Uncalculated Divergences: The Philippine-Chinese Community in the Turbulent 20s

Between 1840 and 1940 China and the Philippines were linked by new technologies, sprawling imperial networks, and Chinese diasporic networks, yet despite many commonalities with other global migratory flows and regional linkages, the Sino-Philippine link offers an important counterpoint which this paper divides into two 1920s divergences. By 1920 China was enmeshed in what scholars have termed the Warlord Era, a period when regional militarists carved out constituencies in the remnants of China’s empire and republic; included in this contested terrain was the maritime-oriented province of Fujian, from which the vast majority of Philippine huaqiao, or Chinese in the Philippines, hailed. Meanwhile, in the American-colonized Philippines, with the support of the Philippine legislature, new Governor General Leonard Wood passed the Bookkeeping Act, which, in the same vein as the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibited the recording of business transactions in Chinese. Coupled with a severe economic downturn after the World War I boom years, prospects for Philippine huaqiao appeared dim. China was in tatters, Fujian was controlled by occupying armies, the Philippines was ruled by conservative exclusion-minded politicians, and global markets were uncertain.

This unique set of circumstances led to two uncalculated divergences, the first between Philippine huaqiao and their sojourning compatriots across the globe, and the second among Philippine huaqiao themselves. Seeking to contest the convergent threats to their community, Chinese in the Philippines simultaneously supported Nationalist forces in southern China, organized for an independent home province of Fujian, and dispatched two young community members to Washington DC to contest the Bookkeeping Act and protect interests in the Philippines. Yet in pursuing this divergent multi-pronged strategy, seeds of discord bubbled within the community as huaqiao from Guangdong and less wealthy huaqiao questioned the intentions of the Fujianese-merchant-dominated Philippine Chinese Chamber of Commerce.