From opium and arrack revenue farms to international banking - A history of the genesis of the UOB Banking group

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

Lee Kuan Yew at the opening of UOB Plaza:in 1995:

 In the early 1950s, when I was a new young lawyer with Laycock and Ong, I had to attend to UCB’s (United Chinese Bank) simpler work. I met Wee Keng Chiang, then the Chairman and Managing Director of the United Chinese Bank. He was a tall, slim, energetic, highly intelligent and very sociable man. When I visited him in his home in Kuching in the middle 1950s, he entertained me lavishly. He said the secret to his health and energy was daily swimming and champagne. https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/lky19950806.pdf

UOB's beginnings

.............. United Overseas Bank’s Wee family is the reverse. United Overseas Bank was founded as United Chinese Bank in 1935 in Sarawak by Wee Kheng Chiang, the late father of Chairman Emeritus, Wee Cho Yaw and grandfather of current CEO and deputy chairman, Wee Ee Cheong. Wee Kheng Chiang was born into a poor migrant Hokkien Chinese family in Sarawak and lost his father at the tender age of six. He grew up in harsh poverty and started off his career with a British company in Sarawak. He subsequently joined a company controlled by a local ethnic Chinese millionaire, Ong Tiang Swee, a local Chinese community leader. Soon, his diligence and good job performance caught his employer’s attention who, in turn, match made Wee with his daughter. Wee’s background of dealing with agricultural products and being sent to his ancestral home in China during his childhood put him in good stead to be a good trader. Wee’s entrepreneurial traits, combined with Ong’s networking with the elite, enabled him to prosper and eventually set up United Chinese Bank (Lam, 2012). 

https://ics.um.edu.my/img/files/IJCSV9N1/IJCS%209-1%204Koh%20Eric%20for%20website.pdf   

UOB's genesis: 

In 1914, Rajah Sir Charles Johnson Brooke set up the Sarawak Farms Syndicate, a joint venture between the government and the Chinese businessmen, to run the lucrative gambling and opium monopolies and the arak distilleries. Ong was made chairman of the syndicate with his son-in-law, Wee, made manager. The syndicate later closed down due to the Geneva Convention 1924.^[4

( Golden Dragon And Purple Phoenix: The Chinese And Their Multi-ethnic Descendants In Southeast Asia, by Lee Khoon Choy, 2013 p. 464)

To Be Read With 

Friday, November 4, 2022

Singapore and the China opium trade -Nothing to be ashamed of, it was strictly business ,and led by the Peranakans

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

Extracted from  James Francis Warren (1995) Capitalism and addiction-the Chinese, revenuefarming, and opium in colonial Singapore and Java, 1800–1910, Bulletin of Concerned AsianScholars, 27:1, 59-72, DOI: 10.1080/14672715.1995.10413075   

In the words of Carl Trocki:

The founding of Singapore was a peripheral result of the India-China opium trade.1 That trade, portrayed in the works of David Edward Owen and Holden Furber, has been updated by Jonathan Spence, among others.2 Its details and history are integral to the history of the Singapore Chinese. For a full century, Singapore was "Opium Central: Southeast Asia." Opium was so common in nineteenth-century Singapore that most writers seem to take it for granted.

The following excerpt  is from the Singapore Government  NLB website:

The (British Colonial)  government earned most of its revenue by franchising the opium trade to wealthy Chinese businessmen. Well-known names in the opium trade include Lau Joon Tek and Cheang Sam Teo, who made up the Lau-Cheang Syndicate, Heng Bun Soon, Tan Seng Poh and Cheang Hong Guan. Cheong Hong Lim and Tan Seng Poh were other well-known names who partnered with Tan Hiok Nee (Tan Yeok Nee) in spirit and opium farming. Opium, or chandu (Malay for cooked opium), was commonly inhaled or smoked. The ash or residue after opium was smoked for the first time was also recovered by shopkeepers and sold at a cheaper rate.

And this from the Government's National Heritage Board website, "Great Peranakans":

Peranakans initially worked for the large British trading companies as intermediaries, since they could speak Chinese dialects, Malay, and also English. They later set up their own companies to supply Chinese workers, grow gambier and other commodities, and run shipping companies. Several wealthy Peranakans purchased the government monopolies of opium, which proved to be extremely profitable.

END