The Rise of the Chinese and Chinese Mestizos

Readings from Online Sources

Trade between China and the Philippines probably started centuries before the advent of the Sung
Dynasty. The "A Collection of Data in Chinese Classical Books Regarding the Philippines" was
published by the Institute of Southeast Asian History of Zhongsan (Sun Yat Sen) University,
Guangzhou (1900). It states: “During the T’ang (Thang) dynasty China (in the 7th to the 9th century
AD) the two peoples of China and the Philippines already had relatively close relations and material
as well as cultural exchanges.”

During the Sung (960-1127 AD), Arab traders brought Philippine goods to southwestern China
through the port of Canton. Chinese posts were established in coastal towns of the Philippines with
the import of Chinese goods. The trade culminated when Chao Ju-Kua wrote of the barter trade
between the Chinese and the natives of Mayi (Mindoro). The Chinese exchanged silk, porcelain,
colored glass, beads and iron ware for hemp cloth, tortoise shells, pearls and yellow wax of the
Filipinos.

The Chinese became the dominant traders in the 12th and 13th centuries during the Sung Dynaasty
(960-1279 AD). The shift in the commerce between China and Southeast Asia saw Butuan send a
tribute mission to the Sung emperor. The Chinese notice of Luzon appears to have instigated a new
round of tributary missions in the early fifteenth century by Luzon, Pangasinan, and a polity known as
Mao-li-wu [possibly Ma-i on Mindoro].

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/philippines/history-early-china.htm

The Search for Early Chinese Traders

CEBU CITY—The Philippines is quite out of the way unlike other maritime countries in Southeast Asia. It also
has smaller communities than Malaysia and Indonesia.
But due to their business acumen and perseverance in selling their goods and bringing whatever useful raw
materials back to their kingdom, the Chinese braved the seas and started trading with our forebears.
As early as 1144 A.D., the Chinese already had names for the entire archipelago—Mayi—and certain islands
like Pai-P’u-yen for the Babuyan Islands, Liu-hsin for Luzon and Pa-lao-yu for Palawan.According to experts of
Southeast Asian history, it was not the Chinese who first traded with Filipinos but the other way around. O.W.
Wolters said some Filipinos sailed 800 miles across the seas to bring pearls which the Chinese greatly valued at
their trading post in Funan in ancient Vietnam around 300 A.D.
The story may be true but the trading could not have lasted long enough as what the Chinese have done to
this day.
The late historian William Henry Scott opined that although Chinese goods abound in the Visayas in the 16th
century, he doubted that the traders themselves came.
Humabon, Cebu’s ruler in 1521, ate from porcelain wares based on the account of Antonio Pigafetta,
chronicler of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. For Scott, this did not prove that the Chinese were
indeed in Cebu then simply because the Spaniards didn’t mention them.

Years later and despite the report received by the Spaniards that eight men from the Magellan expedition
were sold to the Chinese, Scott remained unconvinced of their presence simply because the Spaniards only
heard of it and did not actually see the Chinese. For Scott, the Chinese only came, at least, in the Visayas in
1569 when Miguel Lopez de Legazpi captured a Chinese vessel and its crew somewhere off Panay Island.It
could be true but it could also be that the Chinese were in the Visayas in 1521 but were just elsewhere among
the many islands. The Spaniards were also not that many to observe the whole Visayan Sea. It could be true
that some of the porcelain ware recovered in many parts of Cebu, for instance, which date back to the Sung
and the early Ming dynasties, were brought by other traders such as the Annamese and the Siamese.
But it was also possible that a majority of these were brought by the Chinese themselves.

Just because the Spaniards didn’t see them until 1569 didn’t mean that they had not been trading with the
Filipinos, the Visayans in particular. What should be taken into account are the many years that the Spaniards
were not in the Philippines.
For Edgar Wickberg, it was only when the Spaniards started the galleon trade that Chinese migration to the
Philippines occurred. This happened when the Chinese saw the opportunity to export Chinese goods to
Mexico. Silk and luxury goods were brought to Mexico and Mexican silver were brought back by the galleons
as payment.
In both deals, the Spaniards gained as middlemen. In 1603, or 32 years after the founding of Manila, 20,000
Chinese were already residing there, compared to just 1,000 Spaniards.
Accounts of the presence of Chinese traders in the Philippines before 1569 may be found in Chinese archives
and just waiting to be uncovered. But for now, the abundance of porcelain ware used as grave goods by our
ancestors may indicate that they had been in the country for a long time.
The recovery of many Chinese porcelain ware in Cebu, being an ancient place, could show that the Chinese
traded with Cebuanos even as early as the 12th century.
In the present downtown area, archaeologists Karl Hutterer and Rosa C.P. Tenazas unearthed burial sites that
yielded Yuan and early Ming wares, together with other Southeast Asian ware.
Another site in Fort San Pedro in 1973 yielded Ming dynasty ware.
Archaeologists also found more porcelain items during the construction of the multibillion-peso tunnel that
connects to the South Coastal Road in 2008. Some of the items were identified by archaeologist Jojo Bersales
as Zhangzhou-type.
It is possible that some had been accidentally unearthed or looted by antique hunters in the same vicinity.
For sure, trading was not only confined to Cebu City since certain blue and white wares were recovered in
other towns even outside Metro Cebu.On Bantayan Island in northern Cebu, blue-and-white porcelain ware
were still being washed out to the shore in a coastal village, especially after heavy rain.

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/354993/the-search-for-early-chinese-traders

The Chinese in the Philippines

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, deep-seated Spanish suspicion of the Chinese
gave way to recognition of their potentially constructive role in economic development. Chinese
expulsion orders issued in 1755 and 1766 were repealed in 1788. Nevertheless, the Chinese
remained concentrated in towns around Manila, particularly Binondo and Santa Cruz. In 1839 the
government issued a decree granting them freedom of occupation and residence.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, immigration into the archipelago, largely from the
maritime province of Fujian on the southeastern coast of China, increased, and a growing proportion
of Chinese settled in outlying areas. In 1849 more than 90 percent of the approximately 6,000
Chinese lived in or around Manila, whereas in 1886 this proportion decreased to 77 percent of the
66,000 Chinese in the Philippines at that time, declining still further in the 1890s. The Chinese
presence in the hinterland went hand in hand with the transformation of the insular economy.
Spanish policy encouraged immigrants to become agricultural laborers. Some became gardeners,
supplying vegetables to the towns, but most shunned the fields and set themselves up as small
retailers and moneylenders. The Chinese soon gained a central position in the cash-crop economy on
the provincial and local levels.
Of equal, if not greater, significance for subsequent political, cultural, and economic developments
were the Chinese mestizos. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, they composed about 5
percent of the total population of around 2.5 million and were concentrated in the most developed
provinces of Central Luzon and in Manila and its environs. A much smaller number lived in the more
important towns of the Visayan Islands, such as Cebu and Iloilo, and on Mindanao. Converts to
Catholicism and speakers of Filipino languages or Spanish rather than Chinese dialects, the mestizos
enjoyed a legal status as subjects of Spain that was denied the Chinese. In the words of historian
Edgar Vickberg, they were considered, unlike the mixed-Chinese of other Southeast Asian countries,
not "a special kind of local Chinese" but "a special kind of Filipino."

The eighteenth-century expulsion edicts had given the Chinese mestizos the opportunity to enter
retailing and the skilled craft occupations formerly dominated by the Chinese. The removal of legal
restrictions on Chinese economic activity and the competition of new Chinese immigrants, however,
drove a large number of mestizos out of the commercial sector in mid-nineteenth century. As a
result, many Chinese mestizos invested in land, particularly in Central Luzon. The estates of the
religious orders were concentrated in this region, and mestizos became inquilinos (lessees) of these
lands, subletting them to cultivators; a portion of the rent was given by the inquilino to the friary
estate. Like the Chinese, the mestizos were moneylenders and acquired land when debtors
defaulted.

By the late nineteenth century, prominent mestizo families, despite the inroads of the Chinese, were
noted for their wealth and formed the major component of a Filipino elite. As the export economy
grew and foreign contact increased, the mestizos and other members of this Filipino elite, known
collectively as ilustrados, obtained higher education (in some cases abroad), entered professions
such as law or medicine, and were particularly receptive to the liberal and democratic ideas that
were beginning to reach the Philippines despite the efforts of the generally reactionary--and friar-
dominated--Spanish establishment.
http://countrystudies.us/philippines/7.htm
https://www.persee.fr/doc/arch_0044-8613_1986_num_32_1_2316#:~:text=In%201850%20the%20Chinese
%20mestizo,the%20local%20inhabitants%20(18)

Activity 2: The Rise of the Chinese and Chinese Mestizos

1. State in one paragraph some eventualities that the Chinese were already doing busines with the
Philippines even before the occupation of the Philippines by the Spaniards.

Some historians said that there were Chinese posts established in coastal towns of the Philippines
with the import of Chinese goods and that the trade started when Chao Ju-Kua wrote of the barter
trade between the Chinese and the natives of Mayi (Mindoro). The Chinese exchanged silk,
porcelain, colored glass, beads and iron ware for hemp cloth, tortoise shells, pearls, and yellow wax
of the Filipinos. Due to the Filipino’s business acumen and perseverance in selling their goods and
bringing whatever useful raw materials back to their kingdom, the Chinese braved the seas and
started trading with our forebears. As early as 1144 A.D., the Chinese already had names for the
entire archipelago—Mayi—and certain islands like Pai-P’u-yen for the Babuyan Islands, Liu-hsin for
Luzon, and Pa-lao-yu for Palawan.According to experts of Southeast Asian history, it was not the
Chinese who first traded with Filipinos but the other way around. O.W. Wolters said some Filipinos
sailed 800 miles across the seas to bring pearls which the Chinese greatly valued at their trading post
in Funan in ancient Vietnam around 300 A.D.

2. Identify some material or physical evidence that prove the Chinese were already trading with the
Philippines even before the Spanish Regime. Explain how this evidence could prove the theory.

Some of the porcelain ware recovered in many parts of Cebu, for instance, which date back to the
Sung and the early Ming dynasties, were brought by other traders such as the Annamese and the
Siamese. The recovery of many Chinese porcelain ware in Cebu, being an ancient place, could show
that the Chinese traded with Cebuanos even as early as the 12th century.
In the present downtown area, archaeologists Karl Hutterer and Rosa C.P. Tenazas unearthed burial
sites that yielded Yuan and early Ming wares, together with other Southeast Asian ware.
Another site in Fort San Pedro in 1973 yielded Ming dynasty ware.
Archaeologists also found more porcelain items during the construction of the multibillion-peso
tunnel that connects to the South Coastal Road in 2008. Some of the items were identified by
archaeologist Jojo Bersales as Zhangzhou-type.

3. Do you believe that the Chinese and Chinese Mestizos have a significant role in terms of;
a. Economic development of the Philippines? Why?
I believe that the Chinese and Chinese Mestizos have significant role in terms of Economic
development in the Philippines because they are one of the pioneers who had traded with our country
and up until now, Chinese Mestizos dominated businesses in some parts of the Philippines
concentrated in towns around Manila, Particularly Binondo and Santa Cruz.

b. Nation-building? Why?

Chinese came here in the Philippines as early as 12 th Century and married natives. The offspring of two nations
are called Chinese Mestizo. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, immigration into the
archipelago, largely from the maritime province of Fujian on the southeastern coast of China,
increased, and a growing proportion of Chinese settled in outlying areas. In 1849 more than 90
percent of the approximately 6,000 Chinese lived in or around Manila, whereas in 1886 this
proportion decreased to 77 percent of the 66,000 Chinese in the Philippines at that time, declining
still further in the 1890s. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, they composed about 5 percent
of the total population of around 2.5 million and were concentrated in the most developed provinces
of Central Luzon and in Manila and its environs. A much smaller number lived in the more important
towns of the Visayan Islands, such as Cebu and Iloilo, and on Mindanao. Based on these data, we can
conclude that they contributed a lot in building our Nation in terms of population.

4. Using a Venn diagram, compare the Chinese and Chinese Mestizos in terms of their business activities
in the Philippines.

Pure Chinese Chinese Mestizos

Wholesale Trading
Trading silk, (Agriculture)
porcelain, colored
glass, beads and ironindigo, sugar, coffee,
ware for hemp cloth, tobacco, coconut,
beeswax etc., cocoa, coconut oil,
rice etc.,