No Chinese of renown came closer than Tan Kah Kee to the model of the 'Huaqiao', who made good abroad only to send all his money to China. The 'Henry Ford of Malaya,' as he has been called, used the fortune he made in Singapore to fund educational causes, founding not only schools in his natal Jimei, in Fujian's Tongan district, but in a single-handed feat of philanthropy, the Amoy (Xiamen) University.

Upon arriving in Singapore in 1890, he worked in his father's rice business, then set up his own plant for pineapple canning and invested in pineapple planting after his father's firm failed in 1903. In 1906 he also moved into the rubber industry, becoming the 'Rubber King' of Southeast Asia with some 32,000 people working for him by 1925. He was however much more than a mere businessman.

In the 1920s and 1930s he attempted to reform Chinese society in Singapore and Malaya. He reorganized the Hokkien Huay Kuan in 1929 and made it more accountable to the Hokkien community it represented. He was also the first to champion the revision of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce constitution, proposing that leaders be chosen by elections based on the candidates' merit rather than on their dialect-group alignments.

Tan's abiding concern was education. Under his leadership, the Hokkien Huay Kuan founded five primary and secondary schools in Singapore, chief among them the Chinese High School (Huaqiao Zhongxue). He also supported English education, giving various sums to the Anglo-Chinese School and Raffles College. In 1919 he donated millions of dollars to establish and endow Amoy University. For the vice-chancellorship post, he chose Dr. Lim Boon Keng. The university was subsequently handed over to the Chinese government and turned into a national university in 1937.

During the Great Depression of 1930s, Tan fought hard to maintain his business empire. Although it collapsed despite his efforts in February 1934, he did not withdraw from the political arena. His leadership role in the Shandong Relief Fund Committee (1928-29), the Singapore China Relief Fund Committee (1937-41) and the South-Seas China Relief Fund Union (1938-50) earned him a reputation for being a Huaqiao nationalist. Two weeks before the fall of Singapore to the Japanese army, Tan managed to escape to Sumatra, West Java, and then took refuge in East Java until 1945. He was looked after by the graduates of his schools in Jimei and of Amoy University even as the Japanese were trying to hunt him down. In Java he found time to write his memoirs. His safe return to Singapore was marked by a mass rally in Chongqing (the wartime capital in China). One of the congratulatory messages sent to that rally came from Mao Zedong which read, 'The Huaqiao flag, the National Glory.'

Tan continued to play a leadership role in Singapore's postwar construction. To promote unity among the Chinese, he advocated the abolition of dialect-based schools, the centralization of educational authority and the merging of the smaller native-place organizations. He also founded the Nan Ch'iao (Nanqiao) Girls High School in 1947. In order that the Chinese part in the 1942 Malayan war be properly recognized, he took issue with Lieutenant-General A. E. Percival's February 1948 dispatch on the Malayan campaign, protesting the latter's suggestion that Asians were supportive of the Japanese and his oblique silence on Chinese resistance. In a memorandum to the Secretary of State for War, Tan declared that unless amendments and an apology were made, the Malayan Chinese would compile its own report by way of giving a true picture of the 1942 campaign.

Tan Kah Kee made known his views on the constitutional changes to be effected in the run-up to Singapore's self-government, declaring himself in favour of giving Chinese a choice of either Chinese or Malayan citizenship, of safeguarding the special position and privileges of the Malays, and of parliamentary democracy based on popular elections. With the outbreak of civil war in China, however, he turned his attention to the political struggles on the mainland. Because of his open support for Mao and crusade against Chiang Kai-Shek, the Kuomin-tang's supporters in Singapore and Malaya regarded him as an enemy. The bitter rivalry between those who supported Tan and those who opposed him was reflected in the struggle for control between the China Democratic League and Kuomintang factions in the Hokkien Huay Kuan, and in the mass rallies organized by the Left and the Right following Chiang's 1948 election as the President of China. The rivalry left deep political scars within the Chinese community.

In May 1950 Tan returned to settle in China. In 1961 he died in Beijing, aged 87. He was accorded a state funeral by the government of the People's Republic of China. Memorial services to honour him were held by the Chinese in numerous cities in China, as well as in Hong Kong, Singapore, Rangoon, Jakarta, Semarang, Bandung, Surabaya, Palembang, Pontianak, Yokohama, Calcutta, Paris and Leipzig.

Eminent historian C. F. Yong notes that Tan's legacy in China and Nanyang lies in 'his model of modernization through the promotion of education and industrial and technological development,' and in his 'pioneering spirit.' The latter extended beyond business enterprise to social reform and political action. But Tan Kah Kee's legacy as the bearer and perpetuator of Huaqiao identity proved short-lived, overtaken by the growing commitment among Chinese overseas to their countries of adoption.

- By Kwok Kian Woon

© 1998 Kwok Kian Woon

Extracted from The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas, General Editor Lynn Pan, published by Landmark Books and Archipelago Press for Chinese Heritage Centre, 1998