This chapter examines the strategies and effects of the Japanese-Chinese alliances in Singapore as well as their impacts on changing Japanese views of overseas Chinese in the South Seas (present-day Southeast Asia). The literature on Chinese in Singapore in the first half of the twentieth century has emphasised how the British colonial city port developed as the centre of Chinese anti-Japanese nationalism in the region from the 1920s to the 1930s (Akashi 1970; Leong 1977, 1979; Wang 1981; Yong 1987; Heng 1988; Yen 1989; Ku 1994; Horimoto 1997). Based on research into Japanese intelligence reports on the South Seas, this chapter, nonetheless, emphasises Singapore's role in shaping Japanese strategies in dealing with the Chinese in the South Seas in the early twentieth century.

The importance of Singapore in the formulation of Japan's strategies during its southward advance rested not only on trade but also on the Chinese responses to the Japanese expansion. The responses varied among the different Chinese sub-ethnic groups. The latter, who were organised along origin and dialect lines, developed into different immigrant and business networks such as the Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, and Hainanese. In the late Meiji (1868-1911) and Taishō ( 1912-1926) eras, Japan's main aim was to cultivate ‘Japan-China friendship’ (Nisshi Shinzen [日支親善]) in dealing with the Chinese in the South Seas. It successfully incorporated the transnational Chinese networks, above all the most influential Hokkien networks in Java and Singapore, into the Japanese state-sponsored programmes centred in Taiwan, then a Japanese colony. This agenda, however, failed after the late 1920s, when the Chinese bourgeoisie, especially those from the Hokkien and Teochew circles, began to organise Chinese anti-Japanese nationalist movements. After that, Japan began to work more closely with the non-Chinese merchants, including the Malays and Indian merchants, while framing the Chinese as outsiders and exploiters of the natives in the region. Although some Chinese (especially those from the Cantonese sub-ethnic group) continued to import goods from Japan to Singapore despite the surge of Chinese anti-Japanese nationalism throughout the 1930s, Japan viewed these Cantonese merchants as competitors rather than collaborators.