Abstract
This article uses the case of Chinese migration to Suriname, South America, to question the notion that New Chinese Migrants (新移民) should be approached differently to earlier Overseas Chinese (华侨华裔). An ethnic Chinese segment has existed in Surinamese society since the middle of the nineteenth century, as a consequence of Dutch colonial policy to import Asian indentured labour as a substitute for African slave labour. By the early twentieth century chain migration from a narrow area in the Pearl River Delta (particularly Dongguan and Bao’an) created a homogenous Kejia-speaking Chinese group in Suriname. Their ethnic ownership economy became a dominant force in Surinamese retail trade. In the early 1990s Chinese migration to Suriname suddenly and sharply increased, and the impact of New Chinese Migrants in a society where ethnic Chinese had been gradually assimilating, triggered an upsurge in anti-Chinese sentiments. Whereas the ‘Old Chinese’—the Kejia-speakers from the Pearl River Delta—could be described in terms of ‘Overseas Chinese’, the New Chinese initially seemed very different, being linguistically diverse, and apparently linked to Chinese globalization, and Chinese resource extraction projects. However, New Chinese in Suriname have repeated the ‘Overseas Chinese’ settlement pattern of the established migrants. They have successfully created their own ethnic ownership economy in competition with the established Chinese migrants, and they have set up their own Hometown Associations (同乡会) as an migrant adaptive strategy. Within the last 5 years elites have emerged that dominate the Zhejiang, Hainan and Fujian Hometown Associations, which are developing into platforms for New Chinese participation in Surinamese politics, exactly like the ‘Old Chinese’. What is new is that the business empires of these elites have expanded beyond trade and now include gold mining, logging and other interests, and are actively linking to transnational business and migration networks.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This paper is based on material collected between 2003 and 2008 for my PhD thesis at the University of Amsterdam, and on information gathered during visits to Suriname in December 2009 and June 2011.
- 2.
Fuidung’on is an anagram of the Kejia pronunciation of the names of the three counties where the ‘Old Chinese’ migrant cohorts in Suriname come from: fui 5 jong 2 (Putonghua: Huìyáng 惠阳), tung 1 kon 1 (PTH: Dōngguǎn 东莞), and pau 3 on 1 (PTH: Bǎoān 宝安). For the informants in Suriname the term referred to the nineteenth century districts of Dongguan, Huiyang and Xin’an in the Hong Kong periphery, currently corresponding to areas in Dongguan Municipality, Huiyang County, Baoan County, Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, and the New Territories in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. ‘Hakka’ is used here loosely to distinguish the ethnic label from the language. Following current practice in Chinese linguistics the ‘Hakka dialect’ is here called ‘Kejia’. Kejia names are transcribed according to the Fuitungon Kejia pronunciation dictionary (Chin-a-Woeng 2008).
- 3.
Stress in the original. They continue: “[the ethnic ownership economy is a] rational response to job scarcity, and the fact that the general labour market will probably never provide enough jobs for coethnics to join mainstream”. The ethnic ownership economy does not include members of the same ethnic group who work for wages in the general economy.
- 4.
Data from the Surinamese General Bureau of Statistics (Algemeen Bureau voor de Statistiek, ABS): SIC 220-2006/02; SIC 264-2009/11; SIC 278-2011/06.
Chinese remained a minor part of the influx of non-resident aliens during these 21 years, as the majority consisted of holders of Dutch passports. Data are from the General Bureau of Statistics in Suriname (ABS) are not fully reliable, however. According to the statistics for 2006 in SIC 242-2008/1, ‘tourists’ from the PRC outnumbered PRC nationals entering via the international airport and the port of Nieuw Nickerie: 1,757 versus 1,391. The data are not fully reliable; in SIC 242-2008/1, the number of non-resident PRC nationals entering via the international airport in the year 1996 was set at 2,011, instead of 724 in earlier publications (e.g. SIC 220-2006/2).
- 5.
During this period only one official report noted the change in the Chinese population. In an appendix on the Chinese included in their short study of class and ethnic distribution in Paramaribo based on fieldwork conducted in 1992, Schalkwijk and De Bruijne described a basically stable Hakka-dominated urban entrepreneurial minority group (Schalkwijk and De Bruijne 1997, pp. 98–99), but in the revised second edition of 1999, they noted changes with regard to homelands, languages, and financial resources of recent Chinese migrants, as well as the new phenomenon of PRC resource extraction and technical cooperation projects (Schalkwijk and De Bruijne 1999, pp. 98–99).
- 6.
Zhuang includes entrepreneurs from Hong Kong and Taiwan in his analysis.
- 7.
In Albina, near the French border, on 24 December 2009, a quarrel between a Ndyuka man and a Brazilian over money escalated, and the Ndyuka man was stabbed and died. Disenchranchised Ndyuka youths went on the rampage, looting and burning and hunting down Brazilians. As most shops were owned by New Chinese, it seemed as if the violence was not only aimed at Brazilians but also ethnic Chinese. However, in the Chinese-language media (TV and huìguǎn newspapers) the New Chinese shopkeepers explained that their shops, not their ethnicity or nationality, had been targeted. (DWT 28 December 2009, ‘Zinloos geweld Albina: “Kiri ala Brasyonman!”’ (Casual violence in Albina: ‘Kill all the Brazilians!’); ‘Moord leidt tot anarchie in Albina’ (Murder leads to anarchy in Albina)).
Almost a year later, at the end of October 2010, a quarrel between a Chinese shopkeeper and a Maroon got out of hand, with the shopkeeper wounding the client. A policeman shot into the Maroon mob ready to lynch the shopkeeper, killing one man. The incident revealed racial tensions between established city dwellers and Maroon newcomers, and between Maroons and Chinese migrants. (DWT 31 October 2011, ‘Incident Saramaccastraat helt naar etnische spanning “Waar zijn wij veilig”’ (Saramacca Str. Incident is leans towards ethnic tensions; ‘Where can we be safe?’); ‘KPS houdt zichzelf spiegel voor “Politieman niet berekend op massa-aanval”’(Surinamese Police Corps admits own failings; ‘Police officer not prepared for mass attack’)). However, the basic conflicts appear to have arisen from competition between migrants (Maroon, Chinese, Brazilian) in urban settings and weak state control.
- 8.
Shètuán could include anything that is not explicitly geared to migrant survival, and so might include the ‘Chinese Women’s Federation’ (Dutch: Chinese Vrouwenfederatie) which was founded on 8 March 2010, International Women’s Day. As the group was described in De Ware Tijd (17 April 2010), the main Surinamese daily, it appeared to be a women’s social club organized by middle-aged people from ‘Hong Kong Chinese’ Hakka cohorts. The group was presented first and foremost as a women’s organization, with membership open to any ethnic group, but it was inaugurated in the PRC embassy in Paramaribo. This opens up the possibility of instrumental identification as a non-ethnic organization as well as a China-backed shètuán. Such groups have come and gone, the best-known being Tsang Nen Foei (青年会), a Laiap youth organization active in the 1960s, now defunct.
- 9.
The title ‘Surinamese Branch of the Chinese National Party’ 中国国民党驻苏里南属支部 is maintained on the signboard of the huìguǎn.
- 10.
A conflict with the colonial Surinamese government over gambling escalated in 1930 and Kong Ngie Tong was closed down. The next year it resurfaced as Kong Ngie Tong Sang—‘Kong Ngie Tong Reborn’—though in Chinese texts the name remained Kong Ngie Tong.
- 11.
ROSCAs are basically groups of people who periodically meet in order to organize informal micro-financing. ROSCAs are based on trust, and in their simplest form participants contribute a fixed sum of money at each session, to be collected by one member in a predetermined order at every meeting (hence ‘rotating’). Chinese ROSCAs in Suriname are informal (savings and borrowing are untaxed and unregu-lated by the government), but their transactions may involve substantial sums of foreign currency, and require record-keeping, guarantees for participants from external sponsors, and impartial referees. The ROSCAs organized in the Fuitungon Hakka huìguǎn are ‘bidding associations’ (标会 biāo huì), meaning that the order of loans is determined by a system of bidding. In the case of the Fuitungon Hakka huìguǎn in Suriname, participants anonymously bid the highest ‘interest’ they can afford to be subtracted from the monthly contributions they would receive in total as a loan. The order of any equal bids is determined by chance.
The main huìguǎn formally have members and regularly hold elections for their Boards. What the elections mean in practice is unclear, but ‘member of a huìguǎn’ is not how most Chinese migrants in Suriname describe themselves. They ‘visit’ or contact the huìguǎn for specific reasons, and therefore would be more accurately described as clients.
- 12.
The organization never used Chinese orthography in public. Zhongguo was likely 中国 ‘China’, while Lin Liangxin apparently was 林良鑫, the name of the organizer.
- 13.
Not all New Chinese organizations are Hometown Associations. In the early 2000s a Hainanese organization seemed to be claiming a pan-Hainanese forum: Hǎinán Huáqiáo Lianhé Huì (海南华侨联合会, ‘United Association of Overseas Chinese from Hainan’). And since 2009 a second Zhejiangese organization has emerged: Zhèjiāng Shānghuì (浙江商会, ‘Zhejiangese Traders Association’). By 2011 a Buddhist shrine was being run by New Chinese in Paramaribo under the name Fó Jiào Huì (佛教会, ‘Buddhist Association’). The organization plans to send for a monk and eventually set up a temple (Sabirie Gangapersad, ‘Boeddhisme; Nieuwe temple moet frisse impuls geven’(‘Buddhism; New temple to provide fresh impulse’), Parbode, April 2011). Distrust between Old and New Chinese, based on regional and linguistic differences, separate economic strategies and networks, and distinct migration cohorts, is sharpened by religious distinctions when Old Chinese—seen as Christians—cynically describe Fó Jiào Huì as just another platform for Chinatown politics.
- 14.
Li Minghuan (1999) has noted a similar pattern among the Chinese of the Netherlands.
- 15.
Kong Chung Vereniging. Zijlmans and Enser 2002, p. 82. Likely written 广中会 in Chinese characters.
- 16.
No Chinese orthography is available for the name of the organization. The evening paper De West of 23 October 2008 carried an item on the 155th anniversary of the arrival of the first Chinese indentured laborers, in which Stichting Oriental Foundation was called “an umbrella organization within which all active Chinese associations are united”. Five months earlier, in the Times of Suriname daily of 28 April 2007, the organization was listed as one of 13 members of a ‘Federation of Chinese Associations in Suriname’ (华侨全会) expressing loyalty to the PRC in protest against Taiwanese pocketbook diplomacy.
- 17.
The PRC embassy apparently understood the popular sentiment that almost 30 years of diplomatic relations with the PRC had yielded only rhetoric of solidarity and little substantial aid, surely compared to the US$ 100 million Taiwan was now offering. By early August the PRC promised to donate a US$ 3.2 million container scanner, speedboats, motorbikes and computers to the Surinamese Customs Service, and a week later a high-level delegation from PRC airplane manufacturer CATIC arrived to discuss extending its operations to Suriname. It later emerged that the various political parties who had been involved in the delegation each received cash donations and material gifts from the embassy.
- 18.
The dominance of Cantonese is one consequence Old Chinese refocusing on Hong Kong while the Fuitungon homeland was inaccessible, at least up to the 1980s. But it also reflects friction between older Fuitungon Hakka migrant cohorts and the younger Hakka cohorts that arrived acculturated to urban modernity via Hong Kong. This distinction was irrelevant by the time New Chinese arrived in the 1990s.
- 19.
Chinese music, for instance, is problematic. Pop songs signify modernity, but traditional music does not, and particularly opera considered too difficult for outsiders, even though karaoke DVDs of local opera styles can be popular entertainment in huìguǎn settings.
- 20.
There is now a generation of New Chinese children who are fluent speakers of Dutch and Sranantongo, the Surinamese lingua franca, and who are indistinguishable from ‘Old Chinese’.
- 21.
The Creole-dominated National Party of Suriname (NPS) is traditionally considered to be friendly to Chinese migrants, and Chung Tjauw Fu Li Foei (see Appendix) is in fact the ethnic Chinese section of the NPS.
- 22.
Parbode, February 2012, ‘Chinese kartels betalen nauwelijks belasting’ (Chinese kartels hardly pay taxes); De Ware Tijd, 6 June 2011, ‘Is Sino-Forest een frauduleus bedrijf?’ (Is Sino-Forest a fraudulent company?).
- 23.
Lang Chongxin, former second in command at the PRC embassy quoted in De West, 8 October 2011, ‘Surinaamse Chinezen niet genoeg op politieke voorgrond’ (Surinamese Chinese not sufficiently in the political foreground)
- 24.
Brubaker (2004).
References
Alden, C. (2007). China in Africa. London: Zed Books; David Philip: Cape Town.
Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large; cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bolt, P. J. (1996). Looking to the diaspora: The overseas Chinese and China’s economic development, 1978–1994. Diaspora, 5(3), 467–496.
Brubaker, R. (2004). Ethnicity without groups. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Chin-a-Woeng, C. M. (2008). Hak ka ts’u ten 客家辭典 (‘Kejia dictionary’). Amstelveen: Benelux Vereniging.
Dobler, G. (2005). South-South business relations in practice: Chinese merchants in Oshikango, Namibia, draft version, www.ids.ac.uk/UserFiles/File/globalisation_team/asian_driver_docs/Dobler_Chinese.pdf.
Li, M. (1999). ‘We need two worlds’; Chinese immigrant associations in a western society, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Li, A. (2000). 非洲华侨华人史 (A history of overseas Chinese in Africa). Beijing: Overseas Chinese Publishing House.
Light, I., & Gold, S. J. (2000). Ethnic Economies. San Diego: Academic Press.
Nieto, G. (2003). The Chinese in Spain. International Migration, 41(3), 215-237.
Nyíri, P. (1999). New Chinese migrants in Europe; the case of the Chinese community in Hungary. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.
Nyíri, P. (2001). Expatriating is patriotic? The discourse on ‘new migrants’ in the People’s Republic of China and identity construction among recent migrants from the PRC. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 27(4), 635–653.
Pieke, F., P. Nyíri, M. Thunø, & Ceccagno, A. (2004). Transnational Chinese: Fujianese Migrants in Europe, Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press.
Østbø, H., & Carling, J. (2005). On the edge of the Chinese diaspora: The surge of Baihuo business in an African city. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28(4), 639–662.
Schalkwijk, A., & De Bruijne, A. (1997). Van Mon Plaisir tot Ephraïmszegen: welstand, etniciteit en woonpatronen in Paramaribo. (From Mon Plaisir to Ephraïmszegen: Well-being, Ethnicity, and Residence Patterns in Paramaribo). Amsterdam: Institute for Social Geography, University of Amsterdam; Paramaribo: Leo Victor.
Schalkwijk, A., & De Bruijne, A. (1999). Van Mon Plaisir tot Ephraïmszegen: welstand, etniciteit en woonpatronen in Paramaribo. (From Mon Plaisir to Ephraïmszegen: Well-being, Ethnicity, and Residence Patterns in Paramaribo) (2nd revised ed.). Amsterdam: Amsterdam Institute for Global Issues and Development Studies (AGIDS), University of Amsterdam; Paramaribo: Leo Victor.
SIC 220-2006/02. Verkeers- en vervoersstatistieken 1995–2004/Traffic and transport statistics 1995–2004. Paramaribo: Algemeen Bureau voor de Statistiek.
SIC 264-2009/11. Verkeers- en vervoersstatistieken 2000–2008/Traffic and transport statistics 1995–2004. Paramaribo: Algemeen Bureau voor de Statistiek.
SIC 278-2011/06. Verkeers- en vervoersstatistieken 2000–2010/Traffic and transport statistics 1995–2004. Paramaribo: Algemeen Bureau voor de Statistiek.
Thunø, M. (2001). Reaching out and incorporating Chinese overseas: The trans-territorial scope of the PRC by the end of the twentieth century. The China Quarterly, 168, 910–929.
Tjon Sie Fat P. B. (2009). Chinese new migrants in Suriname; the inevitability of ethnic performing. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Tjon Sie Fat P. B. (2010). Old migrants, new immigration and anti-Chinese sentiments in Suriname. In W. L. Lai & T. Chee Beng (Eds.), The Chinese in Latin America and the Caribbean (pp 185–210). Brill: Leiden.
Wang, G. (2000). The Chinese Overseas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Wickberg, E. (1994). Overseas Chinese adaptive organizations, past and present. In S. Ronald (Ed.), Reluctant exiles? Migration from Hong Kong and the new overseas Chinese (pp. 68–84). Armonk: M.E. Sharpe.
Xiang, B. (2003). Emigration from China: A sending country perspective. International Migration, 41(3), 21–48.
Zhuang, G. (1997). 对近20年来华人国际移民活动的几点思考 (Some reflections on the activities of Chinese international migrants in the last 20 years). 华侨华人历史研究 (Overseas Chinese History Studies), 2, 1–6.
Zijlmans, G. C., & Enser, H. A. (2002). De Chinezen in Suriname; Een geschiedenis van immigratie en aanpassing 1853–2000 (The Chinese in Suriname; a history of immigration and adaptation 1853–2000). Barendrecht: Batavia Publishing.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tjon Sie Fat, P. (2014). Old and New Chinese Organizations in Suriname. In: Zhang, J., Duncan, H. (eds) Migration in China and Asia. International Perspectives on Migration, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8759-8_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8759-8_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-017-8758-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-8759-8
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)