Revisiting the Changing Overseas Chinese Education in Myanmar: An Analysis Based on Historical Institutional Theory

Title

Revisiting the Changing Overseas Chinese Education in Myanmar: An Analysis Based on Historical Institutional Theory

Author

Hung-Chang CHEN, Ping-Jen SUNG

Page

39-80

DOI

10.6163/TJEAS.202312_20(2).0002

Abstract

On this research, we take historical institutional theory as the main analysis theory, constructing the types of overseas Chinese schools. We review the development of overseas Chinese education in Myanmar in the past hundred years, carrying important historical moments and contexts, as well as conducting field investigations and interviews with prominent personage. We believe that the beginning of the development of the Overseas Chinese Education in Burma, bearing the burden of the royalist and revolutionary parties from the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty to the early Republic of China, as well as the subsequent struggle between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. This also made the overseas Chinese education in Myanmar from splendid to prosperous after the independence and founding of Myanmar. With the change of Myanmar's political, economic and social environment, as well as the support from Taiwan, coupled with the traditional Chinese cultural heritage of the overseas Chinese community in Myanmar, the overseas Chinese education in Myanmar has re-emerged in northern Myanmar. For a long time, in an environment with limited manpower and material resources and under the pressure of all parties, Chinese in Myanmar still insist on the inheritance of Chinese culture and the traditional social and educational responsibilities of cultivating the children of the Chinese community. In recent years, with the liberalization and democratization of Myanmar, the subsequent opening up of the political and social environment, and the increasing competition in the education market, major overseas Chinese schools have tried various possible ways to respond. However, it still sticks to its original intention and has never transformed towards a commercial international school. However, the spread of the new crown epidemic in 2020 has made overseas Chinese schools in Myanmar face unprecedented difficulties. Despite their adherence to the "responsibility of the Chinese community and the original intention of education", they were able to ignite the light of hope for the education and future of the next generation of Chinese children after the military coup in Myanmar in 2021.

Keyword

blood relationship theory, nationality theory, path dependence, military coup

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