A tale of three : the KMT's promotion of the Chinese cultural renaissance movement in Australia, the USA and Singapore

• Main Author: Tang, Timothy Xu Yang
• Other Authors: Els van Dongen
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Humanities::History::Asia; Humanities::History::Asia::China::Chinese overseas
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/147261
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This paper examines the Kuomintang (KMT)’s promotion of the Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement in Australia, the United States of America (USA) and Singapore during the 1960s and 1970s. Using a comparative historical approach, the paper attempts to depart from pre-existing historical narratives that limit their analysis of the KMT’s promotion of the Renaissance Movement overseas to a single sociocultural narrative. Indeed, by comparing the legacies of the Renaissance Movement in Australia, the USA and Singapore, this paper argues that the KMT’s extensiveness of the promotion of the Renaissance Movement was firstly due to the extent of diplomatic relations between the ROC and the foreign state. Closer diplomatic relations would mean that a higher ROC presence in the foreign state would be tolerated, in turn giving the KMT a bigger stage to promote the Movement to Overseas Chinese communities. Secondly, the embracing of multiculturalism also saw the KMT having some difficulty trying to adapt in order to continue retaining its stage to advocate the Renaissance Movement to the Overseas Chinese communities, by which most of them were feeling a greater sense of attachment to their place of resettlement, than their homeland.