Alvin Khiêm Bùi

From: Dan via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Saturday, October 5, 2024 2:08 PM
To: Alvin K Bui <alvinbui@uw.edu>
Cc: vsg@uw.edu; Christoph Giebel <giebel@uw.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Milestones: Dr. Alvin Khiêm Bùi

Belated congrats Alvin, look forward to reading your dissertation.

When I was researching Viet Hoa in Hong Kong and in US, it looked like the KMT regime in 1975 were busy handing out ROC passports to all ethnic Chinese leaving Vietnam that wanted to go to Taiwan.  More seemed to pick US as a destination.

More in: "Visions of Resistance and Survival from Hong Kong detention camps", Chapter 8 in Yuk Wah Chan, editor,  The Chunese/Vietnamese Diaspora.  Routledge: 2011.

DM me if you like a copy of the chapter. 

Dan 

Daniel Tsang

Librarian Emeritus 

University of California, Irvine

From: Tuan Hoang via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 1, 2024 2:05 PM
To: Aso, Michitake <maso@albany.edu>
Cc: vsg@uw.edu
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Milestones: Dr. Alvin Khiêm Bùi

Congratulations to Dr. Bui!  To add, when it comes to panel organization and conference participation, Alvin was one of the most active VSG members--of all ranks, not just among grad students--during his doctoral studies. In this regard alone, his service to the profession is most appreciated.

Cheers,

Tuan

Tuan Hoang

Pepperdine University
www.tuannyriver.com/about

From: Hiep Duc via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 30, 2024 6:42 PM
To: Christoph Giebel <giebel@uw.edu>; vsg@uw.edu
Cc: Hajin Jun <hjun@uw.edu>; Michael Walstrom <mwal7@uw.edu>; James Lin <jyslin@uw.edu>; Daniel Bessner <dbessner@uw.edu>; Glennys J Young <glennys@uw.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Milestones: Dr. Alvin Khiêm Bùi

Interesting work. Congratulation Alvin.

I personally have known some ROC people fled to North Vietnam, established themselves in Hanoi then moved again. For example, a general and family, the maker of Dong Hung mooncakes in Hanoi settled down there after ROC was defeated in 1949, and then moved south in Saigon (near Ben Thanh market), then moved again to Taiwan or other countries. Not to mentioning, some ROC people moved to North Vietnam, then South Vietnam, then to Cambodia, and back to Vietnam then to other countries.

Fascinating stories

From: Christoph Giebel via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 30, 2024 4:16 PM
To: vsg@uw.edu
Cc: Hajin Jun <hjun@uw.edu>; Daniel Bessner <dbessner@uw.edu>; Glennys J Young <glennys@uw.edu>; James Lin <jyslin@uw.edu>; Michael Walstrom <mwal7@uw.edu>
Subject: [Vsg] Milestones: Dr. Alvin Khiêm Bùi

Seattle, 30 September 2024

Dear Viet Nam Studies colleagues,

Now that most of us will be back from the summer and have begun our teaching quarters or semesters, I'd like to make the following happy announcement:

Earlier in the previous month, Alvin Khiêm Bùi successfully defended and submitted his 270-pp. doctoral dissertation in modern Southeast Asian (Vietnamese) history, titled "Twice Exiled: The Ethnic Chinese from Vietnam, the Republic of Vietnam and the Republic of China (1955-Present)." Despite the challenges of the pandemic years, Alvin Bùi finished his entire MA/Ph.D. program, including coursework, comprehensive exams, intensive field research in Viet Nam and Taiwan (supported by highly selective, prestigious scholarships) , and the writing phase in five short years!

The dissertation historicizes the ethnic Chinese from Viet Nam or “Hoa” in the context of relations between the Republic of Viet Nam (RVN) and the Republic of China (ROC)/Taiwan. The Hoa formed a notable minority in the RVN and became a substantial demographic of the IndoChinese (“boat people”) refugee crisis. 

The first part of Alvin's dissertation is devoted to Hoa and ROC reactions to the RVN’s attempts at assimilation or “Vietnamization” of the Hoa in four policy areas: nationality/citizenship, education, economy/industry and through the dissolution of the Chinese Association Halls (hội quán/會館). In reaction to the RVN government’s efforts to assimilate them as Vietnamese citizens, some 10% of the Hoa applied to “return” to Taiwan (a place where many had never been).

Part two looks at two case studies of Hoa involvement in Cold War-era transnational anti-communist networks in the late 1960s. Elite Hoa were political and cultural brokers within a self-styled “Free Chinese World” by participating in RVN government bodies to promote sister cities relationships with municipalities in Taiwan and collaborating with ROC film studios to produce an anti-communist spy thriller. In these two parts we learn how the Hoa in the southern Vietnamese diaspora facilitated, but also complicated RVN-ROC relations.

In the final part, Alvin traces the journeys of Hoa and Vietnamese asylum seekers from Indochina who passed to or through Taiwan and the various ways the term “refugee” was deployed and used by the ROC government, the United States government and the asylum seekers themselves. Whereas the scholarship has discussed refugee camps for Indochinese in Hong Kong and across Southeast Asia, there are no English-language discussions about the two camps on Taiwan’s Penghu Islands. Over 15,000 refugees from Indochina passed to/through Taiwan before most were resettled in other countries (the majority in the United States).

In this latter part Alvin is mapping how the earlier complex history led to the pathways out of which the diverse Vietnamese and Chinese-Vietnamese diasporic communities were constituted in the US and elsewhere. While the ties between Asia’s communist countries during the Cold War are comparatively well researched, Alvin’s dissertation on the anti-communist side will forge a fresh new path and promises to add important new insights to our understanding of international relations, decolonization, and migration during the era.

Alvin's dissertation transcends national and regional borders, expanding both Asian American and Chinese/Taiwanese Studies into Southeast Asia, spanning institutionalized academic fields, and bridging Vietnamese, Asian diasporic, Chinese-Vietnamese, and Taiwanese histories in profound, intellectually courageous ways. His sources are varied and encompass multiple archives, media, and oral interviews conducted in three languages.

James Lin, Daniel Bessner, and Christoph Giebel (Chair) served on Alvin's dissertation committee, and credit also goes to Glennys Young and Hajin Jun for earlier advising duties. Alvin is currently working in a postdoc position at the University of Oregon and, in a few months, will begin a tenure-track position in the History of Asian Peoples in Diaspora at Brooklyn College (CUNY). Congratulations and best wishes to Dr. Alvin Khiêm Bùi!

Christoph

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Christoph Giebel, PhD (he), Assoc. Professor, International Studies and History

The Howard and Frances Keller Endowed Professor in History, Dept. of History

University of Washington,  Seattle, WA 98195-3650,  USA,  < giebel@uw.edu >

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