Chinese Diasporas: An Overview

Abstract

In the late 1950's, migrants from Asian origins accounted for less than 8 per cent of the migration to the US and around 3 per cent of the migration to Canada and Australia. By the early 1990's, these proportions had increased to about 48 per cent of the annual migration to Canada, 38 per cent to the US and 46 per cent of the migration to Australia. In 1990 alone, for example, 256,000 entered the US, 91,000 Canada and 56,000 Australia. In the early 1990's, the overseas Chinese community would have approximated 30-35 million worldwide - about 30 million in Southeast Asia and other parts of Asia, about 3.2 million in the Americas, about 700,000 in Europe (including the former Soviet Union), some 370,000 in Oceania, and about 100,000 in Africa. Relaxed immigration laws in the USA, Canada and Australia since the 1960's, combined with the impact of the new globalisation and the rise of East Asia has resulted in an unprecedented movement of peoples from this region of the world to these countries. The implications of this new multicultural immigration, while unique to the circumstances of the current stage of global economic history, have to be seen in the light of past history. The Chinese diaspora is quite old, and it is important to conceptualise its current relationship to global society and economy in historical and comparative terms. The term diaspora is being used here to mean simply migratory dispersal, interchangeable with the term overseas Chinese communities, and is not being used with the political-historical connotations often associated with the original usage, although there may very well be some similarities in specific societal situations. Even so, it is necessary to define the term overseas Chinese. The simplest definition would mean anyone of Chinese descent who personally or whose ancestors migrated from China to a foreign country within or beyond Asia, and who now considers himself/herself a citizen or permanent resident of the host country. The recently published Encyclopedia Of The Overseas Chinese defines this as someone whose non-Chinese citizenship and political allegiance collapse ancestral loyalties. This definition would technically exclude Chinese nationals who are residing temporarily in a foreign country for purposes of study, business, or other reasons, who continue to consider themselves nationals of China and have the intention to return to their place of birth within the foreseeable future. It would conceptually include people from this group who do have intentions of relocating to the new society, and who may be making moves to effect such a transition. It could also include people in all the different host countries who may be locally born of mixed Chinese descent, but who may wish to define themselves or may even be defined officially by their host societies as belonging to the Chinese community. The Encyclopedia also includes in its definition of overseas Chinese permanent residents of Taiwan and Hong Kong who have simultaneously acquired foreign citizenship of one kind or another, even though they may continue to live in these places. Methods of Classification There are several ways in which one can classify Chinese migrant communities for the purposes of analysis. One can classify them according to their chronological origins i.e. the historic period when the migrations originally took place, and the first local communities were formed. One can classify them according to the kinds of destinations or host societies in which they settled, with the implication that the social and developmental challenges which they faced were qualitatively different in each group of destinations. One can also classify them according to the nature of the occupational push/pull factors which took them to their new environments. Applying the first method of classification, we can separate four distinct phases in the history of Chinese migration. First, there was the phase which can be described as the autonomous or traditional intra-Asian phase, when their movements were the result of regional and/or national domestic factors, unconnected to and indeed before the historic contact with Western powers. …