Chinese Overseas

Based on long-term ethnographic study, this is the first comprehensive work on the Chinese popular religion in Malaysia. It analyses temples and communities in historical and contemporary perspective, the diversity of deities and Chinese speech groups, religious specialists and temple services, the communal significance of the Hungry Ghosts Festival, the relationship between religion and philanthropy as seen through the lens of such Chinese religious organization as shantang (benevolent halls) and Dejiao (Moral Uplifting Societies), as well as the development and transformation of Taoist Religion. Highly informative, this concise book contributes to an understanding of Chinese migration and settlement, political economy and religion, religion and identity politics as well the significance of religion to both individuals and communities.

In Contested Community, the authors analyze the Chinese immigrant community in Cuba between the years 1900–1968. While popular literature of the era portrayed the diasporic group as a closed, inassimilable ethnic enclave, closer inspection instead reveals numerous economic, political, and ethnic divisions. As with all organizations, asymmetrical power relations permeated Havana’s Barrio Chino and the larger Chinese Cuban community. The authors of Contested Community use difficult-to-access materials from Cuba’s national archive to offer a unique and insightful interpretation of a little-understood immigrant group.

In Global Hakka: Hakka Identity in the Remaking Jessieca Leo offers a needed update on Hakka history and a reassessment of Hakka identity in the global and transnational contexts. Leo gives fresh insights into concepts such as ethnicity, identity, Han, Chineseness, overseas Chinese, and migration in relation to Hakka identity.

Globalization, transnationalism, deterritorialization and migration drive the rapid transformation and reformation of Hakka identity to the point of no return. Dehakkalization through cultural adaptation or genetic transfer has created an elastic identity in the global Hakka and different kinds of Hakka communities around the world.

Jessieca Leo convincingly shows that the concept of ‘being Hakka’ in the twenty-first century is better referred to as Hakkaness – a quality determined by lifestyle and personal choices.

"Among the Chinese, tradition long resisted the idea of migration. In practice, however, there were many layers of adaptation to different circumstances. The Hakka have been exceptional in having always been conscious of their migratory successes. This book explores with great sensitivity how Hakka history outside China influences the way they respond to the new global environment. Combining careful scholarship with self-discovery, Jessieca Leo captures the processes by which one group of Chinese became migrants who consider migration as normal. Her fascinating and original work takes the study of the Hakka to a higher level and offers fresh insights for understanding how other migratory Chinese are transforming tradition today."
Professor Wang Gungwu, National University of Singapore

In Networks beyond Empires, Kuo examines business and nationalist activities of the Chinese bourgeoisie in Hong Kong and Singapore between 1914 and 1941. The book argues that speech-group ties were key to understanding the intertwining relationship between business and nationalism.

Organization of transnational businesses and nationalist campaigns overlapped with the boundary of Chinese speech-group networks. Embedded in different political-economic contexts, these networks fostered different responses to the decline of the British power, the expansion of the Japanese empire, as well as the contested state building processes in China. Through negotiating with the imperialist powers and Chinese state-builders, Chinese bourgeoisie overseas contributed to the making of an autonomous space of diasporic nationalism in the Hong Kong-Singapore corridor.

For over 150 years, China’s interactions with its diaspora have evolved according to the domestic and international geopolitical environment. This relationship (broadly described as qiaowu) is most visible in the form of cultural and economic activities; however, its main purpose is to cultivate, influence, and manage ethnic Chinese as part of a global transnational project to rally support for its proponents.

Qiaowu: Extra-Territorial Policies for the Overseas Chinese compares the rival policies and practices of the Chinese Communist Party with the Nationalist Kuomintang and Democratic Progressive Party governments of Taiwan. Political scientist James Jiann Hua To analyzes the role that qiaowu plays in harnessing the power of strategic overseas communities, and highlights the implications for China’s foreign relations.

What role does diasporic Chinese media play in the process of Chinese migrants' adaptation to their new home country? With China's rise, to what extent has the expansion of its "soft power" swayed the changing identities of the Chinese overseas? A Virtual Chinatown provides a timely and original analysis to answer such questions.

Using a media and communication studies approach to investigate the reciprocal relationship between Chinese-language media and the Chinese migrant community in New Zealand, Phoebe Li goes beyond conventional scholarship on the Chinese Diaspora as practised by social historians, anthropologists and demographers. Written in an accessible and reader-friendly manner, this book will also appeal to academics and students with interests in other transnational communities, alternative media, and minority politics.

Much of what has been written on Singapore's wartime past is set against the Japanese invasion and occupation of the island. In Diaspora at War: The Chinese of Singapore between Empire and Nation 1937 - 1945, Ernest Koh maps a war history that is far wider in geographical and temporal scope. From the skies over Western Europe and the Mediterranean to the Burma Road, from the Atlantic Ocean to the cities of China, individuals and small groups of Chinese from the British colony worked, fought, and flew in a variety of fighting and labour units. Drawing from oral history accounts and archival sources, Koh recovers a rich and insightful historical reality that has long been submerged under the weight of a teleological national narrative.

This is an ethno-historical study of Chinese from West Kalimantan, Indonesia that, unlike other Chinese Diasporic studies, takes its departure from the “away” position. The study aims to interrogate how, where, and in what terms “home” is defined for the stranger. Through examining historical events such as the Japanese Occupation, the repatriation of overseas Chinese to China, and ethnic and state violence in West Kalimantan, this study highlights the plight of the Chinese as political orphans in search of a home that eludes them, whether in Indonesia or China. Through a rich array of different kinds of data, including oral histories and memoirs of the Communist underground, this book offers novel perspectives on the role of history in subject formation.

The existing literature on Chinese Indonesians has so far tended to take an approach of either victimization and marginalization or a focus on elite businessmen and their economic influence. This volume takes a different perspective. The Chinese in Indonesia were not only innocent victims of history, but were simultaneously active agents of change. Chinese Indonesians from different walks of life played an active role in shaping society during regime changes and found creative and constructive ways to deal with situations of adversity. This book demonstrates that regime changes in Indonesia did not only pose threats of violence, but also offered opportunities that induced “agency” on the part of Chinese Indonesians to shape their own destinies and that of the country.

This path-breaking collection of critical essays introduces a diverse range of approaches to open up the field of modern Chinese literature to new cross-regional, local, and global analyses. Each of the ten essays deals with a particular conceptual problem or case study of different locations and modalities of Chinese-language, or Sinophone, production. From language to music, literature to popular culture, minority politics to internal diaspora, theories of sinography to China's quest for the Nobel Prize, this volume brings together leading and new voices in the study of Chinese literature from a variety of comparative and intranational perspectives. Contributors include scholars from Asia, North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. It is an indispensable reference for anyone interested in contemporary China and the global politics of Sinophone literature.

``This thought-provoking anthology has opened up many fascinating questions. Although its intended readership is scholars from literary studies, anyone who is interested in the interplay between language, ethnicity and identity should not miss it.``
Zhengdao Ye, The Australian National University

Current historical work on the international tea trade has focused on the Sino-British trade and the impact of capitalism and modern technology on tea production in India and Ceylon. These studies have overlooked the changes that were afoot in the Fujian tea industry and the problems with conducting the trade with the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Using the Fujian-Singapore trade as an illustration and drawing on Chinese-language archival materials, this book looks at the state of tea production in Fujian; the overseas Chinese tea merchants and the fluctuations of the trade during the period of political instability in China; the Sino-Japanese War; decolonisation in Singapore; and the period of collectivisation in China and the Cold War.

For centuries, the Chinese have been intermarrying with inhabitants of the Philippines, resulting in a creolized community of Chinese mestizos under the Spanish colonial regime. In contemporary Philippine society, the “Chinese” are seen as a racialized “Other” while descendants from early Chinese-Filipino intermarriages as “Filipino.” Previous scholarship attributes this development to the identification of Chinese mestizos with the equally “Hispanicized” and “Catholic” indios. Building on works in Chinese transnationalism and cultural anthropology, this book examines the everyday practices of Chinese merchant families in Manila from the 1860s to the 1930s. The result is a fascinating study of how families and individuals creatively negotiate their identities in ways that challenge our understanding of the genesis of ethnic identities in the Philippines.

“…[This book] helps contribute to the revision of the existing literature on the Chinese and Chinese mestizos with a new perspective that highlights the emerging field of transnational studies.” - Prof. Augusto Espiritu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“…the author does an outstanding job and we recommend that citizens of the Philippine ‘nation,’ whether they see themselves as ‘Chinese’ or ‘Filipino’ would do well to read this work and understand the origins of the racial stereotypes that influence the way they look at particular members of Philippine society, particularly in Manila.” - Prof. Ellen Palanca and Prof. Clark Alejandrino, Ateneo de Manila University

"...an ambitious study of the Chinese and first-generation Chinese mestizos of Manila...[the author] has added valuable research materials from Philippine and American archival collections and...a wide range of published primary sources...The book is meticulously annotated and rich in descriptive detail..." - Michael Cullinane, University of Wisconsin-Madison