Chinese affairs in emergency-era Malaya: the limits and legacies of colonial knowledge production

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the significance of ‘Chinese affairs’—both a quasi-ethnographic body of knowledge and a branch of colonial government that generated and circulated such knowledge—during the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960). First developed in the pre-war decades through the Chinese Protectorate, Chinese affairs was revived in the late 1940s as the colonial authorities sought to understand the links between rural Chinese communities in Malaya and communist guerrillas, as well as the influence of a newly founded People’s Republic of China. I will first examine the institutional reordering of Chinese affairs in Malaya via an office called the Chinese Secretariat following the outbreak of the emergency. I will then undertake a close reading of one of the main outputs of the Chinese Secretariat, namely the Monthly Review of Chinese Affairs . This internal periodical provides us with important insights into the ways in which Chinese affairs knowledge about topics such as ‘the Chinese family’ or ‘the Chinese peasant’ was deployed in support of the counter-insurgency needs of the colonial state. While Chinese affairs as a branch of government ceased to operate in the mid 1950s, Chinese affairs as a form of knowledge continued to influence studies of ‘the Chinese’ in Malaya for many years thereafter.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2026 · DOI ↗