Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia - Jurusan Antropologi ...

THE MAKING OF THE PHILIPINES’ NEW RICH 287
artisan work and manual labour, speaking mainly Hokkien, sustained by their own
schools, theatres, hospitals and other community services, and engaging in domestic
politics primarily through monetary support of non-Chinese Filipino politicians.
The main departure from this pattern had come with the emergence of the Chinese
mestizos in the nineteenth century, but their rise was premised on them becoming
a distinct social and cultural entity aligned with Spain and the United States. While
many individuals with ethnic Chinese backgrounds mixed freely with non-Chinese,
the ideas of cultural separation and distinction remained relatively unchanged until
the 1950s and 1960s when many former traders and labourers from the Chinese
community became successful manufacturers. Indeed, it is in this way, and in this
period, that most of the Taipans first became newly rich. However, the most
significant change came in the 1980s and 1990s as the Taipans made substantial
inroads into areas formerly controlled by the old Spanish or mestizo elite, and
established conglomerates which surpassed those of some of the old rich. A major
factor making this and related developments possible was the opening up of
citizenship to FilipinoChinese in 1975. Increasingly, the Taipans also employed more
educated middle-class non-Chinese, as they professionalised their corporations. In
these ways, Filipino-Chinese were imposing their presence on the lives of elite and
middle-class Filipinos in ways most had not previously experienced. Most
importantly, they were doing so at a time when these classes were losing status in
Asia because of the Philippines’ poor record of economic development, and at a
time when Chinese ethnicity was being pronounced elsewhere as the source of
East Asia’s economic miracle. 24
While these shifts publicly emphasised and strengthened the Chinese ethnic
identity of the Taipans, that identity was simultaneously becoming less insular and
more Filipinised (See 1990, 1995). The younger generations of Philippines-born
Chinese are increasingly speaking Tagalog and other Filipino languages in
preference to Hokkien; many of them are entering prestigious schools and
universities which had formerly been the almost exclusive domain of non-Chinese,
particularly mestizo Filipinos; and large numbers have been moving out of the old
Chinatowns into more ethnically mixed middle-class and elite suburbs. Some
Filipino-Chinese are even said to be having cosmetic surgery to make their
appearance more acceptable to the wider population. At the same time, influential
Filipino-Chinese civic organisations have been founded upon a stated commitment
to Philippine national development. One of these, Kaisa Para Sa Kaularan (United
for Progress), proclaims the credo: ‘Our blood may be Chinese but our roots grow
deep into Philippine soil, our bonds are with the Filipino people’ (See 1990:i). 25
Another organisation, the Anvil Executive Club, founded in 1991 by a group of
young Filipino-Chinese entrepreneurs and professionals, claims to be ‘promoting
traditional Confucian values and work ethic, dynamic entrepreneurship and civic
consciousness…to the cause of Philippine economic, social and cultural progress’
(Coyiuto 1995:147). One Filipino-Chinese family runs a publishing company named
Mahal Kong Pilipinas (My Beloved Philippines) Incorporated. For several years
until the mid-1990s, it published a regular document entitled VIPs of the