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Chinese migration and the ‘colonial question’: Perspectives of Chinese intellectuals, 1900s–1940s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2026
Abstract
What is the relationship between Chinese migrants and China? Can modern Chinese migration be compared to colonization? This article examines how Chinese intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century grappled with these questions through their writings in Dongfang zazhi (东方杂志, 1904–1948) and Nanyang yanjiu (南洋研究, 1928–1944). It shows that although these intellectuals acknowledged the territorial dimensions of Chinese migration—particularly in Southeast Asia—they defined colonization through the European model and stressed the fundamental differences between Chinese migration and Western or Japanese colonialism. Their perspectives also evolved over time, from initially advocating colonization and racial vitality in the early twentieth century, to proclaiming a different path after the Republican Revolution in 1911, and later to reimagining post-Second World War Chinese migration as not just a nationalist project but also a movement of decolonization and localization. The article highlights the case of Li Changfu, a pioneering scholar whose writings epitomized these evolving perspectives and illustrated the efforts among Chinese intellectuals to move beyond both the Western colonial framework and the China-centred national model in formulating a world-historical approach. Yet their attempts also revealed enduring tensions, including the tendency to essentialize Chinese identity even as they sought to break from colonial and national paradigms and construct new narratives. Their engagement with the ‘colonial question’ offers fresh insight into contemporary historiographical debates over the role of colonialism and empire-buiding in Chinese history.
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References
1 Shelly Chan, Diaspora’s Homeland: Modern China in the Age of Global Migration (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2018); Prasenjit Duara, ‘Nationalists Among Transnationals: Overseas Chinese and the Idea of China, 1900–1911’, in Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism, (eds) Aihwa Ong and Donald Nonini (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 39–60; Madeline Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration between the United States and South China, 1882–1943 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000); Philip Kuhn, Chinese Among Others: Emigration in Modern Times (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008); Laurence Ma and Carolyn Cartier (eds), The Chinese Diaspora: Space, Place, Mobility, and Identity (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003); Adam McKeown, ‘Conceptualizing Chinese Diasporas, 1842 to 1949’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 58, no. 2, 1999, pp. 306–337; Leander Seah, ‘Conceptualizing the Chinese World: Jinan University, Nanyang Migrants, and Trans-regionalism, 1900–1941’, PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2011; Shu-mei Shih, Chien-Hsin Tsai and Brian Bernards (eds), Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013); Wang Gungwu, ‘The Origins of Hua-ch’iao’, in Community and Nation: China, Southeast Asia and Australia, (ed.) Wang Gungwu (Kensington: Allen and Unwin, 1992), pp. 1–10.
2 Melissa Macauley, Distant Shores: Colonial Encounters on China’s Maritime Frontier (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021), pp. 10–18.
3 Umetani Mitsusada, ‘Nanyang zhi bazhe’ [‘The Hegemons of the South Seas’], Taiwan shibao [Taiwan Times], vol. 105, 1918, pp. 21–33. For the context of the inspection tour (1917–1918) organized by the Japanese colonial government in Taiwan and for a list of the reports by Umetani and other inspection members, see Chen Shih-fang, ‘Rizhi qianqi Taiwan yu feilübin de jiaoliu moshi ji yiyi’ [‘The Modes and Significance of Exchange Visits Between Taiwan and Philippines from 1898 to 1920’], Taiwanxue yanjiu [Research in Taiwan Studies], vol. 19, 2016, pp. 99–130.
4 Chan, Diaspora’s Homeland, p. 48.
5 There have been concerns over using the term ‘diaspora’ in the study of Chinese migration. Sinophone studies argue that ‘diaspora has an end date’ and that the Sinophone culture is ‘transnational in constitution and formation but local in practice and articulation’. In her critique of Chan’s book, along with a thorough review of scholars’ concerns about the term, Madeline Hsu commends Chan for her efforts to avoid ‘ideological and essentialist interpretations of Chinese overseas engagement with China’ and introduces Kevin Kenny’s guidelines on applying ‘diaspora’ to specific types of migrations to retain its explanatory power. However, Hsu warns against using the term ‘until the boundaries between Chinese who are acting diasporically and those who are “settled but unassimilated” become firmly discernible and maintained in perception, discursive practices, and respect for political differences’. This article uses ‘migration’ rather than ‘diaspora’ unless it is cited from other scholars’ work. Madeline Hsu, ‘Decoupling Peripheries from the Center: The Dangers of Diaspora in Chinese Migration Studies’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, vol. 20, no. 2, 2011, p. 212; Kevin Kenny, Diaspora: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Shu-mei Shih, ‘What is Sinophone Studies’, in Sinophone Studies, (eds) Shih, Tsai and Bernards, p. 7; Shu-mei Shih, ‘Against Diaspora: The Sinophone as Places of Cultural Production’, in Sinophone Studies, (eds) Shih, Tsai and Bernards, p. 37.
6 Chan, Diaspora’s Homeland, pp. 12–16.
7 Ibid., p. 58.
8 Jing Tsu, ‘Extinction and Adventures on the Chinese Diasporic Frontier’, Journal of Chinese Overseas, vol. 20, no. 2, 2006, pp. 254, 259.
9 Prasenjit Duara, ‘Transnationalism and the Predicament of Sovereignty: China, 1900–1945’, The American Historical Review, vol. 102, no. 4, 1997, pp. 1032, 1049.
10 Siew-Min Sai, ‘The Nanyang Diasporic Imaginary: Chinese School Teachers in a Transborder Setting in the Dutch East Indies’, in Chinese Indonesians Reassessed: History, Religion and Belonging, (eds) Siew-Min Sai and Chang-Yau Hoon (New York: Routledge, 2013), p. 55. In his study of Nanyang qundao shangyeyanjiuhui zazhi [Journal of the Nanyang Archipelago Commercial Study Association], the first Chinese-language magazine devoted to Nanyang business affairs, founded in Tokyo in 1910, Hong Liu shows that it diverged from the conventional ‘Sino-Japanese, Sino-Western, or Sino-Southeast Asian binary’ and created ‘a new Asian phenomenon and construction’. Hong Liu, ‘Modern China’s Imagining of the Nanyang and the Construction of Transnational Asia’, in Changing Dynamics and Mechanisms of Maritime Asia in Comparative Perspectives, (eds) Shigeru Akita, Hong Liu and Shiro Momoki (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), p. 188. For ‘taught nationalism’, see Wang Gungwu, Community and Nation: Essays on Southeast Asia and the Chinese (Singapore: Heinemann Educational Books, 1981), p. 145.
11 ‘Xinchu Dongfang zazhi jianyao zhangcheng’ [‘Concise Charter of the Newly Launched Eastern Miscellany’], DFZZ, vol. 1, no. 1, 1904, p. 1; Glen Peterson, ‘Migration and China’s Urban Reading Public: Shifting Representations of “Overseas Chinese” in Shanghai’s Dongfang Zazhi (Eastern Miscellany), 1904–48’, in Migration, Indigenization and Interaction: Chinese Overseas and Globalization, (ed.) Leo Suryadinata (Singapore: World Scientific, 2011), pp. 277–296.
12 Fang Hanqi, ‘Dongfang zazhi de tese jiqi lishi diwei’ [‘The Distinctive Features and Historical Significance of Eastern Miscellany’], Dongfang [The East], vol. 11, 2000, http://www.aisixiang.com/data/99378.html, [accessed 25 November 2025].
13 The online database of DFZZ (http://cpem.cp.com.cn) is an invaluable resource to identify these articles.
14 For in-depth studies of Jida, the Bureau, and the origin of the field of Nanyang studies, see Seah, ‘Conceptualizing the Chinese World’; Leander Seah, ‘Between East Asia and Southeast Asia: Nanyang Studies, Chinese Migration, and National Jinan University, 1927–1940’, Translocal Chinese: East Asian Perspectives, vol. 11, no. 1, 2017, pp. 30–56.
15 Chen Zongshan, ‘Jinan yu Nanyang’ [‘Jinan and Nanyang’], NYYJ, vol. 1, no. 2, 1928, pp. 1–4.
16 For a detailed discussion of the Bureau’s history, see Zhao Canpeng, ‘Jinan daxue Nanyang wenhua shiyebu de lishi yange’ [‘On the Historical Evolution of the Bureau for Nanyang Cultural Activities of Jinan University’], Dongnanya yanjiu [Southeast Asian Studies], vol. 6, 2007, pp. 5–12.
17 According to historian Glen Peterson, the urban reading public at the turn of the twentieth century was about two to four million people (compared to the total Chinese population of over 400 million). They were exclusively male and mainly trained in classical Chinese education, though a few received modern-style education either abroad or in domestic missionary schools. The urban reading public grew to around 17 million people in 1940 due to the expansion of modern schooling. Peterson, ‘Migration and China’s Urban Reading Public’, p. 282.
18 Seah, ‘Conceptualizing the Chinese World’.
19 For the importance of bridging these two fields and some examples in this direction, see Chan, Diaspora’s Homeland; Philip Kuhn, ‘Why China Historians Should Study the Chinese Diaspora, and Vice-versa’, Journal of Chinese Overseas, vol. 2, no. 2, 2006, pp. 163–172; Hui Kian Kwee, ‘Pockets of Empire: Integrating the Studies on Social Organizations in Southeast China and Southeast Asia’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, vol. 27, no. 3, 2007, pp. 616–632; Seah, ‘Conceptualizing the Chinese World’.
20 Peterson, ‘Migration and China’s Urban Reading Public’, pp. 291–292. DFZZ is highlighted in historian Li Anshan’s comprehensive review of Chinese writings on migration and on Chinese abroad, which also includes NYYJ and numerous other publications from the Ming and the Qing dynasties to the end of the twentieth century. Another more recent study by Chen Ying draws on DFZZ, NYYJ, and several other periodicals on the Nanyang, though it has a narrower time frame (1911–1937) and focuses on China’s conceptualization of the Nanyang and its impacts on the way China imagined Asia as well as itself. Chen Ying, ‘Nanyang in Modern China’s Knowledge System, 1911–1937’, PhD thesis, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 2018; Li Anshan, ‘Zhongguo huaqiao huaren yanjiu de lishi yu xianzhuang gaishu’ [‘A Survey of the History and Current Status of Chinese Overseas Studies in China’], in Huaqiao huaren baike quanshu [Encyclopedia of Chinese Overseas], (eds) Zhou Nanjing and others (Beijing: Zhongguo huaqiao chubanshe, 1999), pp. 997–1036.
21 The Cuba Commission Report: A Hidden History of the Chinese in Cuba (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Robert Irick, Ch’ing Policy Toward the Coolie Trade, 1847–1878 (Taipei: Chinese Materials Center, 1982); Yen Ching-hwang, Coolies and Mandarins: China’s Protection of Overseas Chinese During the Late Chʻing Period, 1851–1911 (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 1985), p. 32.
22 ‘You wuding zhaomu Huagong zhi yue’ [‘Another Instance of Erroneously Signing an Agreement to Recruit Chinese Labourers’], DFZZ, vol. 1, no. 5, 1904, p. 19.
23 Liang Qichao, ‘Zhongguo zhimin bada weirenzhuan’ [‘Biographies of Eight Great Figures in Chinese Colonization’], Xinmin congbao [The New Citizen], no. 63, 1905, pp. 81–88.
24 ‘Haiwai zhimin’ [‘Overseas Colonization’], DFZZ, vol. 1, no. 3, 1904, p. 36.
25 Liang, ‘Zhongguo zhimin bada weirenzhuan’.
26 In his thorough literature review, Li highlights Liang’s essay as the first study of huaqiao in China and as the origin of huaqiao zhimin lun (the theory of Chinese migration as colonization). Li describes it as representing the gradually formed nationalist consciousness among Chinese intellectuals at this time and discusses its impacts on later theories, such as those during the Republican Era that labelled huaqiao as ‘the mother of the revolution’, or described them as culturally superior even to those in China. Li points out that these theories had similar problems as they were chauvinistic, Sinocentric, and dismissive of the real, main causes within China for Chinese revolutions. Li, ‘Zhongguo huaqiao huaren yanjiu’.
27 ‘Lun zhimin zhengce’ [‘On Colonial Policy’], DFZZ, vol. 2, no. 9, 1905, p. 172.
28 Ibid., pp. 173, 176.
29 The Manchu rulers abolished its ban on Chinese migration to Manchuria in 1878, and about half a million migrants moved to the region every year between 1890 and 1942. Japanese colonization was not immediately successful after 1905, but picked up with the experimental colonization of soldier settlement after the Manchurian Incident in 1931 and then mass immigration after 1937. Prasenjit Duara, ‘Between Empire and Nation: Settler Colonialism in Manchukuo’, in Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century: Projects, Practices, Legacies, (eds) Caroline Elkins and Susan Pederson (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 59–78; John Stewart, ‘Japan’s Strategic Settlements in Manchukuo’, Far Eastern Survey, vol. 8, no. 4, 1939, pp. 37–43.
30 ‘Lun yimin shibian zhi buke huan’ [‘On the Urgency of Relocating People to Strengthen the Borderland’], DFZZ, vol. 4, no. 7, 1907, p. 121.
31 Ibid., pp. 119–122.
32 Cangfu, ‘Zhimin’ [‘Colonization’], DFZZ, vol. 14, no. 12, 1917, p. 11.
33 Ibid.
34 Liang, ‘Zhongguo zhimin bada weirenzhuan’.
35 After the Republican Revolution, the Beijing government’s Nationality Law of 1912 (slightly revised in 1914) inherited the Qing model, while adding jus soli (right of soil) to supplement the jus sanguinis principle. The Nationalist government’s 1929 law retained the basic framework but revised it to make Chinese nationality ‘hard to lose while easy to restore’. A dramatic shift occurred in 1955 when the newly founded Communist government signed a treaty with Indonesia abolishing dual nationality. Although primarily serving China’s national interests during the Cold War—especially by improving relations with newly independent Southeast Asian states with large Chinese populations—this policy was generally seen as facilitating the localization of overseas Chinese. It led Stephen Fitzgerald, a diplomat-turned-political scientist, to describe it as China’s ‘decolonization’ in Southeast Asia, a radical ‘departure from tradition’. The Nationality Law of 1980 reaffirmed the ‘single nationality’ policy. It maintained the combination of jus sanguinis and jus soli (with the former still primary) and established gender equality, allowing nationality to be acquired through either parent and granting men and women equal rights in matters of naturalization, restoration, and renunciation. Tung-Pi Chen, ‘The Nationality Law of the People’s Republic of China and the Overseas Chinese in Hong Kong, Macao and Southeast Asia’, NYLS Journal of International and Comparative Law, vol. 5, no. 2, 1984, pp. 281–340; Chen Xi, Qiaowu yu waijiao guanxi yanjiu: Zhongguo fangqi ‘shuangchong guoji’ de huigu yu fansi [Research on Overseas Chinese Affairs and Foreign Relations: Review and Reflection on China’s Abandonment of ‘Dual Nationality’] (Beijing: Huaqiao chubanshe, 2005); Stephen Fitzgerald, China and the Overseas Chinese: A Study of Peking’s Changing Policy, 1949–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), p. 193; Li Yinghui, Huaqiao zhengce yu haiwai minzu zhuyi [Policies on Overseas Chinese and Overseas Nationalism, 1912–1949] (Taibei: Guoshi guan, 1997); Zhou Nanjing (ed.), Jingwai Huaren guoji wenti taolun ji [A Collection of Discussions on the Nationality Issue of Overseas Chinese] (Hong Kong: Hong Kong shehui kexue Chubanshe, 2005).
36 ‘Zhongguo guojifa cao’an’ [‘The Draft of the Chinese Nationality Law’], DFZZ, vol. 6, no. 2, 1909, pp. 27–34.
37 Yang Yuhui, ‘Lun gaiji xieyue wei guoji zuiyao zhi wenti’ [‘On Naturalization Treaties as the Chief Problem in International Relations’], DFZZ, vol. 5, no. 7, 1908, pp. 8–18.
38 Donna Gabaccia, Dirk Hoerder and Adam Walaszek, ‘Emigration and Nation Building during the Mass Migrations from Europe’, in Citizenship and Those Who Leave, (eds) Nancy Green and Francois Weil (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois, 2007), pp. 63–90. Chinese lawmakers in fact borrowed the Japanese translation of jus sanguinis (血统 ketto); see Dan Shao, ‘Chinese by Definition: Nationality Law, Jus Sanguinis, and State Succession, 1909–1980’, Twentieth-Century China, vol. 35, no. 1, 2009, pp. 4–28.
39 Durward Sandifer, ‘A Comparative Study of Laws Relating to Nationality at Birth and to Loss of Nationality’, American Journal of International Law, vol. 29, no. 2, 1935, pp. 248–279.
40 Yang, ‘Lun gaiji xieyue wei guoji zuiyao zhi wenti’.
41 Tsai Chutung, ‘The Chinese Nationality Law, 1909’, American Journal of International Law, vol. 4, no. 2, 1910, pp. 406–407.
42 Shao, ‘Chinese by Definition’.
43 Jianli Huang, ‘Umbilical Ties: The Framing of the Overseas Chinese as the Mother of the Revolution’, Frontiers of History in China, vol. 6, no. 2, 2011, pp. 183–228.
44 Li, Huaqiao zhengce yu haiwai minzu zhuyi, pp. 43–100.
45 He Haiming, ‘Taipingyang huiyi baoqiaoan tichu zhi zhiqu yu huaqiao zhi juexing’ [‘The Intent of Proposing the Overseas Chinese Protection Case at the Pacific Conference and the Awakening of the Overseas Chinese’], DFZZ, vol. 18, no. 18/19, 1921, p. 1.
46 He, ‘Taipingyang huiyi baoqiaoan’, p. 1.
47 Ibid., pp. 2–4.
48 Qiaoweihui, Huaqiao suo shou bu pingdeng daiyu [The Unequal Treatment Suffered by Overseas Chinese] (Nanjing: Qiaoweihui, 1931); Qiaoweihui, Geguo nüedai huaqiao keli jiyao [A Compendium of Harsh Laws Against Overseas Chinese in Various Countries] (Nanjing: Qiaoweihui, 1931).
49 Seah, ‘Conceptualizing the Chinese World’, pp. 136–137.
50 Lin’s original name was Zhang Hanwen. See Chen, ‘Nanyang in Modern China’s Knowledge System’, p. 113; ‘Zhang Hanwen’, Taiwan Cultural Memory Bank, https://tcmb.culture.tw/zh-tw/detail?id=333870&indexCode=Culture_People, [accessed 25 November 2025].
51 Lin Yanfang, ‘Daguomin de shiming’ [‘The Mission of the Citizens of a Great Nation’], NYYJ, vol. 2, no. 5, 1929, pp. 1–5.
52 Liu Shimu, ‘Nanyang huaqiao zhi weiji’ [‘The Crisis of Overseas Chinese in the Nanyang’], NYYJ, vol. 4, no. 3, 1932, pp. 3–5. Also see Liu Shimu, Riben haiwai qinlue yu huaqiao [Japan’s Overseas Aggression and the Overseas Chinese] (Shanghai: Guoli Jinan daxue Nanyang wenhua shiyebu, 1931), pp. 17, 169; Liang Denggo, ‘Huaqiao jingji de shuailuo ji jiuji duice de shangque’ [‘The Decline of the Overseas Chinese Economy and Discussions on Relief Measures’], DFZZ, vol. 33, no. 9, 1936, pp. 41–51.
53 Chan, Diaspora’s Homeland, pp. 52–53.
54 Charles Schencking, ‘The Imperial Japanese Navy and the Constructed Consciousness of a South Seas Destiny, 1872–1921’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 33, no. 4, 1999, p. 769.
55 Eiichiro Azuma, ‘Japanese Imperial Migrations’, in The Cambridge History of Global Migrations, (eds) Marcelo J. Borges and Madeline Y. Hsu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), pp. 139–159.
56 Seah, ‘Conceptualizing the Chinese World’, pp. 142–153.
57 Qu Mingzhou, ‘Riben yimin jijing zhong de nongmin wenti’ [‘The Problem of Peasants in the Radical movement of Japanese Immigration’], DFZZ, vol. 32, no. 19, 1935, pp. 61–71. According to Duara, Japan’s influence and conquest of Manchuria fundamentally reshaped Chinese ideas and efforts to transfigure the frontier regions and peoples in the Qing empire into a national space. Prasenjit Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), pp. 188, 200.
58 Zhang Furong, ‘Jiujinshan riren shangye zhi fazhan yu huaqiao zhi guanxi’ [‘The Growth of Japanese Business in San Francisco and its Relation to the Overseas Chinese’], DFZZ, vol. 31, no. 15, 1934, pp. 25–32. For concerns about Japanese migration to South America, examples include ‘Guanyu yimin Baxi zhi yanjiu’ [‘A Study on Immigration to Brazil’], DFZZ, vol. 10, no. 5, 1913, pp. 41–42; Songhua, ‘Riben yimin yu woguo dongsansheng ji nanmei Baxi de xinjihua’ [‘Japan’s New Immigration Schemes for China’s Three Northeastern Provinces and Brazil in South America’], DFZZ, vol. 26, no. 11, 1929, pp. 1–3.
59 Chen Mei’an, ‘Women de luxian’ [‘Our Path’], Huaqiao zhoubao [Huaqiao Weekly], 1932, p. 4.
60 Ibid., p. 4.
61 Ibid., p. 3.
62 Peng Shengtian, ‘Sanshinianlai zhi Zhongguo qiaowu’ [‘Thirty Years of Overseas Chinese Affairs’], NYYJ, vol. 6, no. 2, 1936, pp. 1–13.
63 Shih, ‘What is Sinophone Studies’, p. 2.
64 Shi Guogang, ‘Zhuyi Nanyang qiaobao de shanhou wenti’ [‘Addressing the Post-crisis Needs of Overseas Chinese in the Nanyang’], DFZZ, vol. 40, no. 2, 1944, p. 10.
65 Ibid., p. 11.
66 He Bingsong, ‘Fukan ci’ [‘Foreword to the Resumption of Publication’], NYYJ, vol. 11, no. 1, 1943, p. 1.
67 Ibid., p. 1.
68 Fang Qiuwei, ‘Huai jingjixuejia Zhou Xianwen’ [‘Remembering the Economist Zhou Xianwen’], Dang’an yu shixue [Archives and the Study of History], no. 2, 1995, pp. 55–58.
69 Zhou Xianwen, ‘Zhongguo zhi mingyun yu Nanyang’ [‘China’s Destiny and the Nanyang’], NYYJ, vol. 11, no. 1, 1943, p. 2.
70 Ibid., p. 3.
71 Ge Suicheng, ‘Gaizhao Nanyang zhi guanjian’ [‘Thoughts on Reforming the Nanyang’], NYYJ, vol. 11, no. 1, 1943, p. 16.
72 Ibid., pp. 12–15.
73 Ibid., pp. 15–16.
74 Su Qianyin, ‘Nanyang gaizhao wenti de jiantao’ [‘A Review of the Issues in Transforming the Nanyang’], NYYJ, vol. 11, no. 1, 1943, pp. 4–10. Su mentioned the 1942 American report prepared by the editors of Time, Life, and Fortune on the potential courses of the United States in the Pacific. The report was translated into Chinese and was included in this same issue of NYYJ where Su published his article. ‘Jianli minzhu de taipingyang’ [‘Building a Democratic Pacific’], NYYJ, vol. 11, no.1, 1943, pp. 86–107.
75 Su, ‘Nanyang gaizhao wenti de jiantao’, p. 10.
76 Ibid.
77 Qiu Riqing, ‘Huaqiao de baohu wenti’ [‘The Issue of Protecting Overseas Chinese’], DFZZ, vol. 38, no. 1, 1941, pp. 24–27.
78 Yao Nan, ‘Zhanhou Nanyang Huaqiao jingji wenti zhi shangque’ [‘Deliberations on Postwar Economic Issues of Overseas Chinese in the Nanyang’], DFZZ, vol. 39, no. 15, 1943, pp. 17–27.
79 Shi, ‘Zhuyi Nanyang qiaobao de shanhou wenti’, pp. 10–11.
80 In Peterson’s study, DFZZ helped create ‘the collective imagining of a new category of citizens’, the ‘overseas Chinese’ who symbolized China’s national humiliation, despite their enormous diversity in ‘language, ethnic and cultural background, and the degree of indigenization versus identification with China’. For the US-educated sociologist Chen Da (1892–1975), overseas Chinese represented a modernizing force for China. However, his empirical sociology became a normative project as it ‘disciplined the heterogeneity of the South Seas into a patriarchal project oriented toward the transformation, improvement, and modernization of the Chinese homeland’. Rachel Leow, ‘The Patriarchy of Diaspora: Race Fantasy and Gender Blindness in Chen Da’s Studies of the Nanyang Chinese’, Twentieth-Century China, vol. 47, no. 3, 2022, p. 265; Peterson, ‘Migration and China’s Urban Reading Public’, p. 292.
81 A good example is Anna Belogurova’s study of the ‘Nanyang Revolution’, a movement promoting a local identity based on multiple factors such as Chinese nationalism, Comintern internationalism, and migrants’ own need to fit into local society and protect their rights and interests. In this locally based and globally connected environment, the Malaya Communist Party, founded in 1930 and based on the Chinese community, secured ‘an unoccupied niche necessary for localisation—the niche of the liberators of Malaya’. Anna Belogurova, The Nanyang Revolution: The Comintern and Chinese Networks in Southeast Asia, 1890–1957 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), p. 78.
82 He, ‘Taipingyang huiyi baoqiaoan’.
83 Zhang Liqian, ‘Jianshe xin Nanyang chuyi’ [‘Preliminary Discussion on Building a New Nanyang’], DFZZ, vol. 41, no. 23, 1945, pp. 14–16.
84 He Qiba, ‘Nanyang huaqiao shehui jiegou de poushi’ [‘An Analysis of the Social Structure of the Nanyang Overseas Chinese’], DFZZ, vol. 43, no. 7, 1947, p. 34.
85 Ibid., pp. 35–37.
86 Li Xiawen, ‘Nanyang huaqiao de qiantu’ [‘The Future of the Nanyang Overseas Chinese’], DFZZ, vol. 43, no. 4, 1947, pp. 15–19.
87 Ibid., p. 19.
88 Leander Seah, ‘Hybridity, Globalization, and the Creation of a Nanyang Identity: The South Seas Society in Singapore, 1940–1958’, Journal of the South Seas Society, vol. 61, 2007, pp. 134–151.
89 Koh Soh Goh, South Seas Society and Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore: South Seas Society, 1977).
90 Xu Yunqiao, ‘Prologue’, The Bulletin of the Institute of Southeast Asia, vol. 1, 1959, pp. vi–vii. According to Leander Seah, the South Seas Society continued to evolve, based on changing local, regional, and global contexts, including the Singapore-Malaya phase from 1958 to 1971 and the re-Sinicization stage after 1971 against the backdrop of the Singaporean government’s marginalization of Chinese language education and the Chinese intellectual community. Leander Seah, ‘Chinese Identities Between Localization and Globalization: The South Seas Society, Chinese Intellectuals in Singapore, and Southeast Asian Studies, 1958–1971’, The China Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Greater China, vol. 17, no. 3, 2017, pp. 87–110; Leander Seah, ‘Looking Back Towards East Asia: The Re-Sinicization of the South Seas Society in Singapore, 1971–2000’, American Journal of Chinese Studies, vol. 20, 2013, pp. 137–151.
91 Lu Xingyan, ‘Yanjiu Nanyang wenhua yingyou de taidu’ [‘The Proper Attitude for Studying Nanyang Culture’], NYYJ, vol. 1, no. 1, 1928, p. 67. Ironically, Lu himself showed a distinct sense of cultural superiority and wrote that the natives in the Nanyang ‘were usually isolated—though we can’t say they have no culture’, that they did not know how to resist the imperialists ‘due to their low intelligence’, and that China should unite with ‘the weak and small national groups to protect them and our fellow Chinese from harm and to form the Nanyang Federation’, ibid., p. 68.
92 Chen Zongshan, ‘Bannianzhong zhi Nanyang yanjiu’ [‘Nanyang Studies during the Past Half-Year’], NYYJ, vol. 1, no. 6, 1928, p. 2.
93 Lin Yanfang (trans.), ‘Shijie yimin wenti zhi tuiyi’ [‘The Changes in World Immigration Issues’], NYYJ, vol. 2, no. 5, 1929, pp. 113–114.
94 Liu Shimu (trans.), ‘Riben nanjince’ [‘Japan’s Southern Advancement Doctrine’], NYYJ, vol. 2, no. 5, 1929, pp. 115–134.
95 Zhu Xie, ‘Zhongguo zhimin zhi dili de fangshi’ [‘The Geographical Methods of Chinese Colonization’], DFZZ, vol. 27, no. 6, 1930, pp. 33–43; Heinrich Schmitthenner, ‘Der geographische Typus der chinesischen Kolonisation’, Geographische Zeitschrift, vol. 35, no. 9, 1929, pp. 526–540. Schmitthenner’s article was also cited and introduced one year later by Zhang Liangren, ‘Yimin wenti yu Zhongguo’ [‘The Immigration Question and China’], DFZZ, vol. 28, no. 13, 1931, pp. 23–36.
96 Ellsworth Huntington, Civilization and Climate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1915); Yinming, Danhua and Chen Zongshan, ‘Redai zhi bairen’ [‘Whites in the Tropics’], NYYJ, vol. 1, no. 3, 1928, pp. 75–90.
97 Yinming, Danhua and Chen, ‘Redai zhi bairen’, p. 88.
98 Ibid., pp. 88–89.
99 Li Changfu, ‘Huaqiao yanjiu zhi jichu wenti’ [‘The Fundamental Questions in the Study of Overseas Chinese’], NYYJ, vol. 8, no. 1, 1939, pp. 3–22.
100 Harley MacNair, The Chinese Abroad, Their Position and Protection: A Study in International Law and Relations (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1924).
101 Li Ping and Chen Daiguang, ‘Li Changfu xiansheng zhuanlue’ [‘A Brief Biography of Mr. Li Changfu’], in Li Changfu wenji [The Collected Works of Li Changfu], (ed.) Li Changfu (Kaifeng: Henan daxue chubanshe, 2007), pp. 522–529.
102 Li Changfu, ‘Zhongguo zhimin Nanyang xiaoshi’ [‘A Short History of Chinese Colonization in the Nanyang’], DFZZ, vol. 23, no. 5, 1926, p. 45; Li Changfu, Nanyang huaqiao yizhishi [A History of Chinese Migration and Colonization in the Nanyang] (Shanghai: Guoli Jinan daxue chubanshe, 1929).
103 Li Changfu, Huaqiao [Overseas Chinese] (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1927).
104 Chan, Diaspora’s Homeland, p. 10.
105 Li Changfu, Zhongguo zhiminshi [The History of Chinese Colonization] (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1937), p. 2.
106 Ibid., pp. 2–3. Li noted on page 1 that ‘colonization’ had also been translated as shokumin (植民), citing Tadao Yanaihara, Shokumin oyobi shokumin seisaku (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1926). The term shokumin was adopted by Nitobe Inazo (1862–1933), who founded Japan’s Colonial Policy studies and whose ideas would be inherited and developed by Tadao Yanaihara (1893–1961). Nitobe claimed that the Chinese language lacked the appropriate term for ‘colony’, and his usage of shokumin ‘at once elevated Japan above China … and connected Japan to the imperializing nations whose society Nitobe sought’. Alexis Dudden, ‘Nitobe Inazo and the Diffusion of a Knowledgeable Empire’, in Empire and the Social Sciences: Global Histories of Knowledge, (ed) Jeremy Adelman (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), p. 117; also see So Jung Um, ‘Japanese Colonial Policy Studies, 1909–1945: Nitobe Inazo, Yanaihara Tadao, and Tobata Seiichi’, PhD thesis, University of Michigan, 2017.
107 Li, Zhongguo zhiminshi, p. 3.
108 Ibid., pp. 3–4.
109 Ibid., p. 4.
110 Ibid.
111 In an earlier monograph in 1935, Li had already introduced the Marxist framework, referring to the German American sinologist Karl. A. Wittfogel’s theories and discussing Marxist dialectical materialism. Li Changfu, Zhuanxinqi de dilixue [The Study of Geography in a Period of Transition] (Shanghai: Sanwu shufang, 1935).
112 Li, Zhongguo zhiminshi, p. 1.
113 Ibid., pp. 6–7.
114 While historically Chinese monks did go to India to seek Buddhist texts and teachings, Li noted, they were often individuals or small-group based and did not engage in substantial social and economic activities. Li did mention the several waves of Chinese moving overseas due to political persecution, as well as China’s military and political expansion during the Yuan and Ming dynasties which he described as the ‘glories in the history of Chinese colonization’. Ibid., pp. 7–8.
115 Li also mentioned that while for the world powers surplus population was one of the main causes of colonization, it was not among the primary reasons for Chinese migration because capitalism had not yet developed in China and China’s surplus population historically had always been balanced by domestic unrest and famine. Ibid., pp. 8–9, 12–14.
116 Li, ‘Huaqiao yanjiu zhi jichu wenti’, pp. 8–19.
117 Ibid., p. 5.
118 Ibid.
119 Ibid., pp. 5–6.
120 Ibid., pp. 6–7.
121 Ibid., p. 5.
122 Ibid., p. 8.
123 Li Changfu, ‘Huaqiao shi yanjiu zhi jichu wenti’ [‘The Fundamental Questions in the Study of Overseas Chinese History’], NYYJ, vol. 8, no. 2, 1939, pp. 91–113.
124 Li, ‘Huaqiaoshi yanjiu zhi jichu wenti’, p. 94.
125 Ibid., pp. 94–95, 102–103.
126 Nicola Spakowski, ‘Dreaming of Future for China: Visions of Socialisms Among Chinese Intellectuals in the Early 1930s’, Modern China, vol. 45, no. 1, 2019, pp. 91–122.
127 Wei-ming Tu, ‘Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center’, Daedalus, vol. 120, no. 2, 1991, p. 24.
128 Elizabeth Perry, ‘Reclaiming the Chinese Revolution’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 67, 2008, pp. 1147–1164.
129 While Li had long been interested in historical geography, his decision to refocus on this field after 1949 was most likely influenced by the political movements that emerged after the 1950s, which targeted intellectuals—especially those with foreign ties. Li also understood the limited opportunities for Chinese scholars at that time to conduct fieldwork and access archives in Southeast Asia. According to one of his younger colleagues, Li advised him to study Xinjiang instead of Southeast Asia, given the accessibility and the new archaeological findings there. Li Changfu, Nanyang shidi yu huaqiao huaren yanjiu [The History and Geography of the Nanyang and the study of Overseas Chinese] (Guangzhou: Jinan daxue chubanshe, 2001), pp. 2–3.
130 In 2001, Jida compiled and published his writings from the 1930s and 1940s on Nanyang historical geography and Chinese migrants, part of an important project of Jida’s doctoral programme on the history of China’s foreign relations in relation to Chinese migration and Chinese abroad. Another collection of his geographic studies was published in 2007 by Henan University after a conference commemorating the 105th anniversary of his birthday. In these anthologies and other reviews, scholars have highlighted not just his contribution to the study of Nanyang history and Chinese overseas but also his evidential study and critical annotation of classical writings, his combining of archival research with fieldwork, his introducing to Chinese scholars the modern discipline of geography, and his producing large numbers of maps and geography textbooks. Li, Nanyang shidi yu huaqiao huaren yanjiu; Li, Li Changfu wenji; Wu Hongqi, Lishi dilixue fangfalun de tansuo yu shijian [On the Exploration and Application of the Methods of Historical Geography] (Guangzhou: Jinan daxue chubanshe, 2010).
131 Leigh Jenco and Jonathan Chappell, ‘Overlapping Histories, Co-produced Concepts: Imperialism in Chinese Eyes’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 79, no. 3, 2020, pp. 685–706; Julia Schneider, ‘A Non-western Colonial Power? The Qing Empire in Postcolonial Discourse’, Journal of Asian History, vol. 54, 2020, pp. 311–342.
132 Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo shixiang de xingqi [The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought], Vol. 1, Part 1 (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2015), p. 67.
133 Ibid., p. 88.
134 In his article on why scholars in each field need to reach out to the other, Kuhn observed that ‘[T]he modern history of Chinese emigration and the modern history of China are aspects of the same social-historical process.’ Kuhn, ‘Why China Historians Should Study the Chinese Diaspora, and Vice-versa’, p. 166.
135 In 1951, Oscar Handlin, a pioneer in the study of American immigration history, opened his book The Uprooted (a Pulitzer Prize winner) with the following statement: ‘Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history.’ Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People, 2nd edn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), p. 3. While obviously beyond the scope of this article, it would be interesting to compare China and the United States in regard to the role of migration in defining their national history and identity (with the former often presented as ‘a nation of emigrants’ and the latter ‘a nation of immigrants’).
136 Taomo Zhou, ‘The Multidirectional Diaspora: Writing Chinese Migration History in a Time of Global Racial Reckoning’, The Historical Journal, vol. 67, no. 1, 2024, p. 186.
137 Ibid., p. 185.
138 Chris Alden, Daniel Large and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira (eds), China Returns to Africa: A Rising Power and a Continent Embrace (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008); Deborah Brautigam, The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Raquel Carvalho, ‘China in Latin America: Partner or Predator?’, South China Morning Post, 25 May 2019; James Dever and Jack Dever, ‘Information Age Imperialism: China, “Race”, and Neo-colonialism in Africa and Latin America’, University of Miami Inter-American Law Review, vol. 52, no. 2, 2021, pp. 1–48; Brook Larmer, ‘The Expansionists’, New York Times Magazine, 7 May 2017, p. 20; Charles Matseke, ‘Mandarin in South African Schools: A Case of Neocolonialism?’, Modern Diplomacy, 14 June 2025; Robert Rotberg (ed.), China into Africa: Trade, Aid, and Influence (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008); ‘How Chinese Firms Have Changed Africa’, The Economist, 20 May 2022.
139 For example, Mara Hvistendahl and Joy Dong, ‘In African Summit, China Casts Itself as Defender of the Developing World’, New York Times, 6 September 2024, sec. A, p. 6; Liu Hongwu and Yang Jiemian, Fifty Years of Sino-African Cooperation: Background, Progress and Significance (Kunming: Yunnan University Press, 2009); Liu Xin, ‘Accusations of “Debt Trap”, “Neocolonialism” Have No Market in Kenya’, Global Times, 4 September 2023; Lu Miaogeng, Huang Shejiao and Lin Yi, Tongxin ruo jin: Zhong Fei youhao guanxi de huihuang licheng [As United as Gold: A Glorious History of China-Africa Friendship] (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2006).