Chinatowns cannot be read in isolation from the global circulation of capital, and importantly Chinese capital. Many Chinese construction workers were brought to Singapore by Chinese construction companies operating in Singapore, including Chinese state-owned enterprises.54 It is in the thick of Chinese capitalism alongside Singapore’s bustling economy that has enabled the inflows of large numbers of Chinese migrants to work as well as start businesses in Singapore. And it is as much the collision of Chinese capitalism with the political circuits of the state that has created this racialization – a political circuit where labour is imported with racialized, classed and gendered logics. Indeed, the bulk of migrant labour in Singapore comprises low-wage workers who are regulated by gender – only women can be domestic workers and only men can be construction workers – as well as “race” and/or nationality: construction and marine workers come traditionally from South Asia and more recently, from China. Indeed, it is all the reasons above as well as more that has seen this racialization manifest in Geylang. This includes the state’s capitalist logic to import large numbers of low-cost Chinese labourers to do work shunned by locals; low-wage Chinese migrants’ need for cheap rents influencing their decision to live in Geylang; 53 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Psychology Press, 1994) 54 “The Exploitation of Migrant Chinese Construction Workers in Singapore,” Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (H.O.M.E.), 2011, accessed on April 27, 2020 from https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a12725612abd96b9c737354/t/5a1fe5b2652dead776d 5f784/1512039868432/Report_the-exploitation-of-migrant-chinese-construction-workers-insingapore.pdf

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and the legal sex trade in Geylang that the state sees as a necessary evil to meet foreign labourers’ sexual needs. As a result, the presence of large numbers of Chinese migrants, visibly concentrated in Geylang, has invoked the bane of ethnic proximity where Chinese-Singaporeans have sought to differentiate themselves from Chinese migrants. While Chinese capitalist circuits have created the possibilities for fluid (human) capital flows, the political circuits of the nation-state regulate this flow in its enactment of borders and in deciding what kinds of migrants it wants. Though the state can regulate its international borders to admit or deny entry to migrants, locals living in districts such as Geylang do not have a similar privilege. For locals who do not reside in Geylang but visit for work and play, the new Chinatown may bring some annoyances. But locals who have lived in Geylang for some time may have greater troubles with Geylang’s label as the new Chinatown. As Doreen Massey argued, the assumption of place as identified with a single community does not match people’s different senses of place.55 Geylang is a place with multiple identities. In the land-scarce city-state, Geylang to the state and locals, is the official red-light district, a residential district as well as a business district; to migrants, a dormitory area; to Chinese entrepreneurs, a place for business. Problems arise when Geylang’s multiple identities and heterogeneous uses occur in overlapping spaces. For instance, while the sex trades were once confined to the even-number alleyways in Geylang, sex workers now occupy the main roads, public areas, and residential zones. The increased numbers of both Chinese migrants and migrants of other nationalities into the area’s cheaply rented dormitories and other housing has overcrowded Geylang’s traditional facilities and public space. This overcrowding, coupled with locals’ and media’s construction of Geylang as the new Chinatown, has displaced locals. Locals’ displacement occurred at two levels. First, on a physical level, locals now avoid the area or restrict their movements in the area. Locals and residents now say they don’t “feel safe” in Geylang. Second, locals have been displaced in their social imaginary of power. Doreen Massey argues that mobilities are caught up in the power geometries of everyday life.56 While the average Chinese migrant may be less powerful than a Singaporean citizen on a daily basis, this is not true in Geylang. The power geometry tilts such that migrants can appear more powerful. 55 Doreen Massey, Space, Place, and Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). 56 Ibid., 149.

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Due to the myth of migrants’ transience, migrants are perceived as mobile and able to come and go any time in and out of the chaos that is Geylang. As Paul Van der Veer argues, It does not matter how long these groups in fact have been present on the soil; they continue to be migrants and thus fulfil the need for outsiders in the formation of a national identity. This can be called the myth of migrants’ ‘transience’, both in time and in space – a quality that makes them simultaneously marginal and threatening.57

By contrast, locals who feel forced to remain in their homes are rendered immobile. In short, Geylang can be imagined to reflect the mobility of migrants while intensifying the immobility of locals. Locals’ immobility is reinforced by their lack of power/capital in relation to Chinese capital flows and the political circuits of the nation-state. They are at the receiving end of this intersection and effectively imprisoned by it. This “immobility’ renders the locals powerless against migrants’ “intrusions”. However, locals have not accepted displacement as their fate. Racialization may not have immediately released locals from the continued congregation of Chinese migrants in Geylang but it has led to the justification for policing Chinese migrants. As discussed earlier, police presence has increased in Geylang. The Member of Parliament in charge of the district has also taken it upon herself to “clean up” Geylang: organizing walks and parties as well as setting up CCTVs and additional lighting to reclaim the space.58 However, there are competing interests at work in Geylang. Businesses owners are not in a hurry for the Chinese migrants to leave. For the numerous Internet cafes, bars and restaurants targeting Chinese migrants, a second Chinatown is good business; a symbiotic relationship between flows of human and economic capital.

Two Chinatowns, two imaginaries of Chineseness This chapter has shown that the seemingly innocuous construction of Geylang as a new Chinatown veils a discourse of racialization. My respondents 57 Peter van der Veer, ed. Nation and migration: The Politics of Space in the South Asian Diaspora (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). 58 Othman, “MP Vows to Clean Up Rowdy Geylang,”

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and the media’s construction of Geylang as the new Chinatown is deeply linked to imaginaries of Chinese migrants as inassimilable. Their imaginaries echo British colonialists’ imaginaries of the Chinese arrivals in the 1800s. The constructions of Others is closely related to constructions of places.59 The British associated the Chinese and Chinatown in the 1800s with immorality and filth, and saw the group as inassimilable. In the case of Geylang, although it has been for decades the state’s red-light district with attached vices,60 it is now constructed as even more immoral and lawless due to the large presence of Chinese migrants. The Singaporean-Chinese construction of Geylang as the new Chinatown is intimately linked to their construction of Chinese migrants as Others. They imply that the immorality and lawlessness in Geylang fits the immorality and lawlessness of Chinese migrants. At the same time, Chinese migrants participate in these racialization discourses by self-orientalizing. While self-orientalizing acts as an accumulation of social, cultural and symbolic capital for the Chinese migrant, it also consolidates existing power structures. However, Singaporean-Chinese have not only emulated the colonialists in racializing Chinese migrants in the new Chinatown of Geylang. Geylang is the ground zero of Chinese capital and this capital has intersected with Singapore’s modernity to conjure this particular racialization at this particular time. Although Geylang and the original Chinatown are both Chinatowns, they manifest as the antithesis of each other – as the difference in social imaginaries of Chineseness. As mentioned, Chinatowns are the result of Orientalism. The new Chinatown is thus as much a result of Orientalism as the old one; the difference being while the original Chinatown was conjured by the British colonialists, the new Chinatown is conjured by ethnically similar Singaporean-Chinese. Just as the British used racialization as a means to justify their rule over “lesser” peoples, Singaporean-Chinese racialize Chinese migrants to show they are the better Chinese and justify their policing of Chinese migrants. Racialization has facilitated the policing of Chinese migrant workers and have had positive results for locals. Since 2016, my visits to Geylang have found it quiet and desolate. Compared to 2014 when I first did my fieldwork, there were far fewer sex workers and even fewer migrant workers in sight. Despite the quiet, on a weekend night in 2016, I witnessed a group of six policemen on patrol in Geylang. 59 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978). 60 “Urban Systems Studies: Planning for a Secure City,” Centre for Liveable Cities Singapore, 2019, accessed on April 27, 2020 from https://www.clc.gov.sg/docs/default-source/urban-systemsstudies/uss-planning-for-a-secure-city.pdf

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Singaporean-Chinese’s imaginaries of mainland Chinese migrants as inassimilable and a different, lesser kind of Chinese have resulted in racialization and its very real consequences. Geylang residents may indeed have reclaimed their Geylang, even as that reclamation and its associated lack of migrant workers signalled a slowing economy and the increased vulnerability of local jobs and wages.

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Conclusion: A hierarchy of Chineseness Abstract The Conclusion reflects on the COVID-19 pandemic and how it illuminated China’s centrality to the rest of the world. It revisits the questions raised in the preceding chapters to reflect on the book’s implications for how we understand ethnic Chinese subjects’ experiences of nationality, gender and class today in an era of China’s ascent. Through these reflections, the Conclusion ends with a discussion of how the book’s approach provides deep insights into the imaginaries and limits of ethnicity. These insights enrich understanding of an increasingly mobile and diverse world. Keywords: pandemic, COVID-19, hierarchy of Chineseness, coconstitution, contesting Chineseness

In June 2020, I made my way back to Australia from Singapore amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Like everyone around the world, I was concerned about contracting the virus. But there was something else I was anxious about even whilst planning my return to Australia. I was worried about racism. Since COVID-19 hit Wuhan, China in December 2019 and subsequently moved to infect people all over the world, anti-Chinese and anti-Asian racism has erupted. In the U.S, President Donald Trump called the corona virus “the Chinese virus”.1 Unprecedented numbers of Asian-Americans reported verbal and physical abuse including an Asian-American middle schooler in Los Angeles who was hospitalized from being beaten by students who claimed he had the coronavirus.2 In Australia, Chinese Australians have also reported facing increased hostility since the COVID-19 outbreak including 1 “Asian Americans Report Over 650 Racist Acts Over Last Week, New Data Says,” Caitlin Yoshiko Kandil, NBC News, March 26, 2020, accessed on May 10, 2020 from https://www.nbcnews. com/news/asian-america/asian-americans-report-nearly-500-racist-acts-over-last-week-n1169821 2 Ibid.; “OFFICIAL CORRECTED – Fake Flyers and Face-Mask Fear: California Fights Coronavirus Discrimination,” Andrew Hay and Maria Caspani, Thomas Reuters Foundation, February 14, 2020, accessed on May 10, 2020 from https://news.trust.org/item/20200214225344-4d4x6

Ang, Sylvia, Contesting Chineseness: Nationality, Class, Gender and New Chinese Migrants. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463722469_concl

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one family’s home being vandalized with racial slurs.3 I felt especially vulnerable with my Asian/Chinese face, knowing that Singaporean-Chinese have been targeted overseas over the virus. In London, a Singaporean-Chinese student was attacked by a group of strangers who shouted “I don’t want your coronavirus in my country”.4 In Melbourne, Australia, a Singaporean student and her Malaysian friend were physically assaulted when they responded to the perpetrators’ taunts of “coronavirus” and “go back to China”.5 Ironically, these attacks surfaced during a time when in Singapore, Singaporeans’ behaviour echoes white racists in the rest of the world: an online petition urging the Singaporean government to ban travel from China gathered 125,000 signatures.6 Mainland Chinese businesses and Chinese nationals have reported being shunned and the latter even verbally abused in Singapore.7 It was not long before racism found me. Upon my return to Australia, I joined my partner in the small regional town he lives in. Located along the coast of the Southern Ocean, the town is very scenic but also lacks the population diversity bigger cities such as Melbourne have. Other than the tourists from all over the world who visit during peak periods, my partner and I counted approximately thirty people of non-white backgrounds living in the town, including ourselves. It is easy to imagine how much I stuck out as a sore thumb when I came to the town that I did not previously live in, and at a time where there were no tourists to hide my presence. It was perhaps no surprise then that my partner and I soon encountered a ‘white’ woman in the supermarket who 3 “‘This is racism’: Chinese-Australians Say They’ve Faced Increased Hostiltiy Since the Coronavirus Outbreak Began,” Evan Young, SBS News, January 31, 2020, accessed on May 10, 2020 from https://www.sbs.com.au/news/this-is-racism-chinese-australians-say-they-vefaced-increased-hostility-since-the-coronavirus-outbreak-began; “Chinese-Australian Family Targeted Over Coronavirus Receives Outpouring of Support,” Jason Fang and Samuel Yang, ABC News, April 23, 2020 accessed on May 10, 2020 from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-23/ chinese-australian-family-racist-coronavirus-racist-attack-speak/12178884 4 “More Shock Than Anger: S’porean Student Opens Up About Covid-19 Racist Attack in London,” Jean Lau, The Straits Times, March 7, 2020, accessed on May 10, 2020 from https:// www.straitstimes.com/singapore/singaporean-student-in-london-seeks-eyewitnesses-aftercoronavirus-related-taunt-and 5 “Singaporean Student and Friend Hurt in Racist Attack in Melbourne,” David Sun, The Straits Times, April 20, 2020, accessed on May 10, 2020 from https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ singaporean-student-and-friend-hurt-in-racist-attack-in-melbourne 6 Ibid. 7 “Some Chinese Workers, Businesses in Singapore Shunned Amid Fear and Anxiety Over Covid-19,” Mandy Lee and Lena Loke, Today Online, February 19, 2020, accessed on May 10, 2020 from https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/some-chinese-workers-businesses-singaporeshunned-amid-fear-and-anxiety-over-covid-19

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commented in a mocking tone as she walked by us, “Where did these two come from?” There was only one message underlying her comment, just like the other racists I have encountered over my decade spent in Australia, “you don’t belong.” My partner, who has been living in the town for more than two years, has thus far only encountered covert racism. He could have passed off as Chinese but has an ostensibly non-Chinese name which has so far merely caused him to suffer as an unwilling representative of all things Asian. He is frequently forced into corners by ‘white’ colleagues’ complaining about Chinese tourists, Chinese people and Chinese products. The overt racism we encountered at the supermarket was a first for him in the town. It reminded him forcibly of the limits of his nationality as an Asian Australian with a Chinese-looking face. The pandemic has many lessons for my partner and for us. China’s issues do not only affect Chinese nationals; they also affect ethnic Chinese overseas and even just people who look Chinese all over the world. The pandemic highlighted the importance of the nation and its borders by forcing states to close national borders; but it also illuminated the limits of nationality for ethnic Chinese overseas. Ethnic Chinese overseas such as SingaporeanChinese may attempt to differentiate themselves from Chinese migrants through their nationality, as this book has shown, but to the rest of the world, they are never too far from their links with China. The pandemic also underscored the centrality of China as well as Chinese migrants. While the world was aware of China’s growing role in globalization, it was not until China stopped its factories and the “Made in China” products that it was revealed how the world had become over reliant on China as a global supply chain, especially in terms of vital medical products.8 In Australia, the international student sector -the second largest contributor to GDP – is deeply affected as international students return home or cannot come to Australia due to the pandemic. Political relations with China have also exacerbated the sector as China asks its students to avoid Australia due to the racist attacks while the Australian Prime Minister sided with the U.S. in pushing for China to be investigated for the source of the virus. 8 “COVID-19 Will Not Reduce Global Reliance on China,” Zhang Jun, Project Syndicate, April 7, 2020, accessed on May 10, 2020 from https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/chinaglobal-economic-position-stronger-after-covid19-by-zhang-jun-2020-04; “Coronavirus: China Faces Fight to Hang onto Foreign Manufacturers as US, Japan, EU make Covid-19 Exit Plans,” Finbarr Bermingham, Mark Magnier and Sidney Leng, South China Morning Post, April 24, 2020, accessed on May 10, 2020 from https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3081415/ coronavirus-china-faces-fight-hang-foreign-manufacturers-us

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Political commentators have emerged to speculate on China’s fate postpandemic. Pro-Chinese commentators have suggested that the pandemic will accelerate the “Asian century” as it illuminated the competence of East Asian governments such as China, South Korea and Singapore, in contrast to the weaker responses of Western states.9 Others praised China’s resolute action and suggest that it might restore economic growth before the rest of the world.10 Certainly, at the time of writing, Wuhan, the city where the pandemic began, had just ended its lockdown and China was tentatively returning to work, while the rest of the world remained shut.11 Critics have, however, observed that China’s international reputation as well as its economy will suffer post-pandemic, making references to China’s alleged cover-ups and other countries’ push to lure manufacturers home.12 Whether China rises or falters, however, as this book has shown, both Chinese migrants and ethnic Chinese overseas will continue to be implicated in its standing.

Coconstitution of China and Singapore’s Chineseness By looking closely at how China nationals and ethnic Chinese overseas imagine China and its outflow of new Chinese migrants, Contesting Chineseness reveals several consequences of China’s rise. First, China’s ascent and its resultant outflow of new Chinese migrants offered new opportunities to reconsider how ethnicity, nationality, class and gender interact to produce social imaginaries of Chineseness. China’s ascent elevated the value of 9 “Kishore Mahbubani on the Dawn of the Asian Century,” Kishore Mahbubani, The Economist, April 20, 2020, accessed on May 10, 2020 from https://www.economist.com/ by-invitation/2020/04/20/kishore-mahbubani-on-the-dawn-of-the-asian-century 10 “Covid-19: Can the Global Economy Operate Without China? [Part One],” Jibing Chen, ThinkChina, February 20, 2020, accessed on May 10, 2020 from https://www.thinkchina.sg/ covid-19-can-global-economy-operate-without-china-part-one 11 “China Goes Back to Work, Many Wonder if the Country’s Coronavirus Recovery Can be Trusted,” David Culver, CNN, April 3, 2020, accessed on May 10, 2020 from https://edition.cnn. com/2020/04/02/asia/china-coronavirus-numbers-trust-intl-hnk/index.html; “‘Lockdown is Not Over’ for People of Wuhan, Despite Easing of Restrictions,” Lily Kuo, The Guardian, April 11, 2020, accessed on May 10, 2020 from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/12/ wuhan-celebrates-its-liberation-as-covid-19-lockdown-ends 12 “Covid-19 A Blow to Beijing’s Ambitions for Global Leadership,” Bonnie S. Glaser, The Straits Times, April 10, 2020, accessed on May 10, 2020 from https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/ covid-19-a-blow-to-beijings-ambitions-for-global-leadership; Bermingham, Magnier and Leng, “Coronavirus.”

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Chinese identity, but the variegated embrace of Chinese identity illuminated both its heterogeneity and instability. Second, Singapore’s Chinese identity has coconstitutive connections with China’s identity, and both countries have manipulated and appropriated Chinese identity to meet economic and political needs. China’s long history of linking blood, descent and shared cultural consciousness veils the state’s purposes of totalitarian and paternalistic rule; it also legitimized courting the capital of ethnic Chinese overseas. Like China, Singapore’s advanced its one-party rule through selective appropriation of Chinese history and culture; a strategy also intended for access to China’s markets. Singapore’s reliance on China for its Chinese identity, however, has recently backfired with China’s attempts to engage ethnic Chinese overseas to benefit China. However, state social imaginaries of Chineseness may shape but do not necessarily determine Chinese subjects’ social imaginaries of Chineseness. The arrival of new Chinese migrants has contributed to the questioning of the Singaporean state’s version of Chineseness and Chinese homogeneity. Chinese migrants are also confronted with the heterogeneity of Chinese subjects who may not buy into the civilizational discourse. Third, a strategic analysis of the social imaginaries of ethnic Chinese subjects provided insights into the hierarchy of Chineseness. The SingaporeanChinese’s social imaginaries of Chineseness value nationality over ethnicity and class, relegating even professional Chinese migrants to the lower classes. Imaginaries of gender and class also discriminate against Chinese migrant women and men in distinct ways: the former is deemed lower-class from imaginaries of hygiene and morality; the latter is deemed lower-class from imaginaries of economic capital. Chinese migrants’ social imaginaries of Chineseness, on the other hand, self-orientalize and value the Chinese civilization which ties together ethnicity and nationality. In Chinese migrants’ imaginaries, Singaporean-Chinese’s nationality is de-emphasized, and their mediocre grasp of the Chinese language and individualistic habits render them unworthy of being Chinese. Singaporean-Chinese or Chinese migrants can be positioned as higher-up or lower-down in the hierarchy of Chineseness according to how nationality, class and gender is imagined and valued. Finally, future work theorizing the politics of identities in immigration contexts must consider the place of co-ethnicity in superdiverse settings. We must reconsider the dominance of “ethnicity” as a sufficient unit of analysis to measure assimilation and move beyond the ‘white’ versus Other binary that dominates studies on race and migration. How co-ethnics imagine nationality, class and gender can determine how they interact with co-ethnic others; imaginaries which may even produce co-ethnic racialization.

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Enduring Chineseness In 2017, the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre (SCCC) was opened. It boasts of an expansive 11-storey building and cost US$110 million (S$150 million). An esteemed academic who heard of its opening was intrigued and chuckled as she stated rhetorically, “What would it teach?” Significantly, the SCCC came after the China Cultural Centre which was opened in 2015 during China’s President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Singapore. The close proximity between the two Chinese cultural centers in Singapore may not be a coincidence.13 The Singaporean state may finally have decided that in order not to be held hostage to China, it must define its own Chinese identity. Its dependence on China for its Chinese identity though, will make for an arduous struggle ahead. What this book has shown, however, is that the Singaporean-Chinese and Chinese migrants started the contestation of Chineseness long before the Singaporean state did. Global and state discourses can shape but do not necessarily determine people’s imaginaries. China’s ascent and its resultant outflow of Chinese migrants are intimately tied to the cultural politics of being Chinese. On the ground, social imaginaries of Chinese identity, nationality, class and gender interact with people’s everyday attention to hygiene and morality, local places like Chinatown or Geylang as well as state Sinicization. In the backdrop of ethnic Chinese subjects’ everyday lives looms China’s ascent; the opportunities offered as well as the challenges presented. Whether China’s ascent will hold out in the long run is open to debate and is not central to the book’s argument. This research has captured a moment where China’s ascent was entangled with the peak of new Chinese immigration in Singapore. This book shows the importance of how people reimagine Chineseness through aspiring to assert a superior Chinese identity and reconfigure hierarchies of nation, class and gender. To be Chinese today, after all, is vastly different from being Chinese before; more than ever, ethnic Chinese subjects are struggling with the realization that one does not stop being Chinese after one leaves China, even generations after. As the world responds to China taking its place in the global order, ethnic Chinese subjects know that willing or not, the contestation of Chineseness will endure in an increasingly mobile and diverse world. 13 “Worries Grow in Singapore Over China’s Calls to Help ‘Motherland’,” Amy Qin, The New York Times, August 5, 2018, accessed on May 30, 2019 from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/05/ world/asia/singapore-china.html

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References Bermingham, Finbarr, Magnier, Mark, and Sidney Leng. “Coronavirus: China Faces Fight to Hang onto Foreign Manufacturers as Us, Japan, Eu Make Covid-19 Exit Plans.” South China Morning Post, April 24, 2020. https://www.scmp.com/ economy/china-economy/article/3081415/coronavirus-china-faces-fight-hangforeign-manufacturers-us. Chen, Jibing. “Covid-19: Can the Global Economy Operate without China? [Part One].” Think China, February 20, 2020. https://www.thinkchina.sg/ covid-19-can-global-economy-operate-without-china-part-one. “Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19) Pandemic.” World Health Organization, accessed May 10, 2020, https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019. Culver, David. “China Goes Back to Work, Many Wonder If the Country’s Coronavirus Recovery Can Be Trusted.” CNN, April 3, 2020. https://edition.cnn. com/2020/04/02/asia/china-coronavirus-numbers-trust-intl-hnk/index.html. della Cava, Marco, and Kristin Lam. “Coronavirus Is Spreading. And So Is AntiChinese Sentiment and Xenophobia.” USA TODAY, January 31, 2020. https://www. usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/01/31/coronavirus-chinese-xenophobiaracism-misinformation/2860391001/. Fang, Jason, and Samuel Yang. “Chinese-Australian Family Targeted over Coronavirus Receives Outpouring of Support.” ABC News, April 23, 2020. https://www. abc.net.au/news/2020-04-23/chinese-australian-family-racist-coronavirusracist-attack-speak/12178884. Glaser, Bonnie S. “Covid-19 a Blow to Beijing’s Ambitions for Global Leadership.” The Straits Times, April 10, 2020. https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/ covid-19-a-blow-to-beijings-ambitions-for-global-leadership. Hay, Andrew, and Maria Caspani. “Official Corrected – Fake Flyers and Face-Mask Fear: California Fights Coronavirus Discrimination.” Reuters, February 14, 2020. https://news.trust.org/item/20200214225344-4d4x6. Jun, Zhang. “Covid-19 Will Not Reduce Global Reliance on China.” Project Syndicate, April 7, 2020. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/ china-global-economic-position-stronger-after-covid19-by-zhang-jun-2020-04. Kuo, Lily. “‘Lockdown Is Not over’ for People of Wuhan, Despite Easing of Restrictions.” The Guardian, April 11, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ apr/12/wuhan-celebrates-its-liberation-as-covid-19-lockdown-ends. Lau, Jean. “More Shock Than Anger: S’porean Student Opens up About Covid-19 Racist Attack in London.” The Straits Times, March 7, 2020. https://www. straitstimes.com/singapore/singaporean-student-in-london-seeks-eyewitnessesafter-coronavirus-related-taunt-and.

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Lee, Mandy, and Lena Loke. “Some Chinese Workers, Businesses in Singapore Shunned Amid Fear and Anxiety over Covid-19.” Today Online, February 19, 2020. https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/some-chinese-workers-businessessingapore-shunned-amid-fear-and-anxiety-over-covid-19. Mahbubani, Kishore. “Kishore Mahbubani on the Dawn of the Asian Century.” The Economist, April 20, 2020. https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2020/04/20/ kishore-mahbubani-on-the-dawn-of-the-asian-century. Qin, Amy. “Worries Grow in Singapore over China’s Calls to Help ‘Motherland’.” New York Times, August 5, 2018). https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/05/world/ asia/singapore-china.html. Sun, David. “Singaporean Student and Friend Hurt in Racist Attack in Melbourne.” The Straits Times, April 20, 2020. https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ singaporean-student-and-friend-hurt-in-racist-attack-in-melbourne. Tan, Eugene KB. “A Tale of Two Chinese Cultural Centres.” Today Online, May 18, 2017. https://www.todayonline.com/commentary/tale-two-chinese-cultural-centres. Yoshiko Kandil, Caitlin. “Asian Americans Report over 650 Racist Acts over Last Week, New Data Says.” NBC News, March 26, 2020. https://www.nbcnews.com/ news/asian-america/asian-americans-report-nearly-500-racist-acts-over-lastweek-n1169821. Young, Evan. “‘This Is Racism’: Chinese-Australians Say They’ve Faced Increased Hostiltiy since the Coronavirus Outbreak Began.” SBS News, January 31, 2020. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/this-is-racism-chinese-australians-say-they-vefaced-increased-hostility-since-the-coronavirus-outbreak-began.

Index anxieties global anxieties toward China 12-13 Singapore’s anxieties toward China 17-19, 35, 44 Singapore’s anxieties toward mainland Chinese migrants 66, 68 Singaporeans’ anxieties toward regulating the internet 113 Singaporeans’ anxieties toward space 123 Asian values 46, 125 Australia 9, 12-13, 40, 145-147 belonging and citizenship 26, 55, 57, 68, 70 civilizational 110-111, 224 in Geylang 136 national 103-106, 109-111, 114 unstable 27, 97, 99 blood 26, 35, 42, 51, 112 Chinese 41, 98 new 36 breadwinner 82 capital economic 17, 19, 28, 38, 40, 119, 122-123, 136, 138-139, 149 cultural 100, 103, 108, 135, 139 human 137-139 social 135, 139 symbolic 135, 139 China Cultural Center 150 China dream 36-37, 39, 41 China’s rise 15, 17, 19, 50-51, 148 Chinatown 23, 27, 85, 119-130, 132-134, 136-139, 150 Chinese chauvinists 46, 77 Chinese-educated 44-45 Chinese migrants female 23, 26, 55, 128 male 23, 25-26, 43, 61, 75-76, 78-79, 89-91, 119 Chinese vernaculars 22-23, 43-44, 100, 105, 107-108, 114 Chineseness 16, 19-22, 25-28, 35, 37, 45-46, 50, 70, 92, 99, 104-105, 107-108, 111, 113-114, 123-126, 129, 135, 139, 148-150 sanitized 113 citizenship 26, 55, 57, 68, 70 cultural 11, 15-17 civility 74, 81 civilization 27, 38, 42, 47, 50, 99, 104, 111-112, 114-135, 149 CMIO (Chinese, Malay, Indian, Others) model 44 colonial 27-28, 38, 44, 60, 119, 123-124, 131, 136

communism 44, 50 Confucius 42 teachings 42-43 cosmopolitan 56 cosmopolitanism 81, 84 COVID-19 28, 145 culture 15, 22-23, 27, 35-36, 44-45, 47, 50, 56, 75, 97, 99, 109-111, 113-114, 130, 132-134, 149 Deng Xiaoping 39, 48 developing status 17, 58, 78, 81, 92 diaspora policies 40 digital ethnography 22, 24-25 discrimination 13-14, 16, 56-57, 61, 75, 80-81, 134 displacement 27, 73, 91, 136-138 embodiment 10, 27, 43, 55, 58, 65, 78 English-educated 44-45 gender 17, 22, 27-28, 50, 73-74, 78, 86-87, 91, 103, 134-136, 145, 148-150 generation 22, 27, 41, 58, 99, 107-108, 114, 126-127, 150 Geylang 23, 83, 85, 90, 119-123, 126-140 hegemonic masculinity 68, 91 hierarchy 27, 73, 76-78, 80, 91-92, 108, 149 homogeneity 22, 26, 35, 37, 51, 149 huaqiao 36, 38, 39, 41 huaren 36-37, 39-41, 111-112, 135 hygiene 27, 55, 57-60, 63-66, 70, 149-150 identity Chinese 9-28, 35-51, 55-70, 73-80, 83-92, 97-114, 119, 121-140, 145-150 Singaporean-Chinese 9-12, 15-16, 18-19, 21-23, 26-28, 35-37, 43, 46-51, 55, 57-59, 61, 65-66, 68-70, 73-79, 83-84, 86-87, 89-90, 92, 97-114, 119-129, 132, 135-136, 139-140, 146, 149-150 immobility 138 immorality 27, 55, 58, 61, 63-65, 70, 122, 132, 139 language 10, 15, 18, 23, 27, 43-47, 50, 75, 83, 89, 97, 99-106, 108-109, 111, 114, 121, 129, 149 Lee Kuan Yew 45-49, 101, 111 Mandarin 9-10, 12, 22-24, 27, 44, 46-47, 61, 75, 90, 97, 99-111, 113-114, 119, 121, 129, 133 masculinity/masculinities 26-27, 73-74, 78-80, 82-92 modernity 28, 84, 122, 139

154  nationality 17, 22, 27-28, 38-39, 50, 70, 77-78, 80, 91, 103, 109, 111, 135-136, 145, 147-150 orientalisation 135 performativity 86, 92 promiscuity 69-70 Qing 37-38 racialization 28-28, 119, 121-124, 130, 133-134, 136, 138-140, 149 racism 27, 60, 77, 145-147 repulsion 64, 69 respectable manhood 87-88, 92 sensory disturbances 63-64, 66 sex workers 61, 65, 68, 85-87, 89, 119-120, 128-129, 131, 137, 139 sexuality 74, 78, 129 Singapore 9-12, 14-19, 21-27, 35-37, 40, 43-51, 55-62, 64-70, 73-83, 85-92, 97-114, 119-128, 130, 132-136, 145-146, 148-150 Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre 150 Sinicization 28, 43, 150

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sinkeh 43 social class 17, 22-23, 26-28, 50, 64-65, 70, 73, 77-78, 91, 99, 103, 108, 114, 133-136, 145, 148-150 low/lower 27, 44, 55, 65, 68-70, 75, 84, 91, 108, 131, 149 middle 26-27, 55-58, 64-65, 70 social imaginaries 19, 21-22, 26, 28, 50, 70, 90, 92, 99, 114, 139, 148-150 social media 24-25, 73-74, 113 Speak Mandarin Campaign 46, 100, 103 Sun Yat Sen 36, 38, 47-48 suzhi 74, 81-85, 88, 91-92, 102, 109 taste 16, 59, 65, 70, 121 third world 27, 55, 92 WeChat 23-27, 73-74, 80-83, 85, 89-91 Western 13, 15, 17, 38, 46, 56, 148 Westernized 46, 56, 111 Xi Jinping 36, 41, 150 Xinyimin 40-41, 49 Zhou Enlai 39