"Disappearing Overseas Chinese States: The Rise and Fall of the Chinese Regime in West Borneo", by Li Xinxiang, Peking University Press, November 2022, 314 pages, 98.00 yuan
The history of overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia has long attracted the attention of scholars, starting from the earliest economic behavior, and then has excellent monographs and research articles in various aspects such as political significance, cultural evolution and inheritance, and identity. Moreover, under the large regional concept of "Nanyang", the historical differentiated development of overseas Chinese in different countries/regions is gradually subdivided. For example, the overseas Chinese in Singapore/Malaya that the author mainly studied during his doctoral studies, and the overseas Chinese in Thailand after working, whether they were in the early overseas Chinese era or the Chinese who have evolved to the present, all show very different living conditions and identities. Mr. Li Xinxiang's book "Disappearing Overseas Chinese States: The Rise and Fall of the Chinese Regime in West Borneo" starts from the "Chinese Overseas Republic" that has been heard of in the field of Lanfang Company (1770-1884), and gives a detailed introduction and analysis of the origin, development and demise of several Chinese regimes in West Borneo, and attempts to discuss the important and unique pioneer role that these regimes, especially Lanfang Company, may have played in the entire history of the Chinese people (the name dispute of Lanfang Company has a long history, This article adopts the name of Mr. Li Xinxiang in the book, written as Lanfang Company). Due to the decline of the Chinese community in West Borneo, the relevant research work has not been carried out on a large scale, and Mr. Li Xinxiang has made a more in-depth and extensive extension of his previous accumulation, taking the Chinese companies that existed in West Borneo as the overall research object to write "The Vanishing Overseas Chinese State", which has left an important mark on the history of Chinese companies and regimes in West Borneo.
The company (Kongsi) is still a republic – how to define the Chinese regime in West Borneo
The author cleverly titled the book, using the word "Winbond" because the characterization of Lanfang has been controversial for decades. Some scholars represented by the Dutch scholar Gao Yan believe that the leadership of Lanfang Company is almost the president under the republican system of government, and even developed its own parliament-like deliberative system, plus armed forces, tax policies and foreign relations, especially the Qing government at that time did not recognize the subordination relationship with Lanfang, which can be regarded as an independent country, so Lanfang Company deserves to be called the "Lanfang Republic". However, some scholars believe that Lanfang Company has not departed from the universal meaning and function of "kongsi" in the Southeast Asian Chinese community, that is, a social organization with comprehensive management functions, similar to the guild halls that existed in other Chinese groups in Southeast Asia during the same period (for the common interpretation of the word "company" in the overseas Chinese community in Southeast Asia from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, mainly refer to Chen Guodong's "A Thousand Years of East Asian Seas").
The third chapter of the book provides an insightful analysis and discussion of the issue, bringing together multiple perspectives and combining it with written records to offer some possible new angles on this long-standing controversy. First of all, the name "Lanfang Grand System", the author made it clear that this is only the name of the top leader of Lanfang Company, and it is inappropriate to use it as the name of Lanfang Company. Next, Li Xinxiang suggested that the origin of the word "company" may be related to the "public temple" culture that prevailed in Fujian and eastern Guangdong along the southeast coast of China, and was first organized by the same surname or fellow villagers in a region. The reason why the word "company" overseas emphasizes "division", that is, execution, is mainly responsible for public management and seeking economic benefits, and dilutes the sacrificial function of the southeast coastal shrines. The author then argues that although the word "company" in the modern Chinese context may indeed be a term for overseas returnees, it is not the same concept as the "kongsi" of Southeast Asian Chinese from the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries, so it should not be defined as a contemporary corporation to Lanfang and other Western Borneo Chinese companies, thus not accepting the reality that these companies are actually autonomous regimes. From this point of view, the author further explains the specific composition and implementation of various aspects of the economy, taxation and laws, defense system and elections of the West Borneo Chinese companies, emphasizes the legitimacy of these corporate regimes, and finally draws his own conclusion: not only the Lanfang Company, but also several large Chinese companies in West Borneo at the same time, such as the Ho Shun Company, the Dagang Company, and the Sanjogou Company, can be called republics because they have the three founding elements of "territory, people, and sovereignty" (p. 167).
Chinese workers and foremen in the West Borneo gold mine in 1819 (Leiden University Collection, The Netherlands)
Overseas Chinese – The History of the Rise and Fall of the Chinese in West Borneo
Borneo is the third largest island in the world, currently divided into three countries: Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, Borneo is the name of Malay, Indonesia calls Kalimantan. Lan Fang and other large-scale overseas Chinese companies are the stories that took place in this land, mainly on the coast of West Borneo. Today, Pontianak, the capital of Kalimantan, is also where the Lanfang Company has developed and grown, and the coast of West Borneo is undoubtedly an ideal stopping place from Fujian and Guangdong on the southeast coast of the mainland. According to Li Xinxiang's research, in addition to the legendary early Chinese, it is well documented that in 1735, the Lin clan of Jieyang County, Guangdong, came to Pontianak and established the first Chinese company, Jusheng Company. The large-scale Chinese tide occurred in the mid-eighteenth century after the discovery of gold mines in West Borneo, and Chinese miners quickly became the most popular group of employees with efficiency, diligence and intelligence, so a large number of fellow villagers from Guangdong Province, Jiaying Province and Huizhou Province moved to seek wealth in "Jinshan". Some studies have pointed out that between 1770 and 1820, according to the characteristics of the monsoon, at least 2,000 Chinese miners would come to West Borneo to pan for gold at the beginning of each year, and in June and July of the same year, hundreds of people would return to their hometowns with the money they earned, but more chose to stay and continue to work, so the Chinese population in West Borneo grew rapidly, reaching tens of thousands.
The surge in the number of Chinese had a considerable impact on the original pattern of the local economy and society, and the conflict between the Chinese and the Malays and Dayaks (the indigenous people of Borneo) began to occur, including armed struggle. In this context, the Chinese began to form their own interest groups, mostly with fellow villagers, especially people from one county or neighboring counties, as the core increased, and with the increase in the inflow of Chinese in West Borneo, the economic strength and sphere of influence of each group gradually expanded, which formed the Chinese companies of the 18th to 19th centuries in West Borneo. In the second chapter of the book, "Overseas Chinese States: Rise, Heyday and Demise of China", the author flips through many historical sources and documents in China, from the "Jiaying Prefecture Record" and "Lanfang Company Yearbook" to a number of biographies of the leader of the Lanfang Company, Luo Fangbo, including Chinese and Dutch studies, in a large number of complete or scattered records to provide readers with a concrete picture of the development of the Chinese company in West Borneo.
Li Xinxiang's research is not limited to Luo Fangbo and Lanfang Company, but under the premise of relatively scarce historical materials, he still portrays the development history of companies such as Dagang (later renamed Heshun) and Sanjogou under the "Heshun Alliance". These companies were also founded in 1770-1780, and compared with the Lanfang Company, these companies had earlier frontal conflicts with the Dutch, coupled with frequent internal disagreements, and the vigorous anti-Dutch campaign that lasted for four years from 1850 to the Andryshan Dutch finally ended in the "massacre" of the Chinese by the Dutch in Andriy Hill in 1854. Under the mediation of the last Jia Tai (that is, the supreme leader) Liu Asheng, the Lanfang Company lasted for nearly 30 years, until Liu Asheng's death in 1884, and the Lanfang Company finally collapsed under internal and external troubles. Since then, the Chinese company has officially withdrawn from the historical stage. After reading this chapter, I can't help but sigh: no matter how these companies are characterized, they have slowly developed from the initial economic mutual aid to a political system with internal and foreign affairs and even a guard organization, and have experienced the fire of cooking oil, flowers and brocade, and even the collapse of the Khura Lama Mansion, which played an important role in cohesion, safeguarding interests and ensuring personal safety for the Chinese who were struggling to make a living in West Borneo at that time. Although the end of the company was inevitably full of war and killing, it was still a unique and colorful chapter in the history of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia.
Liu Asheng presided over the replacement of the door plaque of the Lanfang Mansion in Tamsui Port
The Republican of Lanfang Company - The Overseas Practice of Chinese-style Democracy?
After discussing the characterization of Chinese companies in West Borneo in the third chapter, "Power and Governance of Chinese Corporations", the author compares these Chinese corporate polities with Western democracies, and puts forward the view that Chinese companies in West Borneo were practiced overseas for more than a hundred years before the advent of American-style democracy. In Li Xinxiang's view, the way to elect leaders and the setting of decision-making bodies are the core elements of democratic politics, and Luo Fangbo was elected as the first general commander of Lanfang Company, and he also worked with many founders to formulate Lanfang Company's laws, election leadership system, and government structure, which shows that "democracy was not the first invention of Americans" (173). According to the Dutch, hundreds of delegates argued for days in the Dagang, Heshun and Sanfa regions to elect the leader of the negotiations with the Dutch, and the author believes that the democratic atmosphere reflected in this is no less than the subsequent congressional debate in the United States.
Reading this, the word anachronism comes to mind. When we discuss the concept of "democracy", we should also take into account that its definition has changed with the times. For example, in ancient Greece, which is considered the birthplace of Western democracy, Plato talked about the attitude of democracy in the Republic, which is that democracy passes into despotism, and dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty）。 This example is to illustrate that it seems inappropriate to compare "democracy" in different contexts at different times.
In addition, it is doubtful whether Lanfang's "election system" is really original or innovative. The author said in the book that the "Lanfang Company Chronicles" does not have a record of how Chinese companies conduct elections or specific election policies, so what is the essential difference between these methods of selecting leaders and the system of electing clan chiefs that has prevailed for thousands of years in rural areas of the mainland? Just as patriarchs can often only be selected from a few local surnames, Chinese companies are particularly sensitive to the origin of leaders, such as the head of Lanfang Company, which must be a person from his ancestral home in Meizhou and Tai Po County. The term of office of the patriarch is also often specified and supervised by the clansmen. Each clan generally has its own elders, and specific villages also have village chiefs, just as Chinese companies also have small leaders at different levels. A clan society usually has its own rules of reward and punishment, such as family punishment for crimes other than those involving murder, such as adultery and theft, ranging from flogging to expulsion, and in severe cases, even the power to decide life and death. So can the law of Chinese companies also be regarded as an extension of family rules? These two questions are not to question the "independent state" theory of Chinese companies in West Borneo, but to argue that it is debatable whether these Chinese companies can or should apply the concept of "democracy" in the modern West. The word "democracy" itself does not have a positive connotation in any context, so the continuation of our cultural traditions abroad does not necessarily need to be linked to it. As the author himself wrote, he also ended this article - "The success of a regime does not depend on a certain system, and if there is no ideological emancipation and scientific progress under the democratic system, no outstanding culture and talents, and no flexible policies that adapt to the trend of history, then even the best opportunities cannot be seized."