INTRODUCTION

WANG GUNGWU
Director, The East Asian Institute

The peopling of the earth has been an enduring part of human history. From very early times, individuals, families and tribes moved from place to place whenever necessary in search of abundance and safety. When the urge to migrate for the sake of survival or for a better livelihood was strong, it could only be halted or slowed down by territorial constraints supported by superior arms. After technological changes made the agricultural revolution possible, long-term settlement became the norm. The surpluses that this produced made possible the growth of towns, cities, kingdoms and empires, and of institutions that kept their own people in and foreign peoples out. In China, this led to the growth of one of the most stable political systems ever recorded. Its success led China to become, for thousands of years, a major attraction for immigrants and a meagre source of emigrants. Until the 19th century, almost all voluntary migration happened within the borders of the empire.

The population of China doubled from about 50 million between the first century and the 11th, and doubled and redoubled to about 400 million by the beginning of the 19th century. Increasingly, official demographic policies, and the search for agricultural land or urban employment, led to massive internal migrations. Alongside these movements of people, merchants ventured forth to trade, some travelling to markets beyond China's borders. They were held back not only by the needs of security and foreign relations, but also by social and cultural injunctions not to leave home. Trading overseas particularly was actively discouraged for long periods. It was not until the 19th century that Chinese people left the country in large numbers to find work in distant foreign lands. This new phenomenon of emigration marks the beginning of agrarian China's response to the industrial revolution. Its leaders took a while to realize what this involved, but a series of defeats by the Great Powers made it inevitable that China would have to join the race for modernization. Today, with emigrant communities in every continent and many of them playing a dynamic part in the global economy, the Chinese overseas have a remarkable story to tell. This volume is the first attempt to provide a comprehensive account of that transformation.

Initially, all migrations involve pull or push factors. China experienced some of the cruellest forms of both sets of factors during the 19th century. War and famine within the country drove many abroad, and the dire need for cheap labour by some of the newly industrializing powers opened up opportunities for China's poor. From one point of view, only the slave trade from Africa was more tragic than the fates of the thousands of coolies who were transported around the world. From another, emigration offered life and hope. These Chinese met the challenge with a fortitude and enterprise that confounded everyone, even their own governments and élites back in China. To understand this, we need to link their story to the nature of Chinese culture and history, but the heart of the story lies with the varied responses the sojourners made to the conditions they found abroad. In particular, the experiences they had that led many of them to decide to settle and not return to china shaped the kind of communities they established. This in turn determine the future they hoped their descendants would have in their adopted countries.

There is a tendency among many Chinese to attribute every success they have to the uniqueness and superiority of Chinese culture. This is sometimes exaggerated to the point of incredulity, notably by those with chauvinist or nationalist agendas. Such efforts to use Chinese values to explain what the Chinese have or have not achieved abroad should be made with caution, and full weight must be given to vital factors of economic and political change both in China and elsewhere. On the other had, it is not possible to avoid the question of Chinese culture. Those who minimize, or even dismiss, factors of culture, and invariably attribute all significant developments to the forces of modernization, are also guilty of oversimplification. Much depends on what is being described. To believe that all factors causing change or resistance to change stem from rational choice and universal human traits is no less a narrowing of one's ability to explain. Migration involves multiple responses to alien stimuli, and the way Chinese sojourners and migrants managed new environments deserves closer attention than we have given it so far.

As the accounts in this volume show, culture and history do matter in the way migrant communities are formed and evolved. It is not enough to say that Chinese immigrants are industrious, practice thrift and make sacrifices for their families, value education and social mobility, and organize themselves for effective defence and action. Many others do the same. How the Chinese have sustained what they do, however, does reflect their cultural origins and their uniquely structured history. The earliest traders in Southeast Asia clung to a sojourning pattern, and their appeals to distinctive family, religious and other customary ties determined the way their small communities survived. The later labouring classes that were transported around the world, especially those among them who did not return to China, strengthened the resistance to assimilation among those who had chosen to settle. They were followed in the 20th century by several waves of better educated teachers, journalists, students and refugees. Many of these brought new communication and organization skills that connected the emergent communities with a modernizing China, including some underlying political and cultural changes which either attracted the Chinese diaspora or repelled them. These changes in turn influenced the way the Chinese responded to new economic opportunities both within China and in their host countries.

In the end, immigrants representing a great multiplicity of origins were neither colonists backed by their country's expanding power, nor slaves to circumstances or economic forces bound to a particular place and occupation. They had varying capacities to choose and varying degrees of freedom to act. The factors behind each migration were never constant, the contexts were always important. Both could be more decisive than the cultural baggage the Chinese carried with them. As the essays in the volume show, when the Chinese left home and where they went to played extremely parts in shaping the communities they formed outside China. Over time, these two questions help us group the Chinese around the world in three broad ways. The first group consists of the large majority who are located in the lands in the neighbouring region where the Chinese first went and continued to go; the second, those who are scattered among developing countries around the world in small numbers; and the third, those who have moved to the industrializing West, especially the recent exodus to the migrant states of North America and Australasia.

When the Chinese migrate is important because this highlights the conditions under which they leave China and are received abroad. The timing not only gives precedence to those who settled in areas close to China but also emphasizes the depth of their ethnic identity if they choose to assert it. It reminds us not to assume that questions of Chinese identity are simply matters of policy and personal choice.

Some 80 per cent of Chinese who live outside China (that is, the People's Republic, Hong Kong and Taiwan) belong to the first group. Many of those who had traded there since earlier times had assimilated to the local population (mostly in Korea, Japan and mainland Southeast Asia), but others have remained Chinese and are conscious of living among peoples who have long trading links with China. This is particularly true of those descended from southern Chinese who had migrated across the South China Sea since the 19th century. They still rely on the economic roles they can play in future relations between their adopted countries and a China seeking to regain its historic place in the region. Even in Singapore where ethnic Chinese can form an independent government and Malaysia where they are the largest minority, their economic function is primary. Only if they perform that role successfully can they ensure a continued political, social and cultural position in those societies. Wherever the countries in the region trade closely with China, the reliance of their Chinese on commercial success is even more obvious. This is not without cost. Having a spotlight shone on the wealth of the successful few could threaten the safety of the many who try to live normal lives among their indigenous fellow nationals. The phenomenon reminds us how important China's proximity to the region is. It is the one that must invariably call for care and sensitivity among all concerned.

For the second group, the formation of scattered communities in the developing nations of Africa, Latin America and the rest of Asia came about largely during the 20th century. The Chinese there have been too few in number to play significant roles and, therefore, are prone to assimilate or re-migrate if their population is not augmented by new immigration. They too have depended on trading skills to sustain their small communities. There has been little prospect of political activity and, for their social and cultural life, they have had to depend on new technologies to reduce the distances between them and similar communities elsewhere. But if China does eventually become the economic giant predicted for it, every Chinese community, however small today, would have the opportunity to expand its trading role and strengthen its links with people not only in China but with ethnic Chinese in their respective regions. This presupposes a long-term and wider acceptance of multi-ethnic tolerance in the new states. In any case, in an era of capitalist globalization, there are other options. If necessary, many would seek to move to centres where wealth-making is perceived as easier and safer.

As for the third and growing group in the West, theirs is a history filled with contradictions. Most of the early miners and coolie labour who went to the English-speaking migrant states were forced to return to China. Those who remained had turned to a limited number of trades and a few eventually acquired enough education to join the professions. But, after World War II, there was a reversal of immigration policies which transformed conditions almost beyond belief. Today, these migrant states, notably the United States, Canada and Australia, receive more immigrants directly from Chinese territories than from anywhere else in the world. To their weak and scattered communities that had been declining surely and steadily during the first half of the 20th century, there came new waves of immigrants from Taiwan, Hong Kong and more recently the Chinese mainland. Increasingly, they came as families, with many headed by those who were educated and who chose to migrate to a particular country in search of even better education and opportunities for themselves and their children.

Among the newcomers were many who could be described as refugee élites intent on playing a part in the modernization of China. They have been compared with the élite literati who left to learn from the West, and those who, since the beginning of the 20th century, have brought Nationalist and Communist organizations and education ideals to their compatriots abroad. But in terms of numbers, including many who had studied in the West and turned their backs on one Chinese regime or another, such movements of élite families were unprecedented.

Their impact on earlier layers of Chinese settlers, however, is uncertain. They are still mobile and could readily re-migrate if necessary. Their ties with China remain emotionally and culturally strong, and already some have returned to Taiwan, Hong Kong and the mainland. Such loyalties as they have to things and matters Chinese will vary from individual to individual, but much will depend on the future development of the Chinese polity. The future moves of these new émigrés are unpredictable and no doubt these will be carefully by Chinese and non-Chinese alike. But it is likely that most of them will remain abroad as diaspora communities in those countries where legal and political conditions permit them to do so.

In an era of expanded global relationships, the three distinctive groups described above are now less likely to develop apart. Many are already interacting with parts of China whenever feasible, and many do so with one another across the various regions. Unlike in the past when such connections were primarily commercial, modern communications enable them to be multidimensional and much more entwined. There will emerge many kinds of political and community leaders to cope with rapidly changing local environments. Their visions of the future will be couched in increasingly modern terms. As they become more articulate and convincing, they could lead the Chinese in several different directions. And when, as many would expect, China joins the mainstream of the nation-state system in some future modified form, the alternatives will become clearer. Some leaders will ask their communities to emphasize their Chinese identities, or offer to take their followers home to China. Others will persuade theirs to disappear as Chinese, give total loyalty to their adopted homes and, wherever possible, participate fully in the lives of their fellow nationals. Yet others will seek one of the many positions in between and, from past experience, it would seem likely that the numbers of these will remain large. For them, the spectrum will be determined by local needs and the place of China in the region and the world.

Throughout China's history, there have been peoples who have become Chinese as well as Chinese who have become other peoples, both within and outside China's long and moveable borders. Never, however, have the numbers of Chinese ready to become other peoples been so great as during the 20th century. Never before has there been the perception that Chinese civilization itself was being threatened. What the story in this volume brings to the fore is that the unique challenge of global modernization has changed the conditions under which Chinese people move out of China and move back in again. This has also ensured that the impact of China on the world will remain strong. If the transformation within China is successfully managed, and its rejuvenated civilization greatly enhanced, all Chinese will look at the Chinese diaspora depicted here with different eyes. They will see that many people of Chinese descent have made significant contributions to the countries in which they settled. They will better acknowledge that such achievements have been an inspiration to those who stayed home during the past hundred years or more.

Excerpt copyright © 1998, 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.