Native songs and dances: Southeast Asia in a greater Chinese sporting community, 1920-48

In the 1920s and 1930s, Republican Chinese thinkers viewed modern sports an d traditional martial arts as important ways of invigorating the Chinese na tion and race, and institutions in the ROC used both in attempting to exten d the nationalist impulse to the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. These alternative physical culture models provide insights into both the diversit y of thinking and the shared modernist assumptions that inspired projects d irected toward the creation of "Greater Chinese" communities.