When China Rules the World

For a number of reasons it is difficult to estimate the number of overseas Chinese. In some instances, migration remains highly active, for example to Africa and Australia. There are also problems of definition as to precisely who the category should include, those of mixed race being an obvious example. The statistics also vary greatly in their reliability and accuracy for various reasons, including illegal immigration, the quality of censuses and definitional issues. Notwithstanding these difficulties, the table below gives a rough idea of the total size of the Chinese diaspora and the main countries where it resides.

Chinese migration has a long history, dating back to the Ming dynasty in the case of South-East Asia. The global Chinese diaspora began in the nineteenth century, when there was a surplus of labour in the southern coastal provinces of China and Chinese workers were recruited for the European colonies, often as indentured labour. The biggest migratory movements were to South-East Asia, but the Chinese also went in large numbers during the second half of the nineteenth century to the United States, notably in search of gold and to build the railroads, and also to Australia and many other parts of the world including Europe and South Africa. Over the period 1844-88 alone over 2 million Chinese found their way to such diverse locations as the Malay Peninsula, Indochina, Sumatra, Java, the Philippines, Hawaii, the Caribbean, Mexico, Peru, California and Australia. In the second half of the twentieth century there has been a big expansion in Chinese migration to North America, Australia and, very much more recently, Africa, as well as elsewhere.

There is a voluminous literature on the subject, including: Lynn Pan, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999); Lynn Pan, Sons of the Yellow Emperor: The Story of the Overseas Chinese (London: Arrow, 1998); Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (London: UCL Press, 1997); Susan Gall and Ireane Natividad, eds, The Asian American Almanac: A Reference Work on Asians in the United States (Detroit: Gale Research, 1995); Wang Gungwu, China and the Chinese Overseas (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1991); Wang Lingchi and Wang Gungwu, eds, The Chinese Diaspora: Selected Essays, 2 vols (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1998); Wang Gungwu, The Chinese Overseas: From Earthbound China to the Quest for Autonomy (London and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).

Guide to Further Reading

It is difficult, a little invidious even, to select a relative handful of books from the vast range of sources – including books, academic and newspaper articles, lectures, talks, seminars, personal conversations, conference proceedings and countless interviews – that I have used in writing this book. Nonetheless, having spent years burrowing away, I feel it is my responsibility to offer a rather more selective list of books for the reader who might want to explore aspects of the subject matter a little further. I cannot provide any titles that offer the same kind of sweep as this book but no doubt in due course, as China ’s rise continues, there will be several and eventually a multitude.