Theorizing the Chinese: the Mui Tsai Controversy and Constructions of Transnational Chineseness in Hong Kong and British Malaya

Although questions of community identity had been subject to debate within the Chinese world for centuries, the rapid extension of European imperial power during the long nineteenth century invested the question of Chineseness with new significance. Open conflict with the British East India Company and the British government in the early nineteenth century, as well as the subsequent expansion of European missionary activities in China, raised pressing questions about Chinese tradition and the future of the Chinese polity. The rapid growth of the coolie trade – where China assumed a significance position as a supplier of workers within a global imperial labour market – in the late nineteenth century resulted in the development of numerous overseas Chinese communities that reached out beyond Southeast Asia where there were long established Chinese merchant communities and extensive cultural networks. These new enclaves of Chinese labourers met the need for cheap labour that could perform hard and repetitive tasks under difficult conditions. The proliferation of these overseas Chinese communities, however, posed a challenge for Chinese authorities as they tried to secure the loyalty of these mobile groups to the Chinese nation. During the early twentieth century, different factions that were competing for power in China developed and constructed different narratives of Chineseness, with the hope of winning the