Tan Kah Kee (1874-1961), a Fukien-born Chinese in Singapore, was one of the most eminent leaders of all Chinese in contemporary Southeast Asian societies. With the promotion of China's modernization program in these years, his name in China has come to fame again as one of the greatest industrial entrepreneurs, an outstanding patriot and a famous benevolent person for the promotion of school education and the devotion to charities both in Singapore and Amoy where he was born and grew up. Such a characteristic image about Tan Kah Kee as a typical example of loyal and patriotic subject to his motherland, however, is far from the real situation of his personal history. He was only an ordinary Chinese businessman in Singapore, a non-elite and a non-partisan Hokkien merchant without any academic career of secondary education. The real events of his life tell us indeed that he was neither a patriotic Kuomingtang (KMT) supporter, nor an ideological Communist.
As he fully realized the neccessity of school education, Tan in 1910's began operation to invest his capital in the promotion of Chinese school education both in Singapore and Amoy and also founded Amoy University in 1921. In 1916 when he became naturalized as a British subject, Tan kept friendly relations with the British Colonial Authorities in Singapore. Through the wartime, there were various points of view on their political identity among different dialect and religious groups, or different economic and social status of the Singapore Chinese. Although he was apointed as a Chairman of the Nanyang Chinese Relief General Association in 1938, Tan stood out of the political movement by the KMT and the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) and kept a friendly relations with the Colonial Authorities. As he was disappointed at the corruption of the KMT bureaucrats during the wartime, Tan keenly desired in his heart that a new democratic government should be established in post-war China.
In 1942 when the Japanese army invaded to Singapore, Japanese military police put a price on Tan Kah Kee as a top-ranking leader of the anti-Japanese movement in Nanyang. Tan exiled to Java and hid himself at a house of the Amoy school graduate at Malang until the end of the war. Soon after the end of the war, Tan returned to Singapore and made a poor attempt at the promotion of Nanyang Chinese relief fundraising campaign for the wartime victims both in Singapore and the Fukien. The power structure of the Nanyang Chinese, however, was very much transformed by the upheaval of the war and Tan's leadership declined with the growing KMT's and the MCP's powes in post-war Singapore. There was indeed a generation gulf between Tan and the new leaders of the Chinese political and economic circles in post-war Singapore.
His return to China in 1949 was motivated neither by ideological nor by practical consideration for protecting interest or all Chinese abroad and was merely urged by the traditional custom of many China-born Chinese in abroad who usually go back their home-town for living calmly in their old age. In 1949, Tan was invited to Beijing for helping the Overseas Chinese affairs of the new government. But, he was excused himself from the invitation and usually stayed in Amoy for devoting all of his retired life to the community development in Amoy. With the reassessment of the role of the Overseas Chinese for their investment to modernize China in these years, the great name of Tan Kah Kee has come to the fore again in some Chinese periodicals since 1980. His contribution to social and economic development projects after retirement, however, was largely concentrated to Amoy where was a microcosm of Tan's spiritual identity.
