In this hybrid seminar, Dr Zhou Taomo, Associate Professor of History at Nanyang Technological University shares her research regarding the contribution of Southeast Asian Chinese migrants to the broadening of China’s economic borders. The presentation is based on an upcoming book by Dr Zhou Taomo, tentatively titled Made in Shenzhen: A Global History of China’s First Special Economic Zone. The book is under advance contract with Stanford University Press.
REGIONAL SOCIAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES PROGRAMME WEBINAR
Tuesday, 26 March 2024 – This seminar examines the development of Shenzhen, China’s Special Economic Zone, with a focus on state policy and Southeast Asian emigrants. Dr Zhou Taomo is joined by Dr Siwage Dharma Negara, a Senior Fellow from ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, who served as moderator for the event. The webinar attracted over 70 registrants.
Dr Zhou began her presentation by laying out three key concepts for her discussion. Firstly, the analytical model of mobility lens, which encapsulates not only the long-distance relocation of migrants but also short-distance migration which is usually circulatory and repeated. Secondly, the translocal sphere which links China and Southeast Asia histories, and finally, the ideological restructuring of diasporas by states for economic engagement. She aimed to utilise these three frameworks to understand the connection between the growth of Shenzhen and Southeast Asia.
Thereafter, Dr Zhou outlined the background of Shenzhen as the “social laboratory” for China’s market reform, becoming China’s most successful Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Sharing some products that emerged from this project, she observed that the GDP for Shenzhen rose 30% between 1979 to 2009. Beyond the official linear narrative of Shenzhen’s rise, Dr Zhou argued that the “elastic co-ethnic” formed by overseas and domestic migrants to Shenzhen is the catalyst for the city’s transformation from agricultural farmland to a technological metropolis.
Her study focused on the migrants in the early Reform period, dividing it into four types of migrants bound by ethnicity; long-term emigrants, former “escapees” to Hong Kong, ethnic Chinese investors from Southeast Asia and Cold War returnees. These migrants interacted with the economy in myriad ways, either in business collaborations or working as labourers, via the connections of diasporic cadres. For instance, Robert Kuok, the Malaysian businessman, created an empire out of cooking oil in Mainland China. He was an old friend of Yuan Geng, a “diasporic cadre” who is the founder of the Shekou Industrial Zone and a former intelligence advisor in Vietnam. The Shekou Industrial Zone was a preliminary experimental zone that was later used as the foundation of Shenzhen. She also observed that the Cold War returnees from Vietnam and Indonesia settled on overseas Chinese farms that centred on milk production. Calling them enclaves carved out of local territories, these farms subsequently contributed to the rise of biotech in the Shenzhen region.
Concluding her presentation, Dr Zhou noted that through multiple domestic and international migrant streams, Shenzhen was deeply embedded in a translocal network spanning from Hongkong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia. The PRC state tapped into this diasporic network to experiment with economic incentives during a period of market opening.
During the Q&A session, Dr Zhou fielded questions about non-Chinese investments, diaspora policies, the concept of migrants as returnees, the attraction of migrants to Shenzhen in the early Reform era, the role of the diasporic cadres, the mobility of Vietnamese refugees in Shenzhen, financial linkages and the transition of Shenzhen from agricultural to technological sector and finally, the role of the state in choosing diasporic cadres.