Ritual Innovation and Historical Memory

The First World War and the Homefront in Canada: Broadening the Analysis Brad Shoebottom (bio) TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, WHILE I WAS A GRADUATE STUDENT of Canadian military history, a faculty member mentioned that historians faced difficulties selecting which histories to write given a vast potential list of topics and gave the example of the hypothetical local and rural “History of the Post Office in Gagetown, NB.” At the time, I could not have agreed more – being more interested in national-level questions – and I was unable to fathom that there would be enough interest in the operations of a village post office. However, after completing a thesis about a local New Brunswick entrepreneur and after the passage of 25 years, I have come to appreciate that a post office was one of the key hubs of small villages and rural Canada, lower in importance than only the church and the general store. Local community or institutional history, despite its amateur roots, was and still is incredibly popular history. And local history, in a time of war, offers a bottom-up approach to military history that offers a different home front perspective than the typical top-down national narratives about war. Local history – the study of social and cultural history in the local community – became more acceptable as an academic subject in the United Kingdom in the 1950s, when W.G. Hoskins made the case that the local perspective uncovers themes not always visible in a national narrative.1 John Beckett explained more recently that national and local history are both valid and can co-exist so long as both use rigorous analysis of sources.2 In Australia, Ian Willis argues that local history is a radical history as “local histories often look away from the histories of the elite to the experiences of the ordinary, the mundane, the intimate and the banal.”3 In the United States, Carol Kammen agreed with the broader history idea: “Local history is, despite its limited geographical focus, a broad field of inquiry: it is political, social, and economic [End Page 149] history of the community and it’s religious and intellectual history too. . . . Local history is the study of who remained in a community and who left – and why.”4 In Canada, Robert Rutherdale’s Hometown Horizon (2002) noted that the local history approach provides a first-hand experience on various Great War themes such as social conflict about enemy aliens, volunteering, the role of women, conscription, and returning soldiers based on analysis of gender, ethnicity, class, and age.5 Local history therefore offers an alternative approach to the study of history and, in this case, the impact of the First World War on Canada. Canadian military historians writing about the First World War spent much of the first 75 postwar years in a top-down, metanarrative approach debating three major questions: national unity, especially the impact of conscription on English and French relations and on urban and rural areas; the impact on national identity of the battlefield achievements of the Canadian Corps in France, especially the symbolism of the battle for Vimy Ridge in 1917 on the road to Canada’s nationhood; and the impact of the war on the industrialization of Canada.6 These themes help to explore why the war was necessary or to bring more meaning to the war. A more recent trend places less emphasis on overseas events and a military history methodology and more emphasis on a social history methodology to discuss the home front, historical memory, and gender and race issues.7 This is a new military history or, as some call it “war and society” history as pioneered by John Herd Thompson’s [End Page 150] The Harvests of War.8 As such, previously unheard voices have come to light. Typically, most locality-focused articles and books cover only a single subject like recruiting, conscription, women’s war work, race, industrialization, labour relations, or a disaster like the influenza in Winnipeg or the Halifax Explosion. Most of these local studies almost exclusively focus on a large urban centre (as in Montreal, Toronto, or Regina), or provinces (such as Quebec, Nova Scotia, or Ontario), or a...

Reviewed by: Chinese Business in Southeast Asia: Contesting Cultural Explanations, Researching Entrepreneurship Derek Heng Thiam Soon (bio) Edmund Terence Gomez and Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, editors. Chinese Business in Southeast Asia: Contesting Cultural Explanations, Researching Entrepreneurship. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. xiii, 205 pp. Hardcover $128.49, ISBN 0-700-71415-4. Paperback $40.95, ISBN 0-415-32622-2. Chinese Business in Southeast Asia: Contesting Cultural Explanations, Researching Entrepreneurship is the result of a workshop on Chinese businesses in Southeast Asia hosted by the Program for Southeast Asian Area Studies (PROSEA), Academia Sinica, Taibei, in 1997. Edited by Edmund Terence Gomez and Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, this volume consists of an introduction and six papers, each written as country reports featuring Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Taiwan (Taiwanese businesses in Southeast Asia). Each paper [End Page 419] contains a brief history of Chinese businesses in each of these countries and the sectors of their respective economies that Chinese businesses specialize in or have dominated up to the present, followed by an evaluation of the state of Chinese businesses in each of these countries with specific reference to developments in politics and governmental policies pertaining to the economy since the attaining of independence by each of these countries. There is also a fairly detailed bibliography on Chinese businesses in Southeast Asia, which is again divided according to the countries represented in the volume. The general thrust of the papers challenges the cultural approach to understanding the functions and successes of Chinese businesses in each of these Southeast Asian countries in the post-independence period. There is a conscious effort to move away from a more conceptual approach to understanding the success and limitations faced by the Chinese business communities in the respective countries since these countries became independent from their colonial masters after the Second World War, to a more pragmatic approach to the issue of Chinese capital and the establishment of niches in the respective economies. While there is an acknowledgment that emotive factors centered on ethnicity have been and continue to remain important to the Chinese business communities in Southeast Asia, the governments that these communities have been subject to have been more important in determining, in real terms, the viability of Chinese enterprise. The papers also question the thesis that the Chinese business communities in Southeast Asia are linked together by a series of networks that have made available large pools of capital, information, and knowledge that have opened up business opportunities in both domestic and regional markets. The existence and perpetuation of transnational Chinese business networks, based on the mutual recognition of a shared historical and ethnic background and with China as the common point of reference, otherwise known as the huaqiao (Overseas Chinese) or bamboo networks, is refuted. Instead, the papers suggest that since independence was attained by these countries in the mid-twentieth century, the Chinese business communities in Southeast Asia have been confined largely to the respective countries in which they have been located, resulting in a process of localization over the last fifty years. Localization of the various Chinese business communities in Southeast Asia took place as a result of the establishment of national identities in each of the Southeast Asian countries in the post-independence phase of Southeast Asian history, despite the position of the Chinese community in each of the Southeast Asian countries being at times ambiguous. At the same time, the isolation of China by the West during the 1950s to 1970s, and China's closed-door policy up until the late 1970s, had effectively led to the diminishing of the role and importance of the China connection that had, up until the 1950s, been a vital aspect of the Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. [End Page 420] The papers maintain a consensus that in such a context the political framework within which Chinese business existed, such as the nature of the political elite of the respective countries and the policies of the respective governments, had a more fundamental impact on the opportunities accorded to the Chinese business community for the establishment and enlargement of economic niches than do long-standing sociocultural traits and practices, such...

With the recent Sino-Vietnamese conflict over the 'Overseas Chinese', the problem of ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia once again attracted the attention of the world. Questions are raised as to whether or not Peking has introduced a new policy to act as the protector of the interests of the 'Overseas Chinese'. This examines the position of the 'Overseas Chinese' in the People republic of China's foreign policy from 1949 to the present time and conventional notion of the linkages between China and the 'Overseas Chinese'. Moreover, it discusses the ethnic Chinese scene in Southeast Asia and ASEAN countries' reactions to China's recent foreign relations.

Chapter 9 - Chinese Capitalisms in Southeast Asia: Diverging Institutional Legacies of Southeast Asian Chinese Business Communities

This paper explores under what context the transnational ethnic kinship ties between the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and China have not led to their securitization and in what context they have. As the rising great power with exponential economic growth for the past few decades, China has transformed itself from a dirt-poor backwater state to the second largest economy in the world and is also seemingly on the way to reclaim the historical dominant status in East and Southeast Asia. During this process, overseas Chinese in various home states in Southeast Asia have not experienced a uniform securitization of their kinship ties. This paper investigates some of the dynamic patterns about overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia’s relationship between the changing kin state and their home states in the recent past. Focusing on how states in Southeast Asia maintain different types of relations with China in the context of the latter’s rising, this paper contends that the ways in which overseas Chinese communities in the region manage their political space and negotiate their belonging are a function of a combination of international structural changes and domestic political factors. Empirically, this paper compares three states of Southeast Asia—Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia—in the different ways of their treatment of the ethnic Chinese, as well as the responding strategies utilized by the ethnic Chinese in navigating their political space and belonging.

The study of overseas Chinese has continued for some time as a series of somewhat unrelated monographs with little comparative analysis. One of the few important attempts at sociological generalization about Chinese communities in Southeast Asia was made by Maurice Freedman in an article entitled ‘Immigrants and Associations’, which appeared in this journal in 1960. In this article, Freedman suggested that ‘the associations which in a small-scale and relatively underdeveloped settlement express social, economic and political links in an undifferentiated form, tend, as the scale and complexity of the society increase, to separate into a network of associations which are comparatively specialized in their functions and the kinds of solidarity they express’ (Freedman, 1960: 47 f.). He proposed a continuum of types of overseas Chinese urban communities. At one end stands Kuching, Sarawak, ‘as the model of a simple and relatively small-scale overseas settlement’, while ‘Later Singapore is … the model of the most developed form of immigrant Chinese settlement in Southeast Asia’ (ibid.: 45). Singapore exhibits a great number of associations, based on criteria of recruitment that allow memberships to overlap to a great extent; the urban Chinese community in Sarawak includes fewer associations and consequently less overlap among memberships. Other studies in Southeast Asia suggest that this continuum might be a useful way of looking at the development of Chinese communities.

Globalization tendencies have fundamentally transformed the nature and organization of business communities in Southeast Asia. Chinese business communities in East and Southeast Asia have been playing a leading role in the regional economy through the extensive interpenetration of capital flows and business networks. Through their cross-border investments and global trade networks, these Chinese business communities have also facilitated the rearticulation of mainland China into the global economy. The recent Asian economic crisis, however, has seriously undermined the social and institutional foundations of Chinese business communities in Southeast Asia. At the discursive level, Chinese business communities are beginning to come to terms with a much more realistic conception of globalization as a set of contested processes creating both threats and opportunities. In material terms, Chinese business communities increasingly recognize the limits to their `home' country-based accumulation strategies and turn to globalization as an alternative growth strategy. The emergence of Chinese business communities in Southeast Asia cannot therefore be conceived as an indigenous evolutionary process of social and institutional change. Rather, it should always be seen as contingent upon such critical external processes as globalization.

Reviewed by: The Rise of China and the Overseas Chinese by Leo Suryadinata Ja Ian Chong The Rise of China and the Overseas Chinese Leo Suryadinata Singapore: Yusof Ishak Institute, 2017. 278 pp. Leo Suryadinata's The Rise of China and the Chinese Overseas: A Study of Beijing's Changing Policy in Southeast Asia and Beyond is a very welcome addition to the discussion of ties between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and ethnic Chinese living beyond its borders. Suryadinata makes the case in the book that as the PRC becomes more globally prominent, it is increasingly blurring lines in its treatment of PRC citizens and non-PRC citizen ethnic Chinese overseas. This claim comes amid allegations of growing PRC efforts to mobilize ethnic Chinese communities abroad to serve its national interests, be they economic, political, or strategic. These concerns are not new and are in fact a throwback to the past. They give the book an added timeliness and importance. For much of the Cold War, ethnic Chinese communities in non-communist parts of Southeast Asia faced the suspicion of being a possible subversive fifth column for the PRC, especially if they seemed left-leaning. Such perspectives diminished as the PRC engaged in economic reform from the late 1970s, eschewed radical revolution, and passed a nationality law in 1980 clearly demarcating non-PRC citizen ethnic Chinese abroad from PRC citizens. Recent reports of PRC efforts to lobby and police opinion in foreign countries using members of local ethnic Chinese communities ranging from Europe and North America to Oceania and Southeast Asia have again brought these long-dormant issues to the fore.1 This is an issue on which Suryadinata has previously written, and he provides readers a brief reminder of these themes in Chapter 3.2 [End Page 151] An Awkward Closeness Suryadinata organizes the book into four parts. Part I (Chapters 1–3) discusses the PRC's rise to prominence from the 1980s till the present, changes in ethnic Chinese communities outside the PRC, and the organization of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (OCAO). The OCAO is the government body responsible for managing official ties with ethnic Chinese communities outside the PRC, be they PRC citizens abroad or ethnic Chinese who do not hold PRC citizenship. Within these pages, Suryadinata introduces his main observation—that Beijing seems to be reverting to its older policy of reducing distinctions between PRC citizens and non-PRC citizen ethnic Chinese in foreign jurisdictions. The key motivation behind this move, according to Suryadinata, is PRC efforts to advance and protect its interests and concerns overseas. Part II (Chapters 4–8) examines how the PRC responds officially to events outside its borders that affect ethnic Chinese and PRC citizens. Each chapter contains a case where ethnic Chinese come under threat from developments outside China and assess the PRC position. Beijing's reaction to the 1998 anti-Chinese race riots in Indonesia and violence in the South Pacific, Middle East, and Africa indicates a willingness to evacuate PRC citizens, especially those who work for PRC state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The 2014 anti-Chinese riots in Vietnam, triggered by a Beijing-initiated escalation in its maritime dispute with Hanoi, suggests that the PRC is not above placing its citizens overseas in danger for the pursuit of more important interests. However, contrasting PRC responses to incidents involving ethnic Chinese in Malaysia and Myanmar point toward an evolution in Beijing's position. Beijing responded to alleged ill-treatment of its citizens by Malaysian police in 2005 as well as political pressure, even violence, toward ethnic Chinese Myanmar citizens in the Kokang region along the PRC border in 2015 with diplomatic entreaties. Such actions resulted from Beijing's desire to maintain positive official relations with Malaysia and Myanmar. Threats against ethnic Chinese Malaysians in 2015, in comparison, saw the then-PRC ambassador to Malaysia publicly expressing an intention to protect these co-ethnics even though this was tantamount to intervention and divided local opinion. This step appears to portend an effort by Beijing to extend influence over non-PRC citizen ethnic Chinese communities overseas, even at the risk of upsetting foreign governments. The next four chapters in...

This study examines the competitive strategy of Overseas Chinese firms in South-East Asia. The literature on Overseas Chinese business performance indicates that Overseas Chinese firms are a significant business force in South-East Asia and that these firms have been very successful. The literature seeks to explain this success and advances two main strands of explanation: one attributes success to features of the business environment faced by the Overseas Chinese in South-East Asia, the other to Chinese cultural values. Reflecting on this extensive body of literature, one point stands out: there is no clear definition of what is meant by 'success'. Moreover, both strands in the literature essentially treat Overseas Chinese firms as one homogeneous group. No one has asked whether Overseas Chinese firms do business in ways that give them competitive advantage relative to indigenous (e.g. Malay or Javanese) or Western firms. This thesis introduces the resource-based view of the firm (RBV) as new discourse to the study of Overseas Chinese business performance. The RBV seeks to explain why some firms consistently outperform competitors and focuses on a firm's distinctive capabilities as an explanation of a firm's ability to obtain competitive advantage. In this research, the competitive strategies of Overseas Chinese business firms have been analysed using insights from the RBV. The research explores whether, within the same industry and the same business environment, individual Overseas Chinese firms pursue competitive strategies that are very different both from each other and from those of competing Western firms. The methodology used in this research is termed scientific realism. The research design is based on an approach in which theory is built from case studies. The data collection followed two methods: industry analysis and case studies. Eleven firms operating in the latex glove manufacturing industry in Malaysia were studied. The relative recent inception of this industry in Malaysia in 1987 allowed for a retrospective analysis of the case study firms' competitive strategies from their establishment until the time of the interview. The research found that there are two main types of Chinese firms in this industry: the professional Chinese firm and the traditional Chinese firm. A 'competitive and corporate strategy matrix' was developed to indicate the relative position of the case study firms in terms of competitive strategy (i.e. degree of involvement in marketing. product and production process development, and brand development) and the degree of focus of the firm's corporate strategy. The business strategy of the two types of Chinese firms differs in the extent to which the firm is involved in product development and the marketing of its products to end-users. The corporate strategy of the two types of Chinese firms also differs with the traditional Chinese firm following a corporate strategy of diversification. The traditional Chinese firm often manages a portfolio of unrelated businesses and adopts an opportunistic approach to investment in the businesses. The corporate strategy of the professional Chinese firms is more focused and allows them to stay in the glove manufacturing industry for the long term by making long term investments. The theory developed through this research is that there are different types of Overseas Chinese firms that have different competitive and corporate strategies. A combination of a competitive strategy, in which the firm has a high involvement of the marketing of its products to end-user and uses the feedback obtained from this involvement in the development of new products and production processes, and a corporate strategy that allows the business unit to have a long-term commitment and focus on the business activity, will lead to the development of distinctive capabilities. These distinctive capabilities may lead to a competitive advantage of the firm over its competitors.

INTRODUCTION Southeast Asia is closely linked with the Chinese society, not only because of a great number (more than thirty million) of ethnic Chinese in the region but also because of its multilateral connections with China. Historically speaking, China and Southeast Asia started interactions which could be traced back to as early as 111 B.C. when China took over Vietnam during the Han dynasty. Both parties expanded bilateral contacts since Admiral General Cheng Ho's voyages to Southeast Asia during the Ming dynasty in the fifteenth century. China and Southeast Asia have gradually strengthened various interactions since the late nineteenth century when more Chinese immigrated to Southeast Asia due to China's internal chaos and the economic opportunities in this part of the world. Geographically speaking, Southeast Asia has long been regarded as China's rear door or the neighbour in the South. It is particularly true for the people in China's provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan, because peoples (particularly minority ethnic groups) over there often migrate from one area to another, regardless of the concepts of borders and territories of the modern nation-state. Culturally speaking, in addition to the minority ethnic groups along the borders of China and Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar where these minority groups share similar cultures, ethnic Chinese (mainly Cantonese, Fujiannese, Hainanese, and Hakkanese) have also appeared in all countries in Southeast Asia since the late seventeenth century, making Chinese culture significant in the local countries. Economically speaking, the minority groups in the north of mainland Southeast Asia and the above four ethnic Chinese groups along the coast of the South China Sea have already established a long economic history with the local people and among themselves. Politically speaking, it was since the late Ching dynasty that the Chinese Government began to be officially in touch with Western colonial powers, and China began to establish counselor offices in a number of Southeast Asian countries after the Republic of China (ROC) was established in 1911. Given these close connections between China and Southeast Asia, the study of Southeast Asia in China only began in the early twentieth century, much late than the beginning of bilateral interactions of the two sides.

In the early stage of the People’s Republic of China, both the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and retreat of Kuomintang (KMT) tried their efforts to win the overseas Chinese immigrants’ support through a series of foreign policies and legislation activities. Since its establishment, the PRC had constantly increased its efforts to promote its political influence and emotional connections among Chinese immigrants overseas. To this end, the PRC government had adjusted its political policies during the land reformation. On the other side, KMT government tried to contain its counterpart’s political influence among these immigrants and to restrict the monetary funding flowing back to Chinese mainland. In fact, the relevant KMT policies not only were impractical in action but also had caused a series of tension and concerns in major countries at Southeast Asian. In this paper, we analyze documentary records kept from British Foreign Office and conduct a comparative assessment between the PRC and KMT’ s foreign policies targeting those Chinese immigrants in Southeast Asian and propose political options and diplomatic strategies to deal with such situation. Our study intends to explore foreign policy options available in Chinese and British foreign policies toward Chinese oversea immigrants residing in Southeast Asia.

Since China's proposal of the “Belt and Road” initiative in 2013, the relationship between China and Southeast Asia has continued to develop. This achievement is inseparable from a large number of overseas Chinese living in Southeast Asia. As an indispensable and unique force to promote the construction of the “Belt and Road”, the Southeast Asians Chinese have played an irreplaceable role: such as support of Chinese culture spreading, building confidence and disambiguation among countries, and economic and trade cooperation. The problems and challenges facing Chinese culture in Southeast Asia are not only related to the development of Chinese society in Southeast Asia but also the current development of Chinese native culture. To overcome the problems and challenges encountered in the process of inheriting Chinese culture in Southeast Asia, we must clearly understand the status of overseas Chinese and the role that overseas Chinese can play to maximize their role and influence as carriers and bridges.

The Chinese Communist Party and the “Overseas Chinese Problem”The “Overseas Chinese problem” in South-East Asia is most commonly understood to be a problem which confronts the governments and indigenous peoples of the region, or other governments which have an interest in South-East Asia, or sometimes the Overseas Chinese themselves. It is seldom perceived as a “problem” for the Chinese Government, except in so far as China is thought to have encountered certain obstacles to political and economic exploitation of a relationship which appears deceptively simple, and which seems to offer very considerable advantages to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Yet the evolution of China's Overseas Chinese policy since 1949 reveals a growing awareness on the part of the CCP that there were many intractable problems associated with its overseas population, both in the pursuit of foreign policies in South-East Asia and in the very nature of the Overseas Chinese relationship with China.

閩粵為近代中國著名的僑鄉，海外移民及歸僑眾多。華僑的出洋主要是經濟上的因素，他們匯款返鄉支持了家鄉家眷生計、教育、公益、實業等層面的發展，促成了僑鄉社會的近代化。 在昔日交通不便捷的情況下，海外僑居地與僑鄉之間的聯繫，經常必須仰賴僑刊或鄉訊的報導。這些刊物一般由各僑鄉宗族所辦，刊行於海外，讓華僑得以了解家鄉動態與相關事聞。不過由於國共戰爭、文化大革命之故，多數僑刊沒有保存下來。 本文擬以保存完整的僑刊福建金門珠山《顯影》(Shining)為例，一方面深入分析1928至1949年間（1937-45年間因戰爭停刊）《顯影》（共二十一卷）史料，一方面也從刊物內容中理解1920s-40s年代金門社會生活、治安狀況、海外鄉僑事蹟、僑匯經濟、實業發展、政治時局、文化變遷等主題。最後，進一步探究《顯影》的史料價值及其侷限，說明其對於僑鄉研究的重要性。

Editors’ Note Ng Chin-keong and Tan Chee-Beng, Chief Editors Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Chinese Overseas. The study of Chinese overseas has been growing in importance since World War II. With Chinese in almost all the countries in the world, their presence as well as their global networks and contribution to local societies have been the focus of interest of scholars, politicians, business people, and lay people. To date there are scholars and students of Chinese overseas all over the world. Their writings are mainly published in books and a diverse range of journals in social studies. However, there is not one internationally-refereed journal that is professionally devoted to the study of Chinese overseas. JCO aims to fill this gap by providing an interdisciplinary forum for the promotion of research and writing on Chinese overseas. There are many terms for ethnic Chinese of different nationalities living outside mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. We have decided to use the now popular and hopefully not so controversial term "Chinese overseas" as the equivalent of haiwai huaren in Chinese. We are aware of the politics of labels, and in this journal, we allow authors to use their preferred term as long as it is consistent within an article, and is academically sound. For example, "overseas Chinese" may be used to emphasize the historical perspective, and in some contexts, reads better in English than "Chinese overseas." In yet other contexts it may be convenient to use the term "Chinese diaspora" when the global space is emphasized. We support the liberal choice of a convenient term, provided one is aware of the political implications of the various labels. There are five articles, two reports and five book reviews in this inaugural issue. The five research articles show the importance of using the transnational perspective to study Chinese overseas and that the study of China too can benefit from studying Chinese overseas. Prof. Wang Gungwu provides us with a perceptive discussion of Chinese writers in Southeast Asia and North America. Of particular interest is his analysis of ethnic Chinese writers having different selves in relation to his/her fellow Chinese community, and in relation to other ethnic groups in the country. These writers have their different images of China, too. Having to deal with the local-national and impacted by the process of globalization, ethnic Chinese writers are very much concerned with identities. Prof. Wang suggests using the Chinese categorization of nei (within) and wai (without) to better understand how overseas Chinese writers adjust to the "criss-crossing circles." In the next article, Elizabeth Sinn analyzes the place of Hong Kong in her discussion of the Chinese diaspora as a transnational space of consumption in "Preparing Opium for America." She gives a detailed description of Hong Kong as the chief supplier of prepared opium, especially for the Chinese in the United States. [End Page v] Michael Szonyi's "Mothers, Sons and Lovers" describes the complexity of the overseas Chinese divided family before 1949. In contrast to the usual image of passive women left behind in China by emigrants, Szonyi draws our attention to the roles played by wives and other relatives in managing investments in China. Emigration created both opportunities and suffering for women left behind in China. Szonyi points out that migration as a strategy to raise the economic well-being of the family in China was risky as family members, including wives, might betray the sojourner's trust, not just on investments but also on matters sexual. Glen Peterson's "Overseas Chinese and Merchant Philanthropy in China" shows the significance of the transnational perspective in helping to understand merchant philanthropy in China, such as in Guangzhou, where the phenomenon can be better understood by considering both the merchants in China and Chinese merchants overseas. Homeland philanthropy was embraced by merchants in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, and Peterson argues that the ideology behind this shifted from "Confucian culturalism" to modern nationalism. The article by Sun Wanning looks at media and the Chinese diaspora. She demonstrates "how the processes of media production, representation and consumption are integral to the formation of a Chinese diasporic imagination," and argues...