by Hugh M. Lewis

The principle characteristic and enduring feature of the Nanyang has been predominant economic orientation--an orientation that has come to ethno-culturally characterize the Overseas Chinese, often negatively. It is argued that this most characteristic economic preoccupation of the Nanyang Chinese can be best understood in terms of their regional inter-positionality as an entrepreneurial pariah class of merchant-middlemen mediating the relations between the "dual economies" of the local native context and the larger regional/global market economy.

The Nanyang of today are caught in the throes of a national identity crisis, or of a national double-identity. With the removal of colonial rule their social visibility became quite prominent as a pariah class. The modern era became the era for "competitive race relations" in a new pluralistic situation of complexity. Relations between ethnic groups are characteristically marked by ambivalence and ambiguity. 

The Chinese are faced with a problem of a "double identity" (Strauch, 1980) in which factors preserving their characteristic ethos of Chineseness came into conflict with factors related to their characteristic pragmatism in social relations and business. They were seen to come into direct competition, as an ethnic group, politically economically and socially with the indigenous peoples. They have faced an existential choice of redefining their ethnicity either in terms of cultural assimilation with the host society or in terms of systematic exclusion from its political, economic and social life. In spite of growing competition, their roles and assets as merchant middlemen are not easily expendable and replaceable within the new retarded economics of the independent nations. "Economic interests are viewed in and ethnic framework come to be seen as structured by that ethnic framework. The shift is so subtle as to be easily overlooked, or ignored." (Judith Strauch "The Chinese Exodus from Vietnam: Implications for the Southeast Asian Chinese," 1980:11)

Ethnization, as a social process, is one of "diagonal stratification" and resource mobilization that cross-cuts vertical, political economic, and horizontal socio-economic and religious boundaries. It is a process critically tied to the economization and "marketization" or "commodization" of social relations, which is entirely impersonal and "knows nothing of honor", and which serves to redefine inter-positional status-role identity within a larger developing framework. It was the very ubiquity of the Chinese middleman in the 'dual economies' of Southeast Asia that prompted J. S. Furnival to coin the term "plural society"--"to describe the pattern of specialization and division of labor along ethnic lines." (Janet T. Landa, 1983:86) Ethnic communities, emergent from such processes, define values as reward structures, "reinforcement priorities" or "resource systems," and come to compose networks of "opportunity structures".

"Community closure" by the dominant groups against the weaker ones may be so effective as to render the latter unable to resort to their own "community formation" and "community closure" in order to improve their under-privileged position. In time, such groups may be driven to assume the position of a "negatively privileged status group". Its inability to effect its own community formation and closure, according to Weber, would result in two important consequences that can perpetuate the group's under-dog position. First, the denial of economic and political opportunities and, second, the consequent denial of social esteem which essentially rests upon the prior appropriation of economic and political powers. This means that individual's form a "negatively privileged status group" can be prevented from influencing the terms of their participation in the wider community on the basis of their social category. Furthermore, the representatives of the dominant groups through their interest associations can and will tend to regulate and control the negatively privileged, thus making the latter dependent on the former group. In time, a stereotype image about the relative position and social standing of the different groups within a community can be firmly entrenched, forcing the perpetuation of the status quo through the legitimization of social power by the privileged. (Lawrence Siaw, 1981:395-396)

The basic features of plural societies include ethnic group boundaries, separate communities, ethnic differentiation of economic functions, roles, status and class, low rate of intermarriage and uneven distribution of wealth, power and opportunity, within a politically unified communal framework. Rulers and ruled are ethnically distinct, and there is an absence of shared communal values or consensus, either politically or culturally. Both economic competition and political conflict become cast in ethnic terms. There is between group "schismogenesis" that generates potential for conflict. The marketplace is the only communal forum--an inter-ethnic "no-man's-land" in which different ethnic strategies and identities are played out against one another. Plural societies are complicated by the co-existence of overlapping and competing multiple political economic hierarchies of social stratification that become skewed by ethnization. Stratification in such contexts becomes "multidimensional" incorporating structural inconsistencies between individuals or even groups occupying different positions within several hierarchies. Relative inbetweenness constitutes a kind of status inconsistency which becomes viewed as a form of marginality which may "breed discontent and resentment." (Blumberg, 1972:pg. 22)

The inter-positionality of the Nanyang Chinese is that economically they are often in a superior relation, while politically they may be subordinate, and socially "extraneous" to the host societies in which they are operating.

Max Weber distinguished three dimensions of social stratification--social class, political affiliation and status-groups. These three dimensions are usually inter-linked, though they may stand independently of one another. Status-groups are usually communities that may be amorphous in definition or composition, marked by a "status situation". It is every typical component of the life and fate of people that is determined by a specific, positive or negative, social estimation of honor. This may be part of a plurality and closely interwoven with "class situation" that is clearly linked to the decisive market "moment" in the realization of economic advantage and possession of property. "Like ethnic communities, status communities can also monopolize economic or occupational advantages. Implicit in this analogy is the close relationship between social status and ethnicity. Hence ethnic differentiation can be paralleled with social gradation. (Lawrence L. K. Siaw, 1981:395)

In general, however, the status structure reaches such extreme consequences only where there are underlying differences that are held to be "ethnic". The "caste" is the normal form in which ethnic communities usually live side by side in a "societalized" manner. The ethnic communities believe in blood relationships and exclude exogamous marriage and social intercourse. Such a caste situation is part of the phenomenon of "pariah" peoples and is found all over the world. These people form communities, acquire specific occupational traditions of handicrafts or other arts, and cultivate a belief in their ethnic community. They live in a "diaspora" strictly segregated from all personal intercourse, except that of an unavoidable sort, and their situation is legally precarious. Yet, by virtue of their economic indispensability, they are tolerated, and indeed, frequently privileged, and they live in interspersed political communities. The Jews are the most impressive historical example. (Max Weber, "Class, Caste and Parties" 1946)

Status-honor, like ethnic "pride," is normally linked to a particular "style of life" that is shared by members of the group--the expectation of which is linked to restrictions on "social intercourse." Such restrictions lead to stratification and closure between groups. Ethnic honor and status honor are closely linked, except that ethnic honor tends not to be as restrictive as status honor. This closure corroborates with Brown's hypothesis that ethnic diversity varies with closed hierarchies. Hierarchy begets cultural differentiation. Closed hierarchies can base such cultural differentiation upon ethnic distinctions between biologically "closed groups"--open hierarchies cannot be based upon such a presumption of ethno-cultural difference--such societies, like traditional Chinese society, have tremendous powers of universal incorporation. (D. E. Brown, 1976:95)

Because the market place becomes the center of transaction and exchange between ethnic groups in a plural society, there is a marketization of inter-ethnic relations which become defined in terms of market-place and market-exchange transactions. While the voluntaristic and impersonal relations of market exchange tends intrinsically to reduce or ameliorate inter-ethnic conflict and difference, other factors serve to increase the possibility of such conflict. Political monopolization or intervention, the promotion of asymmetries of exchange and inequities of class, and competitive exclusion by common interest groups defined along ethnic lines, may all result in "exchange-generated conflict" which may include contests, competitions, disputes and tensions as well as socially expressed aggression. Such conflict becomes a form of negative solidarity or reciprocity. Trading specialists (i.e. Chinese merchant middlemen in Southeast Asian markets) become major foci of conflict relations. Such exchange conflict can be constrained by ritual or jural proscription, social distancing mechanisms or avoidance patterns that serve to define and delimit the range of possible interactions, or by displacement upon a third, neutral party. The inter-positioning of ethnically defined, "pariah" middlemen minority groups has the effect of creating social distance--economic spheres are the only zones of interethnic interaction, while marriage and kinship relations, social networks and religious affiliation, are kept structurally separate.

Maintaining social distance has two contradictory effects. On the one hand, as we have seen, by socially separating the traders it focuses the conflict on them and diminishes the possibilities of its being offset by crosscutting conflicts. On the other hand, it insulates most community social relations from an important source of conflict and, as with the spatial separation brought about by markets, helps relieve the trader from the expectations of fair dealing and generosity that the peasants have among one another. This change of expectations, as does the market place, constitutes a mechanism for displacement of the exchange-generated conflict by focusing some of the tension on inter-ethnic group relations rather than on parties to an individual transaction. Such displacement helps explain the remarkable hostility often encountered by minority trading groups. It helps explain why traders who are the object of such hostility are not readily replaced by traders from the majority group: the latter are destroyed by the conflict inherent in their commercial activities or by the uneconomic behavior required of them if they are to avoid conflict. (Brian Foster, 1978:14)

In plural contexts, the maintenance of ethnic differences, particularly for an intermediary group, may have a function of facilitating commerce. John T. Omohundro, in reference to the Chinese merchant community of the Philippines, sees ethnic difference facilitating economic transactions in five ways:

The complementary side of the political-economic coin of economic marketization of ethnicity is the political process of "co-option" and bureaucratic encapsulization of majority-minority relations. The Nanyang was never an independent state in terms of territorial sovereignty, except in Singapore. Its intermediate status was determined by situational geo-political contexts and circumstances and by its adaptability to political changes in such contexts. "Encapsulization" by divisive national interests and global market political economies tied the Nanyang economic empire to a set of crosscutting chains of political authority and dependency. A bureaucratic tendency has emerged that minimizes the interaction between local groups within wider fields of action. "Chinese middlemen at all levels serve as specialized middle-men linking their fellow Chinese further down the scale into the Malay-dominated political system. Rather than integration per se, an attenuated encapsulation prevails. "(Judith Strauch, 1981:12)

In this setting, linkages, alliances, and coalitions at all levels of society combine what appears on the surface to be situational flexibility and fluidity with a certain degree of underlying rigidity based on the givens of ethnicity and power. Center-periphery relations ideally incorporate not only elements of dominance, demanding compliance and submission, but also elements of solidarity, promising consonance and unity of interests as a basis for legitimacy and trust. Such solidarity must be found in common ethnicity or level of power, however. The Malay-dominated center shares a bond of common ethnicity with the Malay periphery, and bonds of common interest with the Chinese elites who share some power at the center, but in relation to the Chinese periphery an operational commonality is lacking. The Malay center dominates the Chinese periphery, but it is able to offer little direct inducement to or assurance of solidarity; instead it seeks merely to minimize alienation and fall back on acceptable neutrality. It is left to the subordinate Chinese elements of the center, from its ambiguous position of uncertain proximity to real power, to act as mediator and convey an aura of solidarity and inclusion embracing the Chinese periphery. It is a task that is not always accomplished. (Judith Strauch, 1981:13)

The Nanyang Chinese have been noted for their characteristic failure to achieve the "community closure," deemed prerequisite to their ethnic political-economic mobilization. This is only in part due to their intermediate status within a host society and their lack of political-geographic autonomy. It also seems to be in part due to their communal "openness" and their assimilative power for universal incorporation. In fact, no where that the Chinese are not politically-territorially in control, are they able to effect any degree of "pan-Chinese" solidarity. They have long been involved in divisive, sub-ethnic identities and affiliations, crosscutting organizations that tend to undermine unity of action and purpose. Political parties, common interests groups are always limited, internally divided and never whole-hearted. The Chinese have been typically unable to assert authoritatively their "ethnic honor." "Indeed, history has shown that the Chinese....have had great difficulty in uniting as an ethnic entity against non-Chinese threats." (Lawrence Siaw, 1981:397) Their lack of achieving pan-ethnic solidarity or community closure, is held in part to account for their resorting to many illegal avenues "to satisfy their basic social and psychological needs for reward and recognition even among themselves." (ibid. pg. 397) 

The larger the Chinese minority, the more divisive and complex its internal organization became, and the more problematic its potential for unity of action. Sub-ethnic distinctions between different Chinese communities undermined such possibilities and prevented the formation of a genuinely pan-ethnic "Chineseness"--a stereotype more apparent from the outside than the inside. "Indeed, the more they try to express their 'Chineseness,' the more divisive they become." (ibid., pg. 402)

Variety characterized the Chinese ethnic "identity" in Southeast Asia. It was originally based on the South Chinese dialects that distinguished groups within the Chinese community. This basic linguistic differentiation became enhanced by differences in occupation, class, nation of residence, and various other factors of the Nanyang. Much of it was an extension and social elaboration of solidarity patterns in Mainland China, in which common origin or place of residence remains to this day important factors of affiliation and solidarity. Another element of diversity within the Chinese community was added by the varying degrees of acculturation and accommodation of the Chinese to indigenous cultures, culminating in some cases to complete assimilation, but more often marked by the creation of new groups of acculturated Chinese. Some acculturated Chinese developed a coherent "new" identity, such as the Baba in Malaysia, while others in scattered communities were marked by less well-defined intermediate acculturated identities. (L.A.P. Gosling, The Chinese in Southeast Asia, Vol. II, 1983:2)

The cultural ethos of the Oversea Chinese reflected their inter-positional social status--seen from the inside, we have a basic shift from an etic "circumstantialist" perspective toward a more emic ".primordialist" account of common values, heritage, and tradition which makes for a theme of Chinese unity in diversity in the Nanyang. Promotion of common ethnicity is a means of one status grouping to achieve political-economic mobilization and social consolidation vis-a-vis a counter-reference group. Marginal groups frequently develop an ethno-centric orientation, an ethnic "honor", of superiority reflecting internal cohesion and solidarity "born of the need for mutual protection and reassurance" in the face of structural ambiguity and insecurity and social subordination. This position of common marginality may favor achievement, and if the group has had past experience in market relationships, this achievement motivation is likely to become expressed economically--thus we have a common, core Chinese value orientation emphasizing achievement, pragmatism, entrepreneurial capacity, risk-taking behavior, social mobility and education. They came as a new immigrant group with previous expertise in money handling and in social organization for business--such values contributed to economic success which reinforced and validated such values.

The sense of a Chinese community developed from a shared environment that required an individual and social level of value orientation and integration.. At the individual level there was heavy emphasis placed on work, competition, frugality, achievement, success and accumulation of wealth. At the social level emphasis was on co-operation, mutual help and common endeavor within the family, the clan association, and the lineage whether in fact or in attribution. "The Chinese community thus grew out of a response to the challenges of survival, growth and consolidation. Its ethos of work, achievement and success was consistently manifested through the social framework and was relatively unstructured." (Tham Seong Chee, 1977:320)

Values promoting entrepreneurial and organizational success in a foreign, frequently hostile environment, were thus selected for at a culturally, and possibly even a genetic, level, and once acquired, these values were firmly impressed and transmitted to successive generations. Education in Chinese schools became a critically important mechanism for the transmission of such Chinese values. The Chinese class hierarchy prized economic achievement, as was thus completely open to upwardly mobile individuals. Success was not just individual, but concomitantly familial and organizational. If upward mobility was paramount, downward mobility was also highly devalued. For every successful Towkay, a thousand poor coolies wasted their lives by hard work, malnutrition, opium and gambling. Upward mobility was rapid, within a single generation in many cases, and was associated with a series of correct and lucrative business transactions. Exploitation of opportunities, often illicit, provided opportunities for quick gain and loss. Statistically incremental social mobility, slower but more stable, rewarded the combined efforts of trans-generational lineages and family and clan networks--one's ancestors laid the foundations for the success or future of future generations. These values were reinforced by the cult of ancestor worship and the ethos of parental authority and filial piety. A value emphasis on education as a legitimate and pragmatic mechanism of social mobility, also reinforced this ethos.

Civilization has been defined in terms of its characteristic style patterns and by the incidence of great men, or cultural genius, that defines and elaborates these style patterns. (A. L. Kroeber, Style and Civilization, 1959) In the case of Nanyang civilization, what is clearly evident is a core cultural value orientation and an amazingly high and consistent frequency of a long list of successful Merchants or Towkays or "Kapitan's China" who defined their genius in organizational networking skills.

The social networking of the overseas Chinese provided screens of support as well as screens of opportunity and platforms for mobility. In these networks, five categories of relative ethnic distance/trust are distinguishable--kinship being the closest, atomistic category, and extending outwardly until a line of solidarity is passed. Each of these categories occupies a special place within the overall communal structure, and individuals occupy multiple positions in relation to others within all these categories. "This implies that different patterns can be predicted for each category of members corresponding to their location in the social structure." (Janet Landa, 1983: pg. 98) This leads to a field of decreasing ethnic identity with increasing social distance, "there is a tendency for insider networks towards sub-ethnic homogeneity." "Generally, the strategy of successful merchants seemed to be to maintain large numbers of persons in the "known" category through minimal participation in a large number of association and social activities. If they subsequently needed to contact someone either for information or to initiate a business transaction, common group memberships and prior acquaintance smoothed the way." (Clifton Barton, 1983: pg. 60) Networking success among the Chinese has been found to be correlated to kinds and degree of network involvement in the course of an individual's career development. It is also related to the percentage of kin-related and personalistic ties, use of more "inside" kinsmen as coworkers rather than as "outside" benefactors, and the use of "fictive" kinsmen as "outside benefactors." "Almost all Chinese...have available to them a wide variety of social relationships with which to reinforce their commercial connections....To have connections with persons or businesses who offer favours, loans, emergency assistance or inside information, who can be trusted and by whom one will be trusted, is clearly to have a commercial advantage in an erratic, potentially hostile, highly competitive economy..." (John T. Omohundro, 1983:67-8)

In the Philippine Chinese merchant community, according to Omohundro, there is a constant development through the cumulative effects of many individuals making decisions "to secure their security and livelihood.....change in the merchant community comes from the statistical trend of these small and constant network adjustments." Every merchant is active "in this statistical trend of minute changes over time...Individuals are ruined and rewarded and the resulting pool of cultural values and strategies, though based predominantly upon pre-existing cultural material, is altered in emphasis, in proportions." According to Omohundro, no single system of network relation or decision making will always assure success of an individual merchant, because the background of operations is in a state of continual flux. Success is a question of chance, but merchants hedge their bets by keeping track of the shifting web of relations within an insider's information loop. "And when successful Chinese merchants' patterns of social and business networks are imitated by or passed on to others, while failures either change their ways or leave the ethnic group, then the 'Chinese community' is a changed entity." (John T. Omohundro, 1983: 80)

The marginal position of the Chinese community with host societies sometimes meant that normal avenues for status recognition were sometimes effectively closed to its members--encouraging them perhaps to seek and find alternative means of self-expression and empowerment, and to maintain a low profile visibility vis-a-vis the host society. One core characteristic of Chinese communities overseas has been the relative invisibility of a great deal of their socio-economic power. "One of the basic features of Chinese business enterprise is the extent to which success is kept hidden from outsiders." (Clifton Barton, 1983: 47-8) The use of front-men, or ghost-partners, and obscure business fronts, are typical strategies of businessmen who wish to obscure their activities from local officials and operate beyond the reach of tax collectors. "Often the basis of a multi-million-dollar enterprise turns out to be an inconspicuous shopkeeper, dressed in nothing but a pair of shorts, sitting in a small, dark and very old-looking business establishment which differs not at all from scores of similar firms on the same street. (ibid. pg. 48). Social order and cultural ethos reinforce one another.

"To the Chinese, money and marriage is serious business." Family and marriage, seen from such an emic point of view, become important aspects of maintaining Chinese ethnic solidarity and enhancing social mobility. "Love will grow." Marriage frequently becomes a business merger--whether or not love is involved. "The consequence of this endogamy and residential stability is a thick web of kin and business interconnections that serve to reinforce partnerships, import-wholesale-retail distributor chains, credit arrangements, commercial apprenticeships and other business deals." (John T. Omohundro;, 1977:96)

Thus, it is seen that ethnic boundaries and identities are policed from within as much as constrained from without. Ethnic consciousness becomes a paramount process in the formation and maintenance of such boundaries. It functions not just as cognitive models, symbolic systems, or shared values and conceptions and practices, but as an internally consistent and externally efficacious behavioral ethos of a common way or style of life that results in the formation of characteristic kinds of authoritarian power structures and corresponding "achievement motivations." This becomes part of the larger process of "ethnization" that involves the politicization of ethnic categories, labels, identities, markers, and boundaries, and the corresponding "economization" of ethnically defined and available resources. "Ethnic groups maintain their boundaries in part by supporting a certain set of values, or reward structures, that individuals can use for self-ascription and self-evaluation. In the language of the social psychology of bargaining, (ethnic groups) may differ enough in their payoff matrices by virtue of membership in different ethnic groups that trade can be rewarding for both. These payoff matrices are composed of as many motivational factors as the researcher wishes to insert...."(John T. Omohundro, 1977:132)

Ethnicity is an inherently multifaceted phenomenon--it has a variety of different aspects and dimensionalities. "Analyses have always been couched in terms of cultural definitions, of perceptual and cognitive categories, of social distance and solidarity of groups, of boundary definition and maintenance, of conflict and competition, of emergent versus conservative qualities of the phenomenon, and so forth--and all hold some validity...." (Judith Strauch, "Multiple Ethnicities in Malaysia: The Shifting Relevance of Alternative Chinese Categories" Modern Asian Studies: Vol. 15, no. 2, 1981:235) "Careful analytical distinctions must be drawn between different conceptual orders of 'ethnicity' as they apply to a wide range of self-conceptualizations and social behavior and experience." (ibid.: pg. 236)

According to Strauch, ethnic groups, ethnic identity, and ethnic categories are separate but interdependent phenomena. Ethnic identity and categories may operate independently, but ethnic groups, with the connotation of some form of consensus or corporate, functional organization, must be built upon internalized identities and categories, and in turn reinforce these. Ethnic categories promote order and expectability in complex, heterogenous social situations--ethnic identities result from a labeling process relating to categorical expectations of social behavior. "The social meanings of ethnicity, therefore, depend directly on the wider social context of which it is only a part, once the meanings have social significance in that they enable behavior to be predicted." (Mitchell 1974:23) Ethnic groups are the behavioral, social reality that categories and constructions of ethnicity underlie and in turn from which they derive.

In this regard, we can make a sociological distinction between a structural level of analysis of ethnic group and structure which is primarily articulated in terms of economic exchange, political organization and interest, class organization and religious orientation, and a social level involving interpersonal, face-to-face, interethnic and intra-ethnic interactions. Differences that arise from and primarily exist upon the structural level may not be apparent upon the social, interpersonal level. Individuals may readily cross ethnic-group boundaries, and individual ethnic classifications and identity may not completely coincide with these boundaries. Tension may exist as a "subsurface" phenomenon--as a latent potentiality of structural rift and schism. Structural discrimination may exist where social discrimination does not. "...although it is a locally salient subethnic category--e. g. Cantonese or Hokkien demographic ascendancy--that will determine the choice of language used in the street, it is the centralization of power with an ethnic group of a higher order--Malays--that determines the structuring of ethnic groups at the most inclusive level of ethnicity--Chinese as opposed to Malays." (Judith Strauch, 1981:245) There is a general need to maintain some form of alignment between the structural and social levels of interaction--social conflict may lead to structural breakdown and change, while structural contradictions may result in social conflict.

Judith Strauch made the point that the Overseas Chinese social organization is based upon a form that incorporates ethnicity as a central principle--"the principle for segmentary opposition of subethnic categories." Ethnic identity for the Nanyang Chinese exists as a multi-tiered structure. The broadest level, defined from within, is a kind of pan-Chinese cultural chauvinism that is connected to sharing in an Imperial civilization several thousands of years old. "But in contrast to most of the rest of the world, China, while evidencing rich cultural variation at regional and local levels, maintained a striking degree of unity and integration at the higher level of empire for more than two millennia." (ibid, pg. 239) Part of this pan-Chineseness is a common script, a common religious orientation, and a common "Chinese" cultural orientation. This pan-Chineseness entails that whatever the sub-ethnic distinctions, which are many and elaborate, every Chinese is somehow, however distantly, related to every other Chinese within a large hierarchy of Chinese ethnicity. As one author remarked--the Chinese are one big family.

Strauch recognized the similarity between the Chinese and African models of segmentary opposition, but noted that the Chinese model, because of Imperial integration in China, was characterized by its vast inclusiveness. There is thus a common symbolic and cultural identity of Chineseness instilled through ideological, economic and political integration that endured for centuries. "Thus the emigrant Chinese could and did recognize common ties, in ascending order, with village mates, with members of the same standard marketing system (and both of these might also be lineage mates), with non-kin from the same intermediate marketing system or administrative unit of the lowest level, or from the same county, prefecture, province, region, and ultimately from the same empire." (Judith Strauch, 1981:239)

At another level, are Chinese groups defined by nationality of residence--Thai, Singaporean, Indonesian, Malaysian, Burmese. This level is defined from without by contradistinction and competition with native populations and other minorities in plural societies. This level of ethnic differentiation has emerged as the most structurally salient to the Overseas Chinese. Sub-ethnic categories are based primarily upon the place of origination in China: province, county, city, even township. Regional variations of Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, Teochiu, etc., are distinctions that are reflected in linguistic variations and differences as well as in minor cultural variations. "Further segmentation is likely to occur within any given host locality according to smaller geographical units of origin..."(ibid., pg. 239). Distinctions also come to be made on the basis of lineage or clan identity as well as common surname. Though identity with ancestral homeland may have become quite attenuated, the Chinese never severed ties from the homeland or their identification with their ancestors' native place, but rather added more levels with each successive move. Distinctions are also sometimes made in reference to the current location of the Chinese at the local, state and national level. "At different times and places in history many of the various levels of Chinese ethnic and subethnic identities available have served in turn as the bases for group formation, while the others remained meaningful, for the time being, merely as categories." (ibid, pg. 240)

According to Strauch, Chinese ethnic identity shifts and adjusts itself to changing political circumstances and historical contexts. "In each context, ethnicity has a specific meaning, and in each, a particular conceptual order of ethnicity underlies the sense of commonality of purpose that defines the ethnic 'group'." (Judith Strauch 1981:240)

Within the colonial framework of a plural society, immigrant Chinese communities were divided along sub-ethnic lines in both cooperation and competition. Sub-ethnic identity delimited the field of opportunities and actions open to the immigrant. Although internal class distinctions existed, these were of far less significance in daily life than ethnic solidarity. "In sum, cleavages and alliances within Chinese immigrant society were both complex and of daily significance, whereas for all but the elite, contacts between Malays and with Europeans were few and relatively unimportant." (ibid., pg. 242)

Regional contrast lies in the fact that in Malaysia, unlike Thailand and the Philippines, for example, there exists no transitional ethnic category, halfway between Malay and Chinese and able to move in either direction at will. The Baba and Nonya of the colonial period are no longer possible in the post-colonial era. Islamic nationalism demands total adherence, allowing for no half-Muslims: Malays are, virtually by definition, Muslim, and Chinese are, almost without exception, non-Muslim. The Straits Chinese, like Indonesian Peranakan Chinese, are often thought of as semi-assimilated, speaking a home language that is a sinicized form of Malay, and adopting certain Malay food habits and clothing styles (Freeman 1965). But they cannot situationally opt for Malay or Chinese identity by choice, as some Thai Chinese might choose between Thai and Chinese labels. "Chinese do not take Malay names, and intermarriage is practically negligible, among urban educated classes as well as among more parochial rural segments of the population. Chinese female children (often infants) are sometimes adopted by Malay families, but they are then raised wholly as Malays, and often come strongly to deny any Chinese parentage despite their Chinese physical characteristics." (Judith Strauch, 1981:245)

The Kong Si system developed throughout Southeast Asia as a form of social structural integration that depended upon establish trade and exchange relations and partnership based upon an ethnic Chinese ethos of reciprocal trust and the notion of "dependability." This system tied planters, middlemen and agriculturalists or miners and their laborers in the same overarching network that focused on the major Chinese settlements in Southeast Asia. Cross-cutting ties of dialect, lineage, village association, tended to reinforce these bonds, but even more importantly, kinship ties were the best available means of cementing a dependable network.

According to Clifton Barton, success of Chinese in Vietnam depended almost entirely on the mechanisms of interpersonal relation and upon a calculus of trust and reliability of possible partnerships, "in the absence of a well functioning formal legal system." "The Chinese approach to business was based upon personal relationships and word-of-mouth agreements. And these verbal agreements relied solely on mutual trust--sun yung--backed by informal group sanctions. Under these rules, if a merchant was not trustworthy and reliable, that is, if he lacked sun yung, it would be impossible for him to do business. Once the fact that a merchant had failed to honour his word became known, other merchants would simply refuse to do business with him." (Clifton Barton, 1983:53)

We can see Straits societies, as the pioneering forerunners of the later conglomerate Nanyang society, playing a pivotal role in the development of the Nanyang civilization in Southeast Asia. A Russian study of the Nanyang social structure by Simoniya reveals a vast financial- credit-market system which extends throughout Southeast Asia, with Chinese merchant-middlemen, within a colonial and neo-colonial framework, serving as the key articulators of the entire regional political economy. Within this system there emerges a resolute class structure in which plantation laborers and coolies are at the bottom, small petty merchants and planters range somewhere in the middle, and urban based professionals and financiers are at the apex. Economic stratification in Overseas Chinese society of Sarawak for instance is arranged like a pyramid of social relations with the base represented by laborers and agriculturalists of the rural zones, with an intermediary class of "rural bazaar shopkeepers in the middle" and an elite of big businessmen at the apex. Power and wealth is derived through unequal structural relations from the base through the middleman structure, and concentrates at the apex. The latter control the economy and become the de facto leaders of the community. "Whether in the pre-war or post-war period the economic strata in the Chinese community have stayed substantially unaltered. It is through this economic stratification that social power is channeled and leadership structure traditionally developed." (John Chin, 1981:pg. 76-7)

Social stratification exists within, defines, and is defined by, a continuum of social interaction, enduring relations and interpersonal experience that exist through time and across space. Social stratification is transmitted through the generations and between different groupings and sub-groupings--it delimits group boundaries and asymmetries of power, and, in the sense of transcending the lived experience of any single individual, must be considered to be corporate in structure.

Social stratification can be seen to underlie ethnic stratification, boundaries, groups and identities. Just as social stratification varies through time and across space, so too do ethnic differences vary continuously in a corresponding way. Such continuous variation is the basis for speaking of an ethno-cultural continuum; of human experience. It sometimes happens, as in the cases of radically plural societies, that ethnic stratification becomes the defining principle of social stratification, with the resulting "ethos of ethnos." In such cases, ethnic differences and ethnic identities come to take on a social significance, and a real potency, which they might not otherwise have had. Also, defining social ethos in primarily in terms of ethnos tends to constrain and shape its patterning in ways that it might not have otherwise been shaped.

Though perhaps inextricably interrelated, the two kinds of phenomena--social stratification; and ethnic stratification--are yet separable and potentially independent processes. Socio-cultural homogeneity within a society may preclude some of the organizational problems which heterogeneity causes, and ethno-cultural differences also entail its own kinds of dilemmas. Yet stratification occurs in either case, and in neither case does such homogeneity or heterogeneity preclude the potential for competition and conflict on the one hand, or cooperation and social integration on the other.

The Overseas Chinese: Stereotypes and Revisions