Under the ASEAN-China Study Programme launched in 2003, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) organized the ASEAN-China Forum: Realities and Prospects on 23–24 June 2004. From this forum, a book entitled ASEAN-China Relations: Realities and Prospects edited by Saw Swee- Hock, Sheng Lijun and Chin Kin Wah was published by ISEAS in the following year to provide a more permanent source of valuable information for a wider audience.

Under the same Programme, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and the East Asian Institute (EAI) of the National University of Singapore organized the Conference on Southeast Asian Studies in China: Challenges and Prospects on 12–14 January 2006. The three-day conference was divided into two parts: the first was devoted to papers written and presented in English and the second to papers written in Chinese and presented in Mandarin. This was meant to facilitate the gathering of a larger group of Chinese scholars, including those conversant in Chinese but not English. The chapters incorporated in this book consist of those papers written in English and subsequently revised for publication in this book.

In recognition of the dominant political and economic presence of China in Southeast Asia, the conference was designed to promote a better understanding among the peoples of the two regions. Beyond superficial contacts through official visits, business and tours, people from both sides still have large gaps of knowledge about each other. Scholars and academics from both sides have an important role to play in terms of creating greater awareness of each other through research, workshops, and conferences. Whilst many universities and research institutes in the ASEAN region are conducting studies on various aspects of China, it is equally important to promote a better understanding of Southeast Asia among the people and the Government of China. The book traces the development of Southeast Asian Studies in China, discusses the current status of these studies, examines the problems encountered in the pursuit of these studies, and attempts to evaluate their prospects in the years ahead.

We would like to thank the chapter writers for their excellent cooperation, Professor Wang Gungwu, Chairman of EAI, and Mr K. Kesavapany, Director of ISEAS, for their encouragement in the organization of the conference and the publication of the book, and Mrs Triena Ong, Managing Editor at ISEAS, for overseeing the expeditious publication of the book.

INTRODUCTION

As a region that is historically deeply intertwined with China, Southeast Asia is a natural focus of the Chinese state and its scholarly community. Rather than a comprehensive historical survey of Southeast Asian Studies (hereafter SEAS) in China, our survey will seek to advance an institutional interpretation of it. By an institutional perspective, we mean that we view the pursuit of knowledge as being profoundly influenced by the institutional setting of a scholarly community and the society at large.

Thus, our survey does not intend to provide a comprehensive survey of the history and present status of SEAS in China. Rather, we are more interested in understanding how and why China's SEAS has been shaped by the overall institutional environment, and how its future will continue to be shaped by this institutional environment. More specifically, we seek to underscore that the evolution of Southeast Asian Studies in China has been profoundly shaped by three factors: The changing but steadily increasing demand of the Chinese state, the ever deepening inter-dependence between China and Southeast Asia (which partly and indirectly influences SEAS in China through influencing the demand from the state), and the rise of the mass media.

The chapter starts with a brief organizational overview of SEAS in China. Next, it briefly reviews the evolution of Southeast Asian Studies after the founding of the People's Republic of China, highlighting several important developments in its evolutionary path. It then connect these shifts with the three institutional factors. Finally, it explores the future of SEAS in China and what can be done to improve its prospect through institutional changes.

SEAS IN CHINA TODAY: THE ORGANIZATIONAL SETTING

The institutional setting of Southeast Asian Studies in China today can be first understood organizationally. It contains three explicit and implicit dimensions of division of labour. The first explicit division of labour is between institutions affiliated with universities and institutions affiliated with central or local Academy of Social Sciences (ASS) (for a brief introduction to these institutions, see Table 4.1). Institutions affiliated with universities have more responsibility for training new generations of scholars, and they usually maintain a graduate programme but also play a role in training undergraduates.

Nearly thirty-five million ethnic Chinese now live outside mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Known collectively as “Chinese overseas”, they are a crucial force in the socio-economic transformations of modern China and the countries they reside and in the processes of cross-national interaction. Viewed from the perspective of international migration, they are one of the most dynamic immigrant and ethnic minorities. Despite a steady growth of interest in diasporic Chinese societies, relevant writings are scattered across scholarly journals, while some pioneering studies are out of print and hard to find. By re-examining the central themes of some representative works published in the last seven decades and reflecting upon the changing genealogies of the field, I hope readers can gain a deeper understanding of Chinese communities overseas in different historical periods and geo-cultural settings.

While by no means a comprehensive survey of relevant scholarship, this essay sketches the main trajectories and themes in Chinese international migration, meaning “the departure from Chinese soil for the purpose of living and working abroad with the likelihood of settlement”, whether or not the settlement was intended. It also reviews the changing approaches to these themes in spatial and temporal perspectives. The chapter goes on to provide an overview of these main approaches and connects them thematically and in other ways, and suggests additional references. Although this article is not specifically concerned with the status of overseas Chinese studies in the PRC per se, many issues discussed here have also been closely scrutinized by scholars in China, whose important efforts have collectively contributed to the field's emergence and maturation. This essay, therefore, can be read comparatively with other chapters in this volume dealing with Overseas Chinese studies in the PRC.

TRAJECTORIES AND THEMES

The Chinese have had a long history of living and working outside China — a concept that is in itself a historical construct. The first account of Chinese emigration dates back to the Qin and Han dynasties (221 B.C.–220 A.D.), but not until the mid-nineteenth century did Chinese start to leave on a massive scale. This exodus had two principal causes: The socio-economic dislocations brought about by Western intrusion and the deteriorating imperial order in late Qing China; and the growth in demand for cheap labour and for merchants to serve as middlemen between the Westerners and Southeast Asian indigenes.

INTRODUCTION

More than two decades ago, a delegation of Australian historians and social scientists led by Professor Wang Gungwu visited universities, centres, and institutes in the People's Republic of China (PRC) to find out more about the state of Southeast Asian Studies in the country. The curiosity was generated by the fact that while academics knew much about the state of Southeast Asian Studies in North America, Europe and Japan, they were less cognizant as to the state of the art in China. Many of the important observations made by these scholars were that Southeast Asian Studies scholarship in China has had the unfortunate experience of neglect and discontinuities in the 1960s and 1970s; and that PRC scholars doing Southeast Asian Studies were predominantly concerned with the problems of Chinese overseas and “the Chinese influence in Southeast Asia”. One member of the delegation, David Marr, made a salient observation that there seemed to be a lack of seriousness in Chinese Southeast Asian Studies scholarship in researching “the autonomous histories of Southeast Asian kingdoms”. His mere suggestion that PRC scholars needed to pay some attention to the subject raised the ire of the host and propelled him into a long, argumentative defence.

In the last twenty-five years, Southeast Asian Studies in China has experienced a sea-change. Since the early 1980s, Southeast Asian Studies in the country developed much more rapidly after the open-door economic reform policy initiated by Deng Xiaoping. Institutes and centres on Southeast Asian Studies have been better financed by governments, staffed with young and energetic scholars trained in the various humanities and social sciences, and have produced many fine and pioneering works. A review of the state of literature in 1987 revealed various positive developments in this regard. By early 2000, Southeast Asian Studies in China has gradually matured into a more coherent academic discipline supported by the state. Much has been achieved and much remained to be done, however. Liao Shaolian, in his recent review of the state of Southeast Asian Studies scholarship in the PRC, listed four problems that need to be solved for the field to go forward. There were: 1. lack of training and knowledge for some researchers; 2. duplication of research; 3. lack of research materials, and 4. limited academic exchanges.

This conference focusing on Southeast Asian Studies in China provides us with a very good opportunity to review the historical evolution and status of China's Southeast Asian Studies with many representatives from almost every institution in China concerned with Southeast Asian Studies. Talking about Southeast Asian Studies in Chinese teaching programmes and subject construction on Southeast Asian Studies are an important part of it. This chapter, therefore, recalls the development of the teaching programme and curriculum development on Southeast Asian Studies in China, summarizes the achievements and progress made in the past two decades, and meanwhile analyses the remaining problems and challenges we face.

To prepare for this chapter and gather detailed data and information, I organized a nationwide symposium at the School of International Studies, Peking University, from 3–4 December 2005. Twenty-five representatives from twelve universities, such as Peking University, Diplomacy University, University of Foreign Studies, Xiamen University, Zhongshan University, Jinan University, Yunnan University, etc., reviewed the development of teaching programmes and curriculum development on Southeast Asian Studies, analysed its status and exchanged teaching experience. Most representatives thought that great progress has been made in teaching programmes during the last two decades, which was the “golden age” for Southeast Asian Studies in China. However, they argued that the current scale of Southeast Asia teaching programmes and curriculum development is unable to meet the development needs of Sino-Southeast Asia relations, and match the position of China's large nation status. China needs to make greater effort to promote its Southeast Asia teaching programmes and academic research and to nurture more Southeast Asia talents.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHINA's SOUTHEAST ASIAN TEACHING PROGRAMMES

Chinese are the earliest people beyond Southeast Asia who knew well this region. Since the Qin dynasty (221–205 B.C.), Chinese have been migrating to this area in search of their livelihood on the unacquainted land. During China's long ancient history, almost every dynasty sent its ambassadors to ancient kingdoms in Southeast Asia, and these ambassadors left various diaries, documents and other writings about the kingdoms where they stayed as legacy for studying this area. A second group of Chinese who made contributions to the understanding of this region were travellers who were usually intellectuals.

INTRODUCTION

With fast developing relations between China and ASEAN there is a growing need for both regions to better understand each other as their political and economic interests become increasingly interwoven. Of course, the rise of China has long attracted much academic interest in the country from all over the world, including Southeast Asia. However, the state of Southeast Asian Studies in China is a less well-explored terrain. Yet this is an important issue as growing Chinese engagement of Southeast Asia needs to be underpinned by sound academic research about the region. In order to better understand the changes and challenges facing Southeast Asian Studies in China, the East Asian Institute and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore jointly organized a Conference on Southeast Asian Studies in China: Challenges and Prospects, on 12–14 January 2006. The following is a brief overview of the key issues brought up during the conference.

HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES IN CHINA

The study of Southeast Asia has deep roots in China. Dating back to as early as the third century, the records of Southeast Asia composed of the memoirs and notes of China's envoys and their assistants, monks making pilgrimages to South and Southeast Asia as well as navigators and travellers. In particular, the famed Chinese explorer, eunuch Zheng He, greatly enhanced Chinese knowledge of the region through his seven voyages. Under the Qing dynasty, the waves of Chinese immigrants to Southeast Asia in search of livelihood also boosted China's understanding of, and ties with the region at the popular level.

Even though there exists rich ancient literature on Southeast Asia, modern academic research could be traced back to the early twentieth century when Jinan University was founded in 1906 and courses on overseas Chinese and Southeast Asian history were first taught. Since then, China's Southeast Asian Studies have undergone several phases of development which have been largely shaped by two factors — China's relations with Southeast Asia and the domestic political and academic environment in China.

China's relations with Southeast Asia would provide an external impetus for the development of the field, and condition public and scholarly attention to it. China's domestic environment, on the other hand, would directly impact upon the academic freedom, resources and even approaches for scholars in the field.

Yunnan, a frontier province, shares border with Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam with a total boundary line of 4,060 kilometres, of which 1,997 km is with Myanmar, 710 km with Laos and another 1,353 km with Vietnam. It is adjacent to Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia and Singapore with the linkage of routes. There are sixteen ethnic groups living across the border line where there are eleven national first-grade border ports with more than eighty passages leading to neighbouring countries. With its special geographic position and historical relations with Southeast Asian countries, Yunnan Province provides positive external conditions for its scholars to conduct Southeast Asian Studies. Therefore, since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the government departments concerned have attached growing attention to Southeast Asian Studies in Yunnan. As a result, the academic circle has gradually turned to systematic research on Southeast Asia compared with the past spontaneous studies. Since the establishment of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies of Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, Southeast Asian Studies in Yunnan have been raised to a higher level. The further acceleration of reform and opening up has brought unprecedented opportunities to the development of Southeast Asian Studies in Yunnan in the form of increasing new academic achievements and expanding research groups. This chapter, based on the research results made by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies of Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, attempts to give a general evaluation on the history, status and outlook of Southeast Asian Studies.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES IN YUNNAN

Yunnan initiated its Southeast Asian Studies long ago. Even before the founding of the People's Republic of China, the academic institutions there had produced the odd publication. Fang Guoyu, professor at the Department of History in Yunnan University, and Zhang Fengqi were senior researchers conducting Southeast Asian Studies. They conducted thorough studies on the history of China-Southeast Asia relations and border issues with Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.

Systematic studies began in the early 1950s when the Yunnan Institute of Southeast Asian Studies initiated research on China-Myanmar boundary and Myanmar issues. Since the establishment of the Yunnan Institute of Social and Historical Studies of Minority Nationalities in 1956, some researchers at the institute began to conduct specialized researches on Southeast Asia.

PARADIGMS OF THE SOUTH CHINA SEA STUDIES IN CHINA

The South China Sea is categorized as semi-enclosed sea under the general definition set down in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (the LOS Convention). Article 122 of the convention defines “enclosed or semi-enclosed sea” as “a gulf, basin, or sea surrounded by two or more States and connected to another sea or the ocean by a narrow outlet or consisting entirely or primarily of the territorial seas and exclusive economic zones of two or more coastal States”. The South China Sea suits this definition geographically because it is surrounded by six states — China (including Taiwan), Vietnam, Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia. It has an area of 648,000 square nautical miles, twice the area of the Sea of Japan. There are hundreds of small islands in the South China Sea, namely uninhabited islets, shoals, reefs, banks, sands, cays and rocks. According to Workman, they consist mainly of coral reefs. They are widely distributed in the South China Sea in the form of four groups of islands and underwater features, that is, the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Qundao), the Paracel Islands (Xisha Qundao), the Macclesfield Bank (Zhongsha Qundao), and the Spratly Islands (Nansha Qundao). It is interesting to note that in Chinese these groups of small islands have a big name — “qundao”, or archipelago. Such a nomenclature is questionable in law and/or in geography, particularly for the Macclesfield Bank, which is permanently submerged under water, though it is a common Chinese view to consider the Scarborough Reef as part of the Macclesfield Bank. If such a view could be generally accepted, then the English name should be changed to “the Macclesfield Islands”, like those of the other three groups. However, a detailed discussion on it is beyond the scope of the present topic.

The political situation in the South China Sea is complicated, as it contains potential of conflict arising from different national interests. In terms of the island groups, because of their geographical differences, their political situations are accordingly different from one other. The Pratas Islands are under the firm control of the Taiwan Chinese. No competing claims exist there under the current “one China” concept. For the Macclesfield Bank, the only claimant is China including Taiwan.

INTRODUCTION

Southeast Asia is closely linked with the Chinese society, not only because of a great number (more than thirty million) of ethnic Chinese in the region but also because of its multilateral connections with China. Historically speaking, China and Southeast Asia started interactions which could be traced back to as early as 111 B.C. when China took over Vietnam during the Han dynasty. Both parties expanded bilateral contacts since Admiral General Cheng Ho's voyages to Southeast Asia during the Ming dynasty in the fifteenth century. China and Southeast Asia have gradually strengthened various interactions since the late nineteenth century when more Chinese immigrated to Southeast Asia due to China's internal chaos and the economic opportunities in this part of the world. Geographically speaking, Southeast Asia has long been regarded as China's rear door or the neighbour in the South. It is particularly true for the people in China's provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan, because peoples (particularly minority ethnic groups) over there often migrate from one area to another, regardless of the concepts of borders and territories of the modern nation-state.

Culturally speaking, in addition to the minority ethnic groups along the borders of China and Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar where these minority groups share similar cultures, ethnic Chinese (mainly Cantonese, Fujiannese, Hainanese, and Hakkanese) have also appeared in all countries in Southeast Asia since the late seventeenth century, making Chinese culture significant in the local countries. Economically speaking, the minority groups in the north of mainland Southeast Asia and the above four ethnic Chinese groups along the coast of the South China Sea have already established a long economic history with the local people and among themselves. Politically speaking, it was since the late Ching dynasty that the Chinese Government began to be officially in touch with Western colonial powers, and China began to establish counselor offices in a number of Southeast Asian countries after the Republic of China (ROC) was established in 1911.

Given these close connections between China and Southeast Asia, the study of Southeast Asia in China only began in the early twentieth century, much late than the beginning of bilateral interactions of the two sides.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter reviews the development of China's Southeast Asian Studies since the 1950s, especially after the late 1970s. It also examines profiles of major Southeast Asian research centres in China and identifies their changing research focus. In doing so, we attempt to capture the changes in the field of Southeast Asian Studies and challenges faced by this specific academic circle in China.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, China's Southeast Asian Studies have undergone the following stages of development — initial development from the 1950s to the mid-1960s, paralysis from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s because of the Cultural Revolution, rebuilding of the programme in the 1980s after economic reform, expansion in the 1990s, and diversification and rapid development in the 2000s. We argue that at each stage, China's Southeast Asian Studies have been influenced profoundly by both China-ASEAN relations and China's domestic political environment for academic research.

This chapter begins with a brief review of the history of Southeast Asian Studies in China, from the 1950s to the present. The next part analyses the contents of articles on Southeast Asia in China and identifies this changing research focus and interests. The following part suggests a number of remaining academic challenges for China's Southeast Asian scholars. Our studies draw on reviews on the field by China's and Singapore's scholars presented at the Conference on “Southeast Asian Studies in China: Challenges and Prospects” held on 12–14 January 2006 in Singapore. Data for our paper also come from our interviews with regional research institutes in China (administered by Tok Sow Keat), information provided by these research institutes or by their websites or publications, and our analysis of contents of leading publications. Our study also benefits from earlier and brief surveys of China's Southeast Asian programmes, including those by Wang (1985) and Curley and Liu (2002) especially by Liu Yong Zhuo (1994), Chen Qiaozhi and others (1992), Zhang Liang and Yang (2002), and Liu Hong (2003). The former two systemic overviews of Southeast Asian Studies were published in 1992 and 1994 respectively, and its information appeared to be rather dated. Liu Hong provides a comprehensive and useful, as well as the most recent, study of Southeast Asian programmes in China.

Myanmar under the Revolutionary Council (RC) that came to power through a coup d'etat on 2 March 1962 underwent a political and economic transformation. The parliamentary regime was replaced by a military junta, which abolished the Constitution and ruled by decree, removing all vestiges of the ancien regime. The populace was completely depoliticized and socialist revolution became the vanguard of state ideology. The mixed economy comprising a nascent private sector and a shrinking state sector was replaced by a state-controlled autarkic economy that stressed self-reliance and equity.

RESTRUCTURING STATE AND SOCIETY

Both the RC, which was the supreme authority, and the Revolutionary Government (RG) of senior military officers were chaired by General Ne Win, the idiosyncratic chief of the armed forces. The RG instituted a hierarchy of Security and Administrative Committees (SACs) to replace the civil service. The SACs’ principal function seems “to have been to check on local initiatives and to ensure that central directives were followed”.

The RC announced its ideology known as the Myanma Hsoshelit Lanzin or the Burmese Way to Socialism (BWS), on 30 April 1962. The BWS, inspired by the socialist tradition of pre-independence nationalists, denounced bureaucracy, repudiated parliamentary democracy, and promised to develop a non-exploitative planned socialist economy as well as a socialist democracy appropriate to Myanmar conditions. Subsequently, the RC formed a cadre party called the Myanma Hsoshelit Lanzin Parti (Burma Socialist Programme Party, or BSPP) in July. This was followed by the publication of the BSPP's world-view in January 1963. Entitled “The System of Correlation of Man and His Environment” (SCME), it was an eclectic mixture of Buddhism and Marxism couched in general terms susceptible to a variety of interpretations.

The autarkic approach of the Revolutionary Council (RC) era was modified when the “Long-Term and Short-Term Economic Policies” (LTSTEP) were adopted as the economic manifesto of the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) that led the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma after March 1974. However, the state-led import-substituting industrialization (ISI) strategy which had been continuously pursued since Myanmar's independence remained unchanged within the Twenty-Year Plan's (TYP) framework. As such, it entailed acceptance of official development assistance (ODA) and private sector participation in selected industrial activities.

INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY, POLICIES AND PLANS

The aim of Myanmar's industrial strategy in the BSPP framework was to create an industrial base utilizing Myanmar's natural resources and agricultural products for an eventual transformation into an industrialized country. The emphasis was on resource-based industrialization (RBI) while incorporating an “export-substituting” element that entailed increasing the export of value-added (through industrial processing) products. Nevertheless, the legacy of inward-orientation in economic outlook together with restrictive external trade policies foreclosed the EOI (export-oriented industrialization) option.

The long-term policies enunciated in the LTSTEP document were adopted as guidelines for the FYPs and their annual components. Together with the list of ownership vis-à-vis industrial classifications stipulated in the LTSTEP document, the sectoral objectives and policies enunciated in the latter formed the basis of state-led industrialization in the TYP (1974–94) period.

The FYP plan guidelines for the industrial sectors endorsed by the corresponding Pyithu Hluttaw sessions are shown in Table 7.1. They reflected the BSPP's perception on means and ends for transforming Myanmar into an agriculture-based industrial economy by 1994. They also demonstrate the persistence of resource constraints, especially capital and energy shortages, and that each successive FYP encountered essentially the same problems and shortcomings thereby eliciting similar exhortations. These guidelines suggest that underutilization of industrial assets and lack of financial and technological resources were major problems for state industrial enterprises (SIEs) throughout these four FYP periods. Given such constraints, rationalization of the SIEs with less emphasis on new projects and more on full utilization of existing factories should have been carried out from the outset. However, only in fiscal 1983/84 did the state decided to give priority to “completing ongoing projects” and new ones that “were less capital intensive, had short gestation periods, utilized domestic resource base, and had good export potential”.