Wong, Kwok-chu
Description
The Philippines during the early 20th century had an environment that was
conducive to economic growth. The introduction of the rule of law, free
competition, economic reforms, infrastructure projects and free trade with the
United States provided opportunities to all players in the growing economy.
An evolving ethnic Chinese minority was both a product of and
contributor to the growth process. Across the community, there was a general
pattern of upward mobility, achieved mainly during...[Show more] the 1910s and 1920s when
many were able to exploit niches emerging especially from the domestic
economic sector. A majority of those who succeeded in creating businesses for
themselves moved from newly-arrived immigrants into salaried employees,
storekeepers, and big or small businessmen of all kinds, and they assumed the
roles of middlemen and to a lesser extent manufacturers in the production of
goods and services for Filipino consumers. Only a small group of the Chinese
were able to become eminent business leaders through exercising their
entrepreneurial abilities.
In the process of economic pursuits, the business achievements and
limitations of the Philippine Chinese were largely attributable to their
sojourning mentality and ethnic-cultural background. Such factors as
motivation to succeed in a host country, personal efforts and business skills, as
well as ethnically-based xinyong relationships, distribution networks and trade
organizations gave Chinese important advantages over Filipino competitors to
seize economic opportunities emerging during these years. Over time, they
achieved predominance in various domestic-market-oriented commercial
activities, were well represented in financial and light industrial sectors, and
increased their aggregate investments in the local economy. But these same factors contributing to their success also imposed some
limitations on the Philippine Chinese. Few of them were able to exploit
opportunities arising from the Philippine export sector partly because of the
constraints of a sojourning Chinese investment attitude. Most of them created
small family firms which were a source of both strengths and weaknesses. Not
only did these family businesses have internal problems like sibling rivalry and
succession, they tended to compete fiercely among themselves in price term in
over-crowded lines of commerce. All of them, as members of a comparatively economically successful but politically powerless alien minority community,
became scapegoats and targets of discrimination by the insular government.
Meanwhile, a younger generation of Chinese leaders who were better
educated and more ready to participate in the affairs of Philippine society
began to arise after 1919. They became the principal business and community
leaders to try to protect the Chinese stakes amid the upsurge of Filipino
(economic) nationalism and the Filipinization movement. Together with the
impact of the Depression on the Philippine economy as well as the inroads
made by Japanese and Filipino business competitors, the Chinese community
found that the period from 1930 to 1941 was one of relative economic
stagnation and uncertainty over their future in the archipelago.
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