Thammasat University students interested in political science, history, ASEAN studies, Brunei, China, international law, sociology, diplomacy, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 27 April Zoom webinar on Negotiating China’s Economic Presence in Brunei Darussalam: The Dynamics between New and Old Chinese Community.
The event, on Thursday, 27 April 2023 at 9am Bangkok time, is presented by ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore.
The TU Library collection includes several books about the economy of Brunei Darussalam.
Students are invited to register at this link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_lC8ViEN_ReWn1HTEIM5KWw#/registration
The event announcement states:
About the Webinar
The impact of China’s momentous rise has had a tremendous influence on how Chineseness is strategically reconstructed in Southeast Asia. With an increasingly assertive China and the intensification of the influence of the Sinocentre, the ways in which Chinese overseas exercise their agentic power in utilizing their cultural capital of Chineseness is largely based on pragmatic economic calculation. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has provided a strategic opportunity for Beijing to build on the economic role played by diasporic Chinese entrepreneurs and for these entrepreneurs to turn their cultural capital into fiscal capital. In light of the increased global connectivity and new Chinese migration geographies led by the BRI, this article examines the case of the Chinese business community in Brunei Darussalam. The heterogeneous responses of the ethnic Chinese to China and the BRI attest to the multiplicity and contestations of Chineseness based on different migration histories and sentiments to their ancestral land. We focus on the dynamics between the old Chinese Bruneian business elites and the more recent Chinese business migrants from Malaysia and the People’s Republic of China. An investigation of the cultural and economic politics within the Chinese Bruneian business community will provide insights into the modality of Chineseness as an economic asset that can be tactically used by diasporic Chinese entrepreneurs to maintain their social position and to respond to China’s economic rise.
About the Speaker
Chang-Yau Hoon is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, and an Adjunct Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia, where he received his PhD in Asian Studies. He chairs the Academic Board of the Brunei Research Institute at the College of ASEAN Studies, Guangxi University for Nationalities, China. He specializes in the Chinese diaspora, identity politics, multiculturalism, and religious and cultural diversity in contemporary Southeast Asia.
Associate Professor Hoon’s research is available to TU students through the TU Library Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service.
A book he coedited, Chinese Indonesians Reassessed: History, Religion and Belonging, has the following publisher’s description:
The Chinese in Indonesia form a significant minority of about three percent of the population, and have played a disproportionately important role in the country. Given that Chinese Indonesians are not seen as indigenous to the country and are consistently defined against Indonesian nationalism, most studies on the community concentrate on examining their ambivalent position as Indonesia’s perennial “internal outsider.” Chinese Indonesians Reassessed argues for the need to dislodge this narrow nationalistic approach and adopt fresh perspectives which acknowledge the full complexity of ethnic relations within the country. The focus of the book extends beyond Java to explore the historical development of Chinese Indonesian communities in more peripheral areas of Indonesia, such as Medan, the Riau Islands and West Kalimantan. It reveals the diverse religious practices of Chinese Indonesians, which are by no means confined to “Chinese” religions, and celebration of “Chinese” ethnic events. Presenting a rich array of historical and contemporary case studies, the book goes beyond national stereotypes to demonstrate how Chinese Indonesians interact with different spaces and environments to establish new Chinese Indonesian identities which are complex and multi-faceted. The book engages with a larger global literature concerned with diasporic Chinese identities and practices and offers sophisticated and empirically grounded insights on the commodification of ethnic cultures and religions.
The Voice of America News reported in 2018:
Closer China Ties Seen Pressuring Brunei on Sensitive Maritime Claims
TAIPEI — Closer business ties with Beijing could lead tiny, economically strapped Brunei to open a potentially oil-rich tract of sea to Chinese exploration despite competing sovereignty claims, experts say.
The two countries contest rights to a rectangular tract of the South China Sea extending northwest from the island of Borneo. But ties have improved while the Bruneian economy slips because of declining world oil prices and diminishing supplies. Oil and gas make up 60 percent of Brunei’s economy.
China is propping up that economy now with investments that will make it easier to tap, process and transport fossil fuels, experts say. Economic concerns will take “priority” over political issues including sovereignty, said Jonathan Spangler, director of the South China Sea Think Tank in Taipei.
“I think that China has not so much been using like an aggressive approach with Brunei, but just using economic incentives,” Spangler said. “I don’t know if it will even need to tell Brunei what to do about its maritime claims.” […]
Heads of state from Brunei and China said in September the Southeast Asian country would get more play on Beijing’s Belt and Road, a $900 billion initiative calling for new Chinese-funded infrastructure and stronger trade routes in 65 Eurasian countries.
China has invested roughly $4.1 billion altogether in Brunei. Still, the Bruneian economy sank 2.5% in 2016 and the International Monetary Fund forecast it would fall again last year on global fuel prices that have gone weaker since 2015.
Growing economic dependence on China could compel Brunei to soften its maritime claim, said Alan Chong, associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
“Every one of the claimants on the Belt and Road admits some concessions,” Chong said.
For China to push Brunei away from its claim, he said, “at the end of the day they have to sell the Bruneians something so significant that the Bruneians will be prepared to do so.”
China may someday propose joint oil and gas exploration with Brunei in waters they both claim, experts forecast. China is talking now with the Philippines, another eager recipient of Chinese investment, about similar projects despite their own maritime sovereignty dispute.
A Chinese joint venture led by the company that floated bonds last month announced in March 2017 it would work toward a $3.445 billion oil refinery in Brunei, Beijing’s state-run China Daily news website said.
Investment officials in Brunei declined to give information for this report about Chinese projects in the well-off country of about 430,000 people.
Brunei might use its claim to the resource-rich Louisa Reef in its contested maritime tract to to keep Chinese investment coming, said Fabrizio Bozzato, a Taiwan Strategy Research Association fellow specializing in East Asia. Access to the Bruneian claim would be something like a bargaining chip with Beijing, he said.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)