Chinese Diasporas: A Social History of Global Migration

Steven Miles’s “Chinese Diasporas: A Social History of Global Migration” traces the movement of Han Chinese people from China, noting that “the outward movement of Han Chinese people from China proper beginning in the sixteenth century was closely related to the territorial expansion of China-based regimes and to the emergence of significant Chinese communities beyond the borders of China, initially primarily in Southeast Asia”. The book emphasizes the significance of individual and family decisions in shaping these trajectories, stating, “As we shall see, during the five centuries from the sixteenth century… sustained trajectories resulted more from decisions of individual migrants and their families than from state initiatives”.
Early Conceptualizations of Diaspora
The text initially frames early Chinese migration in terms of established diaspora concepts, observing that “Chinese traders in Southeast Asia in the early modern era, roughly 1500 to 1740, seemed to fit nicely the concept of a trade diaspora,” and that “in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the Chinese built railroads in the Americas and worked in mines in Southeast Asia, they seemed to fit the model of a labor diaspora”.
Critiques of the Diaspora Concept
However, the author also acknowledges the limitations of the term “diaspora” when applied to the Chinese experience. He notes that scholars “identify at least three problems” with this term. First, “because it has most commonly been applied to the Jewish experience, the term ‘diaspora’ conveys an image of its members as victims expelled from, and unable to return to, their homeland”. Second, “loose application of the term ‘Chinese diaspora’ risks slipping into conceiving of the unit of study as a monolithic entity,” failing to convey “the great diversity of experiences of people who are clumped together under this label”. Third, “the use of ‘Chinese diaspora’ tends to essentialize the Chineseness of the people studied, people who may just as likely have identified themselves primarily as Thai, Australian, or Cuban, for example,” while also signaling “a lack of belonging in these societies, a perpetual foreignness,” a notion that successive Chinese governments have reinforced by embracing “the notion of essential ties between the Chinese nation and people of Chinese descent residing elsewhere”.
Refining the Understanding of Diaspora
In response to these critiques, the book advocates for a more nuanced application of the term. As the author states, “apply the notion of ‘diaspora’ or ‘diasporic’ to the study of Chinese migrants and their descendants in a more cautious, limited manner”. The book draws on various scholars to refine the concept. The historian Adam McKeown suggests that “the concept of ‘diaspora’ can be useful ‘as a way to conceptualize cultural bonds, ties to a homeland, transnational organizations and networks linking people together across geographic boundaries, and dispersion’”. The anthropologist Lok Siu defines diaspora as “a collectivity of people who share a common history of dispersal from a homeland (real or imagined) and emplacement elsewhere, and who maintain a sense of connection to both places, as well as with their geographically dispersed co-ethnics”. Building on Rogers Brubaker’s criteria, the book highlights dispersion from a homeland, orientation toward that homeland, and “boundary-maintenance” as key elements of diaspora, while seeking to “avoid the notion of collective trauma and separation from homeland commonly associated with the Jewish and African diasporas”. Instead, it proposes that “we might think of diaspora as a claim of belonging, an assertion of connection to a homeland,” echoing the historian Shelly Chan’s view of diaspora as “less” a “collection of communities than a series of moments in which reconnections with a putative homeland take place,” emphasizing “the ‘processual nature’ by which links to a homeland are practiced, articulated, or simply ‘reproduced through sentiment, memory, and imagination’”. Ultimately, “My use of the term ‘diasporas’ is meant to convey dispersal, but not separation,” the author clarifies. However, the book also cautions against homogenization, stating, “one must be wary of the ways in which a transnational approach homogenizes Chinese migrants, obscuring divisions based on gender, class, dialect, and regional differences”.
Motivations and Patterns of Migration
The book moves beyond simplistic “push” and “pull” models of migration, acknowledging that while “classical studies of migration often identified ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors, that is, in emigrant communities,” there are “limits to the explanatory power of some push and pull arguments”. Instead, it emphasizes that “many more migrants who left home as part of a family strategy for socioeconomic survival, maintenance, or advancement,” and that “often, migration of one or more family members was an effort to diversify family resources and investments while reducing risks”. The importance of social networks is also highlighted, as “potential migrants often learned about opportunities in particular destinations because members of their extended families, or neighbors, had preceded them,” leading to patterns of chain migration, as seen in James Watson’s study of a Hong Kong village adapting to the restaurant trade in Britain, where “once a pattern of chain migration was established, it could be continued… by what some scholars have called a culture, or a convention, of migration,” where “a pattern of migration between a specific home community and one or more specific destinations away from home became customary,” and “social expectations” emerged that young people “would pursue their careers outside the home community”. This “culture of migration,” the book explains, “stigmatizes local alternatives to emigration as second-rate or even a sign of failure” and “can and often does persist even after the opportunity structure in the destination” changes.
Evolution of Migration and Community Structures
The book traces the evolution of Chinese migration and community structures over time. It notes the emergence of “huiguan, or native-place associations,” which “emerged during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and reached their heyday… in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,” both within China and abroad. It emphasizes that “many scholars now recognize that migration even of an individual was most often a family decision,” leading to the creation of “split famil[ies]” that “continued to function as an economic and ritual unit even though its individual members resided in two or more places”. The sixteenth century, “during the latter half of China’s Ming dynasty,” is identified as a key period when “sustained, identifiable patterns emerged, that institutions formed, and that evidence can be found of families in specific communities such as Longxi County adopting cultures of migration”. Earlier forms of migration are also acknowledged, such as the “migration from north to south” within China, which was “an important factor in a demographic shift from the Yellow River basin… to the Yangzi River basin,” as well as forced resettlements and refugee flows resulting from dynastic transitions, where “the transition from the rule of one regime to another often created refugees out of those loyal to the collapsing regime,” and military migrations, such as the “Ming conquest and subsequent annexation of northern Vietnam in 1407”.
Early Overseas Chinese Communities
The book highlights the early presence of Chinese traders in Southeast Asia, noting that “Zheng He’s ships in fact followed routes already established by Chinese overseas traders, most of whom hailed from the province of Fujian,” and that by “the fifteenth century, several contemporary accounts suggest, there existed burgeoning communities of Chinese traders… on the islands of Java and Sumatra, in the kingdom of Siam, and at the sultanate of Malacca”. This early presence is characterized by what “Wang Gungwu, the pioneering scholar of overseas Chinese migration, proposed [as] the ‘merchant pattern’ as the dominant mode of overseas Chinese migration in the early modern era”.
Migration in the Context of Change
The book further examines how Chinese migration adapted to periods of upheaval and opportunity. For example, it notes that “the term ‘refugee’ does not fully capture the essence of many migrants who left China in the wake of the Ming collapse,” as “such migrants, many of them armed to the teeth, could equally justifiably be described as military adventurers, some of whom established in Southeast Asian port cities powerful operations that came to resemble independent states,” exemplified by the Chinese pirate Lin Daoqian, who “led some 2,000 followers… to capture the port of Patani (Pattani)”. It also describes how “Ayutthaya, capital of the Siamese kingdom, hosted a large population of sojourners from other states,” where “Chinese constituted one of the two privileged groups allowed to reside within” designated foreign settlements, and how “a Dutch doctor working for the VOC who visited Siam in 1654 noted the presence of Chinese in several towns along the Chao Phraya River,” engaging in trades like cloth dyeing.
The “Chinese Century” and Mass Migration
The book identifies a period of economic expansion and increased migration, noting that “in the nineteenth century, many Chinese writers looked back nostalgically at the eighteenth century, and more narrowly the Qing dynasty’s Qianlong reign (1736-1795), as a prosperous age in China,” which “historians affirm… to some extent,” pointing to “an increasingly commercialized economy,” population growth, and the fact that “the population of China nearly tripled between 1700 and 1850”. This “prosperous age” in China “partially overlaps with an era that one historian of Southeast Asia identifies as the ‘Chinese century,’ approximately from 1740 to 1840,” a period that saw “resource exploitation and new patterns of Chinese migration in Southeast Asia”.
New Destinations and Labor
The expansion of European colonial powers, particularly the British, also influenced Chinese migration, as “as the British empire expanded into the Malay Peninsula… migrant Chinese merchants… exploited opportunities in Penang (established 1786) and Singapore (established 1819)”. This period saw the emergence of new “migrant” groups, such as the Hakkas, “a Chinese sub-ethnic group largely concentrated in northeastern Guangdong,” who “comprised an emergent diasporic trajectory in this period,” and were “involved in mining,” often possessing “technological and organizational advantages over indigenous miners in Southeast Asia,” as seen in the tin mining boom on Bangka, where “estimates of the highest level of Chinese population on the island ranged from less than 7,000 to as many as 30,000,” producing tin “for both the Chinese and wider Asian markets”. The Qing court’s decision in “1747” to allow Chinese merchants “to build ships in Southeast Asia… for shipment of rice back to China” further spurred migration, with “coastal Siam and the Mekong delta in southern Vietnam” attracting “many Chinese migrants in the shipbuilding, rice cultivation, and shipping trades,” contributing to “the Teochiu diasporic trajectory and the rise of Zhanglin as a port”.
Overland Expansion and Regional Differences
Migration also expanded overland, with “another important Chinese diasporic trajectory in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries” extending “from China proper into the southwestern Qing province of Yunnan and across the imperial border into Burma (Myanmar),” with some claiming ancestry in the region dating back to the Ming dynasty, and the Chinese immigrant population in Yunnan reaching “an estimated 950,000 farmers and their dependents, and some 500,000 miners and their dependents” by 1776. The growth of “cross-border trade” also played a role, with “long-distance overland trade… between Yunnan and Burma” expanding to include “substantial trade in bulk goods”. The book emphasizes the linguistic diversity among migrants, noting that “in contrast to the northern Chinese provinces of Shandong and Shanxi, where residents spoke variations of Mandarin Chinese, residents of emigrant communities in southeastern China… spoke a wide array of mutually unintelligible regional dialects,” meaning that “diasporic trajectories defined by native place of emigrant communities often corresponded with dialect groups,” particularly in “Chinese migration to Southeast Asia in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,” where “members of Hokkien, Teochiu, Hakka, and Cantonese diasporas each shared a common dialect”.
Community Institutions and Social Dynamics
Beyond family and commerce, “temples were often the main institution by which members of an immigrant or sojourning Chinese community organized themselves,” serving as “a home away from home”. Native-place associations, or “huiguan,” also played a crucial role, and while “the period 1740-1840 was not yet the heyday of huiguan… the number of huiguan established both in China and abroad during this period far surpassed that of the previous century,” providing “a broad range of functions for migrant men,” including “networking for business,” “participation in collective rituals,” and services like “storage and return of coffins to home communities,” thus offering “a means of institutionalizing native place”. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries also saw the proliferation of “sworn brotherhoods or ‘secret societies’ (hui)”. The book also addresses gender dynamics within migration, noting that “from the perspective of a Chinese male migrant’s family and lineage in the emigrant community, sexual relations and intermarriage, particularly uxorilocal intermarriage, potentially defeated the purpose of male migration,” leading to the prevalence of “lore of indigenous women entrapping male migrants”.
The Era of Mass Migration and Global Expansion
The period from “1840 to 1937” is characterized as “a tumultuous one of ‘domestic unrest and foreign invasion’” in China, marked by events “such as the Muslim Chinese who fled to Burma following the Qing defeat of the Muslim (Panthay) rebellion in Yunnan in 1873,” and a time when “Chinese migrants left home in much greater numbers than before and targeted a far wider range of destinations, including Australasia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe,” driven by opportunities in “rubber plantations and rice mills in Southeast Asia”. This era saw the development of “a regular steamship service” facilitating migration from Chinese ports “to such places as Manila, Bangkok, and San Francisco,” leading historians to characterize “the period 1840-1937 as an era of mass migration,” with “Southeast Asia remain[ing] the favorite destination” for “overseas Chinese migrants from Fujian and Guangdong”.
Scale of Migration and Urban Growth
The scale of this migration was significant, with “one conservative estimate” suggesting “that over two million Chinese migrated to Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Americas between 1848 and 1888,” and other estimates reaching “between nineteen and twenty-two million Chinese overseas migrants” by 1940. This migration also fueled urban growth within China, as “Shanghai’s population mushroomed from a few hundred thousand in the early nineteenth century to 1.3 million in 1910 and 2.6 million in 1927”. Simultaneously, “exporting female labor” emerged as “a new trend, the feminization of migration, that would become increasingly important over the course of the twentieth century”. The early twentieth century also saw Manchuria become “one of the most industrialized regions of China,” attracting workers to its “mines, factories, and railroad construction”.
Regional Focus: Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia remained a primary destination during this mass migration, with “the vast majority” of the “as many as twenty-two million Chinese” emigrating from China between “1848-1940” heading there, along with locales in the South Pacific and around the Indian Ocean, with “as many as eleven million” migrating to the Malay Peninsula, “close to four million” traveling “to Siam,” and “perhaps another three million to French Indochina”. By “1917,” “the Chinese population” in “all of Siam” numbered “over 9.2 million”.
Economic Opportunities and Labor
The Malay Peninsula attracted Chinese labor migrants to “tin mines and then rubber plantations,” with “industrialization in Europe and the United States” increasing “demand for tin” and making “the Malay Peninsula… the world’s largest producer,” a sector dominated by “Chinese migrants” with “superior mining and tin-production techniques”. Similarly, “worldwide demand for rubber” spurred growth in that industry, with “the Hokkien merchant Tan Kah Kee (M. Chen Jiageng)” becoming “a major rubber magnate”. “Rice production” also “boomed in the age of mass migration,” with “Hokkien and Teochiu Chinese merchants” continuing to “dominate the market as plantation owners or rice-purchasing merchants,” while also “adapting to industrialization of rice milling with the transition from hand mills to mechanized, steam-powered mills,” ultimately outcompeting “Euro-American-owned” mills in Siam.
Expansion Beyond Southeast Asia
Chinese migration also expanded beyond Southeast Asia. As the book explains, “as overseas Chinese migrants… established themselves in lower Siam and Burma, in the late nineteenth century some of them began to migrate along the Chao Phraya” and “Irrawaddy rivers into upper Siam and Burma,” areas previously dominated by “Yunnanese overland migrants”. “Railroad construction” in both countries “beginning in the 1890s” both employed “thousands of Chinese laborers” and “facilitated the northward spread of Teochiu and Hakka traders and settlers,” leading to an intermingling of “the upland extension of the overseas trajectory” with “a Yunnanese Chinese diaspora”. In North America, “construction of transcontinental railways” in the United States and Canada attracted “Cantonese Chinese migrants,” many of whom were “remigrants from the goldfields, or from previous railroad construction projects,” with “over 10,000 Chinese laborers” working on railroad construction in the United States between “1865 and 1869”. Chinese migrants also arrived in “Cuba” as “indentured laborers,” and in Latin America and the Caribbean, they “were increasingly concentrated in cities and towns” after the decline of other labor opportunities. Even Europe saw the arrival of Chinese, initially “a few Chinese scholars and servants associated with the Jesuits and other European Catholic missionaries,” and later, by “the 1880s,” the emergence of “a Chinese community” in London, which expanded during World War I with the recruitment of “thousands of Chinese to serve in its merchant fleet”. “A total of some 140,000 Chinese laborers worked in Europe during the war,” primarily from “Shandong province,” but also from “Qingtian,” with some managing “to stay in Europe after the war”.
Labor Systems and Social Ties
While the book acknowledges the presence of indentured servitude, it notes that “of the over nineteen million overseas Chinese migrants in this period, fewer than 750,000 went as indentured servants to European employers”. It emphasizes the continued importance of “informal ties based upon kinship and native place” for Chinese migrants, with “native place” often closely “correlated with dialect” for “migrants from southeastern China”. These ties shaped economic activities, as “many small entrepreneurs abroad recruited both agnatic (patrilineal) and affinal (related by marriage) relatives to aid them as apprentices or shop hands,” and contributed to “the development both of particular diasporic trajectories and of distinct occupational niches”. These kinship and native-place ties were also expressed in the formation of “huiguan,” and associations like the “kongsi,” which were “essentially a three-surname clan association,” illustrating how “Chinese institutions could… solidify, or forge, native-place loyalties”. “Gold-mountain firms” and “qiaopiju, or overseas letter offices,” also served the needs of specific diasporas, facilitating communication and remittances.
Challenges and Inequalities
The book also addresses the challenges and inequalities within Chinese migrant communities. It notes that while “when one walks through the streets of a Chinatown… those that often stand out the most are huiguan,” leading to the conclusion that “these institutions must have been the main ones by which Chinese migrant communities organized themselves,” it is “important to remember that this is how only one segment of the Chinese community presented itself,” as “huiguan were male-dominated institutions that excluded female migrants… and female descendants of male migrants,” and there was “a class element to the dominance of such institutions, as huiguan leadership usually closely overlapped with merchant elites”.
Gender Dynamics in Migration
Gender dynamics are a recurring theme. The book highlights that “as was the case both on Qing frontiers and abroad during the eighteenth century, this practice resulted in ‘unbalanced’ sex ratios, with far more males than females among Chinese migrants in many destinations abroad,” as seen in the “largely male population” of “the British colony of Hong Kong” and the skewed ratios in other destinations, where for “most male migrants at the turn of the twentieth century, life abroad was one without Chinese wives, mothers, or sisters”. However, this began to change, as in “Siam, married Chinese male migrants increasingly brought their wives with them in the 1920s and 1930s”.
Transnational Families and Women’s Roles
The strategy of male migration posed challenges for marriages, with wives sometimes remarrying “especially after letters and remittances ceased to arrive”. Nevertheless, “wives of migrants were important participants in migration, anchoring one end of transnational families,” playing important roles in “reproducing her husband’s patriline” and “managing the household economy,” often “in charge of spending, saving, or investing remittances”.
Education and Social Mobility
Migrants also maintained transnational families by “sending children, especially sons, born abroad back to China to receive education,” with the expectation that “at some point later, the children might return to the places where they were born abroad, a son often succeeding his father”. “For wealthier migrants,” this practice enhanced their prestige, contrasting with the practice of taking “an indigenous wife”.
Evolving Host-Country Relations
The book also examines the evolving relationship between Chinese migrants and their host countries. While Chinese migrants sometimes “enjoyed close working relationships with indigenous regimes,” the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also saw the rise of “some nationalist movements” that “discouraged Chinese immigration or disenfranchised ethnic Chinese,” as seen in “Siam,” where “Chinese became targets during efforts to create an ethnic-based Thai nation”. “The 1930s witnessed growing anti-Chinese rhetoric” focused on “perceived Chinese domination of the commercial sector” and remittances seen “as a drain on the national economy,” with even “several of the most vocal critics in the government” being “themselves of Chinese descent,” such as “Pridi Banomyong,” who was “the son of a Teochiu man whose grandfather had migrated from Chenghai, Guangdong”.
Philanthropy and Education
Despite these challenges, migrants also contributed to their home communities through philanthropy. “Migration, especially the export of male or female labor, was most often the result of a family decision, and remittances were an important part of the process,” but “in the closing decades of the nineteenth century and increasingly in the early twentieth century, successful migrants abroad donated money for charitable projects in their home communities,” such as “a series of schools that the Hokkien industrialist Tan Kah Kee (M. Chen Jiageng) established in his native village, Jimei”.
New Forms of Migration and Identity
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also saw the emergence of “a new kind of migrant, students from China,” with “Japan” being “the favored destination of such students around the turn of the century,” and the number of Chinese students in Japan growing “dramatically” after “1900”. While “the return rates of students were probably higher than those of other kinds of migrants,” some remained overseas, becoming “active in Chinese communities abroad”. “Chinese schools in overseas communities continued to proliferate,” promoting “instruction in Mandarin Chinese” and “textbooks imported from China-based publishers” that “introduced the concept of patriotism and made China its object,” teaching “the history and literature of China, rather than of host societies”.
Scholarly Perspectives
The book also incorporates scholarly perspectives on Chinese migration. It references the work of sociologist “Chen Da (Chen Ta),” who “earned a Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1923 for a thesis on Chinese labor migrants in Southeast Asia” and conducted extensive research on “emigrant communities” in the 1930s. Chen’s work provided “a clear picture of transnational families built through Chinese male migration,” highlighting variations in family structure “by economic class” and raising questions about how “permission to emigrate” could benefit “not only… the individual Chinese and their families… but to their home country as well?”. The book contrasts Chen’s perspective on the influence of “modern education overseas brought back to China” with historian Karen Teoh’s emphasis on “the influence of modern education flowing in the opposite direction, exported from China to diasporic communities”.
Migration in the Modern Era
The book further examines Chinese migration in the context of major historical events, noting that “civil war and revolution created other migrant streams,” such as the movement of “Guomindang military personnel and Yunnanese civilians” into “Burma” after “1949,” and the influx of “hundreds of thousands of Chinese migrants” into “the British colony of Hong Kong”. It also acknowledges that “some trajectories to Southeast Asia declined in the early 1930s due to the impact of the Great Depression,” and that “World War II created migrants but also disrupted existing diasporic trajectories,” while “PRC state policies” after the war “largely restricted overseas migration, and in 1951 officially banned emigration,” with “unprecedented levels of state control” making “illegal movement abroad increasingly difficult”. This period also saw “Chinese schools in Southeast Asia” come “under attack,” with measures like the “government of Thailand” mandating “a standardization of Chinese textbooks” aimed at “promoting national loyalty to Thailand,” and a decline in “the number of Chinese schools in the country”.
Contemporary Migration Patterns
The book then turns to contemporary trends, noting that “emigration was a related phenomenon” to internal migration, and that while “the PRC eased restrictions on internal migration from the 1980s, it liberalized laws on emigration in 1985,” leading to a “leave China fever” and the emergence of ” ‘new migrants’ (xin yimin),” with “around six million people” migrating externally since “1978”. These “new migrants” joined earlier waves, contributing to a growing “Chinese diaspora,” with estimates of “the number of people of Chinese descent outside China and Taiwan in 1990” ranging “from over thirty million to roughly thirty-seven million,” and some estimates reaching “over fifty million people of Chinese descent outside the PRC,” primarily concentrated in “Southeast Asia”.
Changing Demographics and Family Structures
Demographic shifts are also discussed, with the book noting that “two trends that became significant in the early twentieth century, family migration and the export of female, as opposed to male, labor, have become more marked in recent decades,” driving “a further feminization of migration”. “From the 1990s,” there has been an increase in “family migration among migrant laborers,” resulting in “a greater gender balance in migration,” with the “2000 China census” showing that “female migrants accounted for almost exactly half of the ‘floating population’”. The book attributes these changes to the post-Mao reform era, during which “leaving China gradually became easier for many Chinese,” although initially, “simply obtaining a Chinese passport was no easy task” and required various documents and approvals. However, “during the first decade of the twentieth century, for residents of most Chinese cities, obtaining both a Chinese passport and a foreign visa became much easier”.
Student Migration and New Destinations
“Student migration” has also become a significant trend, with “the PRC” becoming “the most important sending nation of international students” since the “1980s,” and “new destinations in the 2000s” including “South Korea” and “Singapore”. “For many of these Chinese students since the 1980s, study abroad was part of a broader individual or family strategy that overlapped with other forms of migration,” and “in fact, international student status was a common pathway toward migration,” with PRC statistics showing that “between 1978 and 2007, 1,210,000 Chinese students went abroad,” and while many returned, “a significant proportion did not”.
Emergence of “Ethnoburbs” and Changing Family Structures
These new migration patterns have also led to the emergence of “ethnoburbs,” defined by “the geographer Wei Li” as “suburban ethnic clusters of residential areas and business districts in large metropolitan areas,” which