Bamboo network explained

Bodyclass:geography
Above:竹网
Bamboo network (Zhuwang)
Label2:Countries and territories
Data2:




Myanmar



Label5:Languages and language families
Data5:Chinese, English, Burmese, Filipino, Indonesian, Khmer, Laotian, Malay, Thai, Vietnamese and many others
Label6:Major cities
Data6: Bandar Seri Begawan
Bangkok
Ho Chi Minh City
Jakarta
Kuala Lumpur
Mandalay
Manila
Phnom Penh
Singapore
Vientiane

The Bamboo network or the Chinese Commonwealth is used to conceptualize the links between businesses run by Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia (in a narrower sense with the Hokkien and Teochew peoples) .[1] [2] It links the Overseas Chinese business community of Southeast Asia, namely Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Myanmar with the economies of Greater China (mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan).[3] Overseas Chinese companies in Southeast Asia are usually managed as family businesses in a centralized bureaucratic manner.  In an article in The New York Review of Books, Indian critic Pankaj Mishra called it a "largest economic force in Asia outside of Japan".

Structure

Overseas Chinese businesses in Southeast Asia are usually family owned and managed through a centralized bureaucracy.[3] [4] [5] The businesses are usually managed as family businesses to lower front office transaction costs as they are passed down from one generation to the next.[5] [6] [3] [4] [7] [8] These bulk of these firms typically operate as small and medium-sized businesses.[5] [9] [10]

Bamboo networks are also transnational, which means channeling the movement of capital, information, and goods and services can promote the relative flexibility and efficiency between the formal agreements and transactions made by family-run firms.[11] Business relationships are based on the Confucian paradigm of guanxi, the Chinese term for the cultivation of personal relationships as an ingredient for business success.[12] [13] [14]

Some Overseas Chinese businessmen include Malaysian dealmaker Robert Kuok, Indonesian banker and retail proprietor Liem Sioe Liong, and his son, financier and money manager Liem Hong Sien in addition to fellow Fuqing native and Salim Group co-founder and investor Liem Oen Kian, Filipino billionaire Henry Sy, and Hong Kong business tycoon Li Ka-shing.[15]

Much of the business activity of the bamboo network is centered in the major cities of the region, such as Mandalay, Jakarta, Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Ho Chi Minh City, Phnom Penh, Vientiane, and Manila.[16]

History

Commercial influence of Chinese traders and merchants in Southeast Asia dates back at least to the third century AD, when official missions by the Han government were dispatched to countries in the Southern Seas. Distinct and stable Overseas Chinese communities became a feature of Southeast Asia by the mid-seventeenth century across major port cities of Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam.[17] More than 1500 years ago, Chinese merchants began to sail southwards towards Southeast Asia in search of trading opportunities and wealth. These areas were known as Nanyang or the Southern Seas. Many of those who left China were Southern Han Chinese comprising the Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka and Hainanese who trace their ancestry from the southern Chinese coastal provinces, principally known as Guangdong, Fujian and Hainan.[18] Periods of heavy emigration would send waves of Chinese into Southeast Asia. Unrest and periodic upheaval throughout succeeding Chinese dynasties encouraged further emigration throughout the centuries.[19] In the early 1400s, the Ming dynasty Chinese admiral Zheng He under the Yongle Emperor led a fleet of three hundred vessels around Southeast Asia during the Ming treasure voyages.[20]

Since 1500, Southeast Asia has been a magnet for Chinese emigrants where they have strategically developed a bamboo network encompassing an elaborately diverse spectrum of economic activities spread across numerous industries.[21] The Chinese were one commercial minority among many including Indian Gujaratis, Chettiars, Portuguese and Japanese until the middle of the seventeenth century. Subsequently, damage to the rival trade networks the English and Dutch in the Indian Ocean allowed the enterprising Chinese to take over the roles once held by the Japanese in the 1630s.[22] Overseas Chinese populations in Southeast Asia saw a rapid increase following the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 which forced many refugees to emigrate outside of China causing a rapid expansion of the Overseas Chinese bamboo network.[23] [24]

1997 Asian financial crisis

Governments affected by the 1997 Asian financial crisis introduced laws regulating insider trading led to the loss of many monopolistic positions long held by the ethnic Chinese business elite and weakening the influence of the bamboo network.[25] After the crisis, business relationships were more frequently based on contracts, rather than the trust and family ties of the traditional bamboo network.[26]

21st century

Following the Chinese economic reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping started in 1978, businesses owned by the Chinese diaspora began to develop ties with companies based in mainland China. With China's entry into the global marketplace and its concurrent global economic expansion since the dawn of the 21st century, the Overseas Chinese community in Southeast Asia have served as a conduit for China's businesses.[27] [28]

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. Book: Pablos, Patricia . The China Information Technology Handbook . Springer . 2008 . 204.
  2. Cheung. Gordon C. K.. Gomez. Edmund Terence. 23462317. Hong Kong's Diaspora, Networks, and Family Business in the United Kingdom: A History of the Chinese "Food Chain" and the Case of W. Wing Yip Group. China Review. 12. 1. Spring 2012. Chinese University Press. 48. Chinese firms in Asian economies outside mainland China have been so prominent that Kao coined the concept of "Chinese Commonwealth" to describe the business networks of this diaspora.. 1680-2012.
  3. Book: Weidenbaum. Murray L.. Hughes. Samuel. The Bamboo Network: How Expatriate Chinese Entrepreneurs are Creating a New Economic Superpower in Asia. registration. 1 January 1996. Martin Kessler Books, Free Press. 978-0-684-82289-1. 4–5.
  4. Pablos (2008), p. 205.
  5. Yen (2008), p. 325.
  6. Richter (2002), p. 84.
  7. Weidenbaum, Hughes (1996), p. 4.
  8. Richter (2002), p. 180.
  9. Richter (2002), p. 12–13.
  10. Book: Murray Weidenbaum. One-Armed Economist: On the Intersection of Business And Government. 30 May 2013. 1 September 2005. Transaction Publishers. 978-1-4128-3020-1. 264–265. 21 May 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160521214959/https://books.google.com/books?id=p0vxapmyvBsC&pg=PA264. live.
  11. Book: Weidenbaum, Murray . The Dynamic American Firm . Springer . 2012 . 978-1461313144 . February 10, 2012 . 80.
  12. Book: Paz Estrella Tolentino. H. W-C Yeung. Handbook of Research on Asian Business. 2007. Edward Elgar Publishing. 978-1-84720-318-2. 412. 2015-12-15. 2016-05-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20160521045726/https://books.google.com/books?id=lTfWutnFbfkC&pg=PA412. live.
  13. Web site: Templates of "Chineseness" and Trajectories of Cambodian Chinese Entrepreneurship in Phnom Penh* . Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam . 68 . 2017-08-16 . 2017-08-16 . https://web.archive.org/web/20170816021339/https://research.vu.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/1589314 . live .
  14. Pablos (2008), p. 201
  15. Book: Richter, Frank-Jurgen . Redesigning Asian Business: In the Aftermath of Crisis . Quorum Books . 2002 . 978-1567205251 . 83.
  16. Weidenbaum, Hughes (1996), p. 8.
  17. Book: The Globalisation of Chinese Business Firms . Yeung . H. . Olds . K. . Palgrave Macmillan . 1999 . 978-0333716298 . 5.
  18. Book: The Chinese of South East Asia . Mabbett . Hugh . Somers Heidhues . Mary F. . Minority Rights Group . 1992 . 978-0946690992 . December 3, 1992 . 1.
  19. Book: The Overseas Chinese of South East Asia: History, Culture, Business . Rae . I. . Witzel . M. . Palgrave Macmillan . 2016 . 978-1349543045 . January 29, 2016 . 3.
  20. Chua, (2003), p. 31.
  21. Weidenbaum, Hughes (1996), p. 24.
  22. Book: Reid . Anthony . Chirot . Daniel . Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the Modern Transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe . University of Washington Press . 1997 . 978-0295976136 . 41.
  23. Book: Joint Economic Committee Congress of the United States . China's Economic Future: Challenges to U.S. Policy (Studies on Contemporary China) . Routledge . 1997 . 978-0765601278 . 428.
  24. Book: Chen, Min . Asian Management Systems: Chinese, Japanese and Korean Styles of Business . International Thomson Business . 2004 . 978-1861529411 . 59.
  25. Web site: Yeung. Henry. Change and Continuity in SE Asian Ethnic Chinese Business. Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. 2017-08-16. 2013-07-31. https://web.archive.org/web/20130731132758/http://econ.tu.ac.th/class/archan/RANGSUN/MB%20663/MB%20663%20Readings/%E0%B9%95.%20%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B0%E0%B8%9A%E0%B8%9A%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%B8%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%A2%E0%B8%A1%E0%B9%84%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%A2/Thai%20Capitalism/Change%20and%20Continuity%20in%20SE%20Asian%20Ethnic%20Chinese%20Business.pdf. dead.
  26. Book: Min Chen. Asian Management Systems: Chinese, Japanese and Korean Styles of Business. 2004. Cengage Learning EMEA. 978-1-86152-941-1. 205.
  27. News: Quinlan. Joe. Insight: China's capital targets Asia's bamboo network. Financial Times. November 13, 2007.
  28. Weidenbaum, Hughes (1996), p. 27.

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