The Chinese Migration and Cross-Border Trade System in Maritime Southeast Asia: A Case Study of the Kinmen Business Community in Singapore, 1860-1960s

Since modern times, South China has served as a crucial node of early globalization and a major source of Southeast Asian migration. Chinese migrants to Maritime Southeast Asia (Nanyang) organized themselves through dialect-group identities, forming communities based on linguistic and cultural affiliations such as Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, and Hainanese. These groups interacted with Filipinos, Malays, Tamil Indians, and other indigenous peoples. Before World War ii, most of Maritime Southeast Asia was under colonial rule by Spain, Britain, the Netherlands, or the United States. Kinmen, located in southern Fujian, was part of the Fujian-dialect-speaking region. From the 1860s to 1949, it experienced four waves of migration, with destinations such as Singapore, Klang in Selangor, Brunei, port towns in Sumatra, Bangka, Belitung, Batavia (Jakarta), Surabaya, and northern Mindanao, including Iligan, Cagayan de Oro, and Cebu. These migrations made Kinmen a significant contributor to the Chinese diaspora. This article examines the Kinmen merchants in Singapore from the 1860s to the 1960s and the transnational trade networks they built across Singapore, Malaya, and the Indonesian archipelago. It begins by tracing Kinmen's role as a migration hub and diaspora homeland, highlighting how Singapore's free port policy fostered an environment where the Kinmenese business community thrived. At the core of their success was the jiubahang system - a collaborative trade structure between merchants and the lighterage industry - that enabled efficiency, resilience, and ultimately, prosperity. The article also explores the system's decline after the 1960s, shaped by the rise of independent states, tighter regulations, and regional tensions such as the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation. These changes, along with operational challenges, led to the gradual fading of the jiubahang model. By examining these transformations, the study offers insights into the social networks, cultural dynamics, and economic practices of the Chinese diaspora in Maritime Southeast Asia.