Routledge Contemporary China Series, 94. London; New York: Routledge, 2013. xxi, 231 pp. (Maps, tables, illus.) US$135.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-415-64222-4.
This book sets out to challenge what author Yow Cheun Hoe describes as an enduring “myth that the Chinese diaspora’s relations with China is something natural and primordial, and that regardless of their base outside China and their generation of migration, the Chinese diaspora are inclined to participate enthusiastically in China’s social and economic agendas” (1). On the contrary, Chinese overseas have in general been distancing themselves from their ancestral homeland for more than six decades since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the rise of postcolonial nation-states in Southeast Asia, and the abrogation of anti-Chinese exclusionary policies in the former white settler colonies of North America and Australasia. Moreover, Yow argues, “not all Chinese diasporic communities are the same in terms of mentality and orientation” (1) and the degree of their attachment and connections to China often varies greatly from one community to another. In fact, Yow maintains, affective ties as a whole are less important than other considerations when it comes to determining diasporic investments in today’s China. During the reform era in China since 1978, emigrants’ ties to their ancestral villages, primordial sentiments and feelings of patriotism toward China “have not necessarily enhanced the degree of involvement of the Chinese diaspora in the economic arena of China” (2). Instead, Yow argues, it is primarily “business calculation and economic rationale” that has determined the “destination and magnitude of diasporic engagement” (2). In order to prove his thesis, the author has painstakingly assembled evidence from a wide array of written and oral sources, including local newspapers and magazines, government documents, personal interviews, questionnaires and extended periods of fieldwork in China and Southeast Asia.
The core of the book consists of a series of detailed case studies that examine the shifting familial, cultural and economic ties between two major qiaoxiang (emigrant districts) in China’s Guangdong province (Panyu and Xinyi) and Chinese communities in Singapore and Malaysia, Hong Kong and North America. These case studies are further augmented by the research findings of scholars who have studied diasporic ties in Guangdong’s other qiaoxiang. The result is an empirically rich and evidence-driven analysis that also makes a significant theoretical contribution. Yow shows that the current economic disparity among Guangdong’s qiaoxiang is something that has emerged most clearly in the past three decades since the onset of the reform period. Qiaoxiang that have been successful in attracting diasporic donations and foreign investment have been transformed and revitalized, while those that have not have become quiet backwaters and relics of an earlier time. The author demonstrates convincingly that the key determinant of qiaoxiang success in attracting investment capital is not diasporic connections per se, but rather economic location and, specifically, proximity to Hong Kong. The only partial exceptions to this pattern are qiaoxiang such as Kaiping and Taishan. As a result of their relatively remote location outside the main Pearl River Delta region, Kaiping and Taishan have received far less in the way of diasporic business investments in recent decades. However, both have managed to compensate for their disadvantaged economic location by becoming the recipients of considerable charitable donations and social welfare investments, thanks to their historic links with Chinese in North America.
The short summary above does not do justice to the breadth and depth of topics explored by Yow. The book is comprised of eight chapters including an introduction and conclusion. After setting the stage with a broad overview of the Chinese diaspora and a critical review of recent literature on qiaoxiang ties and transnational business networks, chapter 2 provides a detailed and nuanced discussion of historic patterns of out-migration from Guangdong and the formation and subsequent development of the province’s distinctive qiaoxiang areas from the early part of the twentieth century to the present. Chapter 3 describes the “waning ancestral ties” (38) of Singaporean and Malaysian Chinese with their ancestral villages in Panyu and Xinyi and their “deepening commitment” to their countries of residence over the past half century. The next four chapters, which constitute the heart of the book, examine the fluctuating fortunes of Panyu and Xinyi before and after 1978. The former profited handsomely from its strategic location in the Pearl River Delta, becoming a major magnate for Hong Kong investment capital, while the latter, located in the mountainous interior of the province, continued to languish economically as it had for much of the twentieth century.
Yow’s book is written in the same spirit as earlier studies by Madeline Hsu and Adam McKeown that challenge migration scholars to rethink entrenched assumptions and basic categories of conceptualization and approach, in the process leading us toward new avenues of research and understanding. Guangdong and Chinese Diaspora provides a useful corrective to a clutch of earlier studies that rushed to proclaim and celebrate the reinvigoration of diasporic ties to China after 1978 without engaging in very much research to support their effusive claims. Empirically rich and theoretically engaged, this book will be of interest not only for historians and social scientists who specialize in Chinese migration, but for all scholars who are interested in human diasporas and how they change and evolve over time.
Glen Peterson
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
pp. 909-911