This volume makes it possible for a layman to decode Wang Gungwu, a scholar on the history of China and the large Chinese diaspora in south-east Asia

Wang Gungwu: Educator and Scholar

Edited by Zheng Yongnian and Phua Kok Khoo

World Scientific

$93

Pg 411

If you happen to visit the caf? on the campus of the charming old National University of Singapore, that opens into vast vistas of majestic rain trees in the distance, chances are you might see a distinguished gentleman sitting in a corner lost in a book over a cup of coffee. In Singapore and across the world of academia, Wang Gungwu needs no introduction. He is as iconic and revered a figure in east Asia as Amartya Sen is in India.

Wang, an octogenarian, born an ethnic Chinese but brought up outside China, is an Australian by nationality who lives in Singapore. He is currently the chairman of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and the East Asian Institute of the National University.

Wang has long sealed his reputation as a deep thinker whose scholarship on the history and civilisation of China and the large Chinese diaspora in south-east Asia is unparalleled. He is also a prominent educationist, committed to the cause of universalist standards in universities, ?a free trade in knowledge and ideas that can help universities transcend national, racial and religious boundaries that constrain intellectual efforts?. In fact, he is famously known as the junzi, or scholar gentleman.

The National University of Singapore has pioneered this volume, which has distilled Wang?s ideas and thoughts as an educator and scholar. The volume comprises three sections. The first section is a compilation of selected public speeches on education; the second is a compilation of authored books with a brief synopsis; and the third section is a rich sketch of his personal life largely unknown to the public.

The first section will interest educationists as Wang has consistently extolled the importance of learning, creativity and originality. Through the years, Wang called for introspection into the fact that Asian universities seldom produce outstanding discoveries or boast original solutions. Indeed, some of the most prominent social scientists of the last few decades?Palestinian Edward Said, Japanese Francis Fukuyama, and Indians Amartya Sen and Ranajit Guha, among many others?honed their creativity not on home turf, but at western universities with superior resources, infrastructure and universalistic standards.

The second section covers Wang?s scholarly work on Chinese migration and the Chinese diaspora. Fittingly, Wang is popularly known as the ?historian of Chinese overseas migration?. This section will interest us, as Indians constitute a large and dynamic diaspora. China, too, has a dynamic diaspora nostalgic about its roots. It is a well-known fact that the Chinese diaspora has been the proverbial ?invisible hand? unconditionally pumping investment into the mainland, helping invigorate and sustain China?s modernisation process.

China, too, recognises their marvellous contribution?the city of Xiamen (earlier known as Amoy, in the Fujian province) boasts of an extraordinary museum dedicated to the Chinese diaspora?the waves and pattern of Chinese migration, success stories and the returnees.

Now, so has Singapore. Singapore is a multi-ethnic country, but the majority are ethnic Chinese. Singapore?s Balestier Road is famous for its chicken rice stalls and old-style bakeries that serve kaya (coconut jam) toast and shop houses. Tucked into one of the lanes of Balestier is a tastefully restored black and white colonial mansion converted into a museum. The mansion was once the base of Sun Yat-sen?s efforts in south-east Asia, a base for mobilising money and resources from the large diaspora for China?s liberation.

Wang?s scholarship has been illuminating as he traced the early commercial links of China with south-east Asia, the complex patterns of Chinese migration, the amorphous socio-cultural identity of the Chinese communities?the Indonesian Chinese, Malayan Chinese and the Singaporean Chinese?which has won admiration from a wide audience, largely for a nuanced, fine balance that provokes contemplation.

Wang explored power and identity; the restructuring of power and state power; the identity of the Nanyang Chinese (Southern Ocean or south-east Asian Chinese) and diaspora, which were difficult propositions.

Some in the diaspora are merely Chinese by birth, but, clearly, culturally ?deracinated Chinese?. Many are English-speaking and culturally sophisticated ?Anglo-Chinese?. Some of the 2011 top celebrities in east Asia were Hong Kong actor Andy Lau, Taiwanese singer Jay Chou, Beijing-based pop star Faye Wong, Hong Kong actor Jackie Chan?with a fan base from Shanghai to Taipei and Manila to Kuala Lumpur. Yet the Chinese diaspora has an identity that is neither Chinese nor western.

The second section has a useful synopsis of Wang?s evergreen classics such as The Nanhai Trade: The Early History of Chinese Trade in Southeast Asia (1958), A Short History of Nanyang Chinese (1959), among many others, which are important reflections on the trade, politics and culture of China, south-east Asia and early commercial influence of the Chinese in the region.

Most of Wang?s works enable an understanding of China as a ?civilisational state?, Chinese modernity and the quintessence of ?Chineseness?, providing answers we often seek. Why are the Chinese land-bound with an agrarian mindset? What explains China?s ?continental mindset?? And why do the Chinese love the past?

Finally, the third section on Wang?s personal life is actually a revelation. His rich and magnanimous understanding of diverse cross-cultural settings is because of his exposure to diverse currents?Indonesia, where he was born, to student days in British Malaya, to student days in a turbulent China in the late 1940s, and finally, London in the 1950s, where he was a contemporary of Indian historian Romila Thapar.

Wang began his career at the University of Malaya, then under the stewardship of eminent historian Prof CN Parkinson with Alastair Lamb for a colleague (older-generation Indians may recollect that Lamb?s extensive writings on the 1962 Sino-Indian war did not curry flavour and never quite ?got past the customs? because of a perceived pro-China bias). Wang later taught at various prestigious universities across the world, but was based for the longest time at the Australian National University.

Thanks to Wang?s five decades of scholarship, we can make sense of the large Chinese diaspora (40 million in 2011). The Chinese diaspora spans the globe from the US and Canada (5.2 million) to Malaysia (7.1 million) to even the small island of Papua New Guinea (30,000).

Of course, the volume cannot do full justice to the great scholar and educator?but its lucid simplicity makes it accessible to the layman in India to decode Wang Gungwu?who chose not to be defined by ethnicity, limited by geography, dictated by politics, but remained true to his calling as a scholar above all else.

As India starts to ?look east?, it?s about time to engage and intellectually connect with east Asia?s great minds who remain largely unknown to the Indian audience to enhance our own sense of the world at large.

The author is a Singapore-based sinologist, currently a visiting fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi