From Exclusion to Protection: Chinese Merchant Capital in the Philippines Under US Law and Empire, 1921–1926

Scholarship about the Chinese Question has largely understood it as a “coolie” question, but what if it was reframed in terms of merchants? Well-studied US anti-Chinese laws like the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act targeted working-class rather than elite Chinese, like merchants and students. But in 1921, the US-controlled Insular Government in the Philippines enacted a statute known as the Chinese Bookkeeping Act (Act No. 2972), marking a moment when US Chinese exclusion laws were directed toward businessowners. The act banned Chinese-language record-keeping and affected merchants ranging from small storeowners to multi-millionaire tycoons. A group of Chinese merchants in the Philippines sued the colonial government and appealed their case to the US Supreme Court, which ruled the Bookkeeping Act unconstitutional in 1926. For the “coolie” Chinese question, the US Supreme Court said “yes” to exclusion, but for the merchant Chinese question, the Court said “no.” The Court’s rejection of a merchant Chinese exclusion became part of the Philippines’ transformation into a US colony. In relation to a patriotic Filipino capital and unmarked Euro-American capital, Chinese capital won rights even as it was framed within US law as “alien” by American and Filipino judges and politicians and, surprisingly, by the Chinese merchants themselves.