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And what a worthwhile effort it is! Shoza gave a detailed account and clear analysis of the nature of the Chinese and the significant roles they played in Southeast Asia, their reasons for migration, and, even more importantly, their progress from being indigent coolies to the wealthiest element of the community, controlling all aspects of agriculture, mining trade and finance, from production to distribution.
It may be superfluous to state here that at the time of Shoza's writing, the mid-1930s, the world was still in the throes of a wide-spread economic depression. With the exception of what we know as Thailand today, Southeast Asia had comprised European colonies, thus any study of local economies had to take into consideration the colonial powers. As a rule, colonial powers adopted oppressive measures against the Chinese in their colonies. Readers need to keep in mind also that place names were also different from what they are today as they peruse the work,
Still, the significance of the Chinese to local economies cannot be over-emphasised. By the 1930s, a poor Chinese in Southeast Asia was rare, Shoza avers. The growth of the Chinese economic power was due to a constant process of individual adaptations to changing market opportunities concluded Shoza, putting aside traditional reasons given for Chinese successes as the cultural trait of hard-work and parsimonious living.
It would be irresponsible for a reviewer not to point out that the author was a Japanese research scholar and that his intended readership was Japanese, therefore the book was written from a standpoint of Chinese intent on economic aggression in Southeast Asia. Shoza's statistics may be dated, observations he made are valid still more three score years later. 'The economy of the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, controlling the economic life of the natives, is a grand spectacle within the East Asian economy' (Chapter 9),
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Politically, the ethnic Chinese population in Southeast Asia today no longer need to worry about local citizenship as they did in the 1930s, but their relationship with the native population, like that between the Southeast Asian countries and the People's Republic of China is still of concern at the end of the 1990s.
228
And what a worthwhile effort it is! Shoza gave a detailed account and clear analysis of the nature of the Chinese and the significent roles they played in Southeast Asia, their reasons for migration, and, even more importantly, their progress from being indiginent coolies to the wealthiest element of the community, controlling all aspects of agriculture, mining trade and finance, from production to distribution.
It may be superfluous to state here that at the time of Shoza's writing, the mid-1930s, the world was still in the throes of a wide-spread economic depression. With the exception of what we know as Thailand today, Southeast Asia had comprised European colonies, thus any study of local economies had to take into consideration the colonial powers. As a rule, colonial powers adopted oppressive measures against the Chinese in their colonies. Readers need to keep in mind also that place names were also different from what they are today as they peruse the work,
Still, the significance of the Chinese to local economies cannot be over- emphasied. By the 1930s, a poor Chinese in southeast Asia was rare, Shoza avers. The growth of the Chinese economic power was due to a constant process of individual adaptations to changing market opportunities concluded Shoza, putting aside traditional reasons given for Chinese successes as the cultural trait of hard-work and parsimonious living.
It would be irresponsible for a reviewer not to point out that the author was a Japanese research scholar and that his intended readership was Japanese, therefore the book was written from a standpoint of Chinese intent on economic aggression in Southeast Asia. Shoza's statistics may be dated, observations he made are valid still more three score years later. 'The economy of the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, controlling the economic life of the natives, is a grand spectacle within the East Asian economy' (Chapter 9),
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Politcally, the ethnic Chinese population in Southeast Asia today no longer need to worry about local citizenship as they did in the 1930s, but their relationship with the native population, like that between the Southeast Asian countries and the People's Republic of China is still of concern at the end of the 1990s.
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