Distant children, integral citizens: Guomindang idealisations of Malayan Chinese childhood, 1927-1949

Abstract

The current historiography of Chinese education in Malaya has generally explored the broader historical changes in the educational landscape based on various variables, most often political. As such, historians have not examined the nature of Malayan Chinese pedagogy—the prescribed content and actual delivery of education. This study explores the mandated content of overseas Chinese education by examining teaching materials, such as textbooks and teaching manuals, published for overseas Chinese schools in Southeast Asia during Guomindang (GMD) rule between 1927 and 1949. By closely reading elementary teaching materials, this thesis shows how idealised notions of overseas Chinese childhood can shed light on the construction, understanding, and practice of citizenship. The overseas Chinese child was integral to the GMD’s nation-building priorities and their alignment with idealised forms of Republican citizenship was an essential goal of Malayan Chinese education. This thesis underscores the effectiveness of teaching materials as under-utilised sources in reconstructing ideas on childhood that would meaningfully engage with existing histories of Chinese education in British Malaya. It proposes that conceptions of overseas Chinese childhood cannot be regarded as peripheral to conventional forms of Republican Chinese nation-building.