Zur Problematik der "Hoa´s" - Flucht vor dem "Sozialismus" oder Geschichtsfälschung?

Abstract

The border war between China and Vietnam has revealed the existence of serious conflicts between both countries. These conflicts are linked inter alia to different interpretations of historical relations, especially where the historical role and position of the Hoas, Vietnam's Overseas Chinese minority, are concerned. The flight of thousands of Hoas to the People's Republic of China and non-socialist southeast Asian countries bears testament to the mounting difficulties the minority has faced since May, 1978. Now numbering 1 million, the Hoas trace their roots in Vietnam back to the seventh century, when the first of several waves of migrants arrived. The bulk of the immigrants came as political refugees and, much later, as low-paid labourers under colonial regimes. Although a rather influential group of merchants and rice millers emerged, the Hoas more characteristically co-operated with anticolonial forces, especially after the upsurge of modem independence movements. Resistance to American intervention in South Vietnam by the most conscious elements of this community and their subsequent evacuation belie Hanoi's allegations that Hoa refugees were "reactionary capitalists who collaborated with U. S. imperialism". The first refugees to reach China in 1978 consisted overwhelmingly of labourers, skilled workers, fishermen, former political cadres, and other workers originating from North Vietnam, where the process of "socialising the economy" had ended 20 years before. The persecution of the Overseas Chinese in Vietnam, which represents the greatest wave of repression since the events of Indonesia in 1960, seems to be more a result of outside influence, i. e. the strengthening of Hanoi's political and ideological ties with Moscow, than the consequence of internal frictions.