Cooperation amidst competition : the role of rubber in shaping Japanese and Straits Chinese relations in Malaya, 1914-1941

• Main Author: Cao, Mingmin
• Other Authors: Tapsi Mathur
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Humanities::History::Asia::Singapore::Politics and government
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/147296
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This study concentrates on the role of rubber as an economic commodity in revealing the relations between Japanese and Straits Chinese rubber enterprises within Asian networks. The interwar years marked Japan’s southward economic advance into the Malayan rubber market involving large-scale agricultural land purchase and the proliferation of Japanese rubber exports through vigorous manufacturing and shipping. The successful attempt in the 1930s in capturing a large share of the domestic market for rubber products and its dominance in the rubber shipping sector posed strong competition to many European and Strait Chinese merchants who were forced to compete against large volumes of Japanese goods marked cheaply. Concurrently, Chinese hostility towards Japan as a result of the country’s incursions in mainland China and trade encroachment in Malaya led to a rise of anti-Japanese boycotts in the 1930s. However, responses were varied and more nuanced towards Japanese competition within the Malayan rubber industry. Mutual support was found exchanged between the two parties, with Japanese firms depending on overseas Chinese trade networks, and Straits Chinese rubber enterprises relying on Japanese shipping and capital to further their businesses. This thesis aims to highlight this unlikely cooperation between the two key players of the rubber trade in the interwar years.