ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the outrage over a sexual assault committed onboard the Java-China-Japan Lijn’s SS Tjibadak in 1930 sparked an anti-Dutch boycott in Amoy – catalysed by Chinese diasporas linking East and Southeast Asia – and provoked a transoceanic dialogue and critique of Dutch imperialism in Asia. Unlike China’s other interwar boycotts aimed at European business interests, the Xiao Xin case saw anti-colonial rhetoric grow ideologically from an incident of sexual assault and rhetoric around gender, empire and power overlapped in accounts of the event. Shanghai activists used the Xiao case as an opportunity to address larger political struggles affecting the Chinese diaspora connecting East and Southeast Asia. The sexual assault of Xiao Xin’an onboard SS Tjibadak spoke to larger transnational political currents connecting China and colonial Indonesia, including the treatment of Chinese residents in the colony, inequitable Sino-Dutch treaties and questionable operations of Dutch shipping companies and other businesses in China.
