The Right of Return: Chinese displaced persons and the International Refugee Organization, 1947–56

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines the rise of the international refugee regime in Asia, focusing on the work of the International Refugee Organization in repatriating overseas Chinese from mainland China back to their homes in Southeast Asia from 1947 to 1956. It looks both at how the International Refugee Organization inherited this repatriation project from its predecessor—the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration—and its survival after a civil war installed a new, Communist government on the Chinese mainland. Doing so reveals the extent to which both Chinese governments had to rely on outside assistance to fulfil an important task of maintaining positive ties between Chinese abroad and the homeland. Using research from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs archives in Beijing and Taipei, as well as records from relevant parties in the British and American governments, this article places the repatriation programme and the larger efforts of the International Refugee Organization in Asia in a broader context of regional foreign relations and the origins of the Cold War.