Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year holiday!
Term 2, 2020-21 commences today. Students who wish to change their course enrolment for Term 2 are reminded to do so via the CUSIS during the following specified add/drop periods:
Undergraduate programme: Between 8:30pm on 18 January 2021 and 8:30pm on 24 January 2021
Postgraduate programmes: Between 10am on 11 January 2021 and 5:30pm on 25 January 2021
Dr. KUNG Chien Wen of the Department of History, the National University of Singapore, was invited by the Department to deliver a lecture entitled “The Chinese Commercial News Affair: The Kuomintang’s Overseas Networks and its Diasporic Sovereignty in the Cold War Philippines” on 26 November 2020.
In this talk, Dr. KUNG made two interconnected arguments about overseas Chinese history with respect to the background on the Philippine Chinese and the Philippine Kuomintang (KMT). First, he argued for a diasporic, deterritorialized, and networked understanding of the KMT to challenge the Mainland-centered and Taiwan-centered narrative of it after 1949. Second, he argued that the KMT projected its “Diasporic Sovereignty” approach to persons with Chinese nationality in legal and cultural aspects.
Dr. KUNG introduced the Cold War context and decolonization setting in Philippines, with a focus on the KMT. He further discussed the influences of the Chinese Commercial News Affair (CCN) that happened during 1950-1970. The KMT consolidated its power in the Philippines in the 1950s; its hostility toward the CCN grew. While the CCN adopted a centrist and non-partisan approach, the KMT extremists saw it as “traitorous” and kept attacking the CCN for using “inappropriate vocabulary” in publications from 1950 to 1962. In 1962, YUYITUNG Quintin was arrested and put on trial because of a forged letter that claimed to be written by LI Weihan, the Head of the United Work Front Department of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). YUYITUNG Quintin and YUYITUNG Rizal were then charged by “publishing news items and articles which were in favourable to the CCP.” They were further threatened with deportation but later released on probation. In 1970, with the increase of the anti-communist paranoia from the Philippine KMT, the YUYITUNG brothers were detained by the Philippine Bureau of Immigration for publishing pro-communist propaganda in their paper. They were sent off to Taiwan.
At the end of the talk, Dr. KUNG explained his research approach on “global Chinese history” and emphasized that overseas Chinese history are not necessarily centered on the Mainland China. Instead, it can be centered on Taiwan or Hong Kong.
The second and third sessions of “Workshops for the Final-Year RPg Students 2020-21” were successfully held on 27 November and 4 December 2020 respectively. The purpose of the workshops was to offer an interactive sharing platform for the Department’s research postgraduate students to exchange and discuss their research findings.
For teachers and students who have information to share with the Department,
please email your articles in both Chinese and English to chanfiona@cuhk.edu.hk by 4:00pm every Monday.