Welcome adress by Teresita Ang See

Welcome to this most memorable and first ever ISSCO regional conference in Africa. We’ve had ISSCO conferences in San Francisco, Hong Kong, Korea, Manila, Cuba, Taipei, Copenhagen and last year at Bendigo in Australia – we come back from each conference richer in insights and knowledge and even richer in the new contacts and friends we made.

Like me, many of you found this ISSCO conference to be a good excuse to be in this part of the world, South Africa, and let me thank (Prof.) Karen Harris first of all and the Department of Historical and Heritage Studies, University of Pretoria, for taking up this heroic act of putting the conference together. We know a lot more about the Chinese in Southeast Asia and in North America. But we know far too little about the Chinese in various countries in Africa.

Our interest in the region was first kindled by Prof. Karen Harris who had done extensive work and given papers on the topic in the past ISSCO conferences. She graciously accepted the challenge of convening this regional conference so that we can have a chance to fill up this significant knowledge gap. We are most grateful to her, to the University of Pretoria and to all of you here in Africa for giving this conference your invaluable support.

The theme of our conference this year emphasizes diversity in the diaspora. We come from different parts of the world and the ethnic Chinese communities in our respective countries come in different colors, languages, traditions, historical experiences and backgrounds. However, while we understand that we are all different in many ways, we have also to remember that there are many events and historical experiences in the past that link us together.

While preparing for this conference, I read up again on the Chinese in South Africa, not just Prof. Karen Harris papers but also the two classic works of Melanie Yap and Dianne Man in English and Li An Shan in Chinese. I marveled at the parallelisms in the historical experiences of the Chinese in Africa and the Chinese in the Philippines. It also struck me how the emancipation of slaves in far away Africa affected events that had far reaching consequences among the Chinese in the Philippines and elsewhere.

In Europe and in America, because of the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of the Black slaves, huge numbers of Chinese laborers had to be contracted to work in the mines and goldfields of Africa, in the European sugar plantations in the West Indies, in the fields, forest, farms and railroads of America, and other destinations to gather raw materials and produce that fueled the industrial revolution. In the United States, because they competed with local labor, they had to be curtailed through the Chinese Exclusion Act which was also applied to the Philippines as an American territory. The same thing happened in Africa. The coolie labour or Chinese contract workers is an important part of the history of the Chinese overseas but not very many people studied how this era started with the emancipation of  trade in slave African laborers.

Another example, elsewhere in South America, the first Chinese who set foot there actually came from Manila – boat rowers, workers and traders who plied the Manila-Acapulco trade which  brought goods from China to Mexico to the Americas and then all the way to Europe. I’m sure the keynote address of Dr Wang Gungwu, as well as the plenary and panel speakers, will share with us many new insights and knowledge that hopefully will open new paths to comparative studies between and among our countries.

It is no secret that as China emerges as a global economic and political power, Chinese are once again migrating to all parts of the world as traders, technicians, professionals, and common laborers, as they did in the past.  Today, there are Chinese in every country in Africa and last month, a highly publicized China-Africa Forum was held in Beijing, during which some 48 heads of states or their representatives attended.  The forum ushered in a new era of China-Africa relations based on principles of equality, mutual respect, benefits, and cooperation.  Hopefully, through this conference and ISSCO, Chinese diaspora in Africa will begin to get the kind of scholarly attention it deserves. Its importance cannot be overemphasized.

Just as Dr Wang Gungwu, in his opening keynote address in the Manila ISSCO conference in 1998 asked “what is in the past of the ethnic Chinese minority that affects their present and shape their future?” What our ancestors did and what happened to them in the past have unexpected consequences in our present. 16th century philosopher John Donne’s meditation  is most appropriate here:

 “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”

 We say welcome and good morning; huan-ing, zhao an; mabuhay, magandang umaga; Welkom goeiemôre -- in different ways. We are indeed diverse but even in the richness of diversities we do find common realities.

Thank you all and let me wish everyone a most productive conference!!

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