DFZZ (1904–1948) and NYYJ (1928–1944)

DFZZ, known as the ‘linchpin of Chinese periodicals’, was founded in 1904 by the Commercial Press with a mission to ‘guide and enlighten fellow countrymen and connect East Asian societies’ (启导国民联络东亚).Footnote ¹¹ Published monthly and then bi-weekly from 1920, it was suspended four times, first during the Republican Revolution in 1911 and then in the 1930s due to the Japanese invasion. It was published in various cities such as Shanghai and Hong Kong and boasted 44 volumes and over 500 issues, with a circulation of up to 60,000 in its heyday.Footnote ¹² Following the format of Japan’s Taiyō magazine and the British and American style of ‘Review of Reviews’, it featured opinions and reports either written by its own staff or collected from domestic and foreign newspapers and magazines.

Focusing on DFZZ’s coverage of Chinese migration, this study chose articles throughout its publication from 1904 to 1948 with any of the following keywords in the title: yimin (移民, migration), 55 articles; zhimin (殖民, colonization), 21 articles; huaqiao (华侨, overseas Chinese), 130 articles; huagong (华工, overseas Chinese labourer), 21 articles; huashang (华商, overseas Chinese merchant), 26 articles; qiaomin (侨民, sojourner), 26 articles; huamin (华民, Chinese national), one article; and huaren (华人, ethnic Chinese), 29 articles. Of these 309 articles, about one-quarter were book promotions or general advertisements, while the remaining three-quarters provide the basis for the analysis of DFZZ here. They were published under various categories such as opinion, education, diplomacy, and commerce, showing DFZZ’s broad coverage of Chinese migration both around the world and across different fields.Footnote ¹³

Compared to DFZZ, NYYJ was a smaller-scale journal with a specific focus on the Nanyang, particularly Chinese migration to that region. It was founded as a monthly in 1928 by the Bureau of Nanyang Cultural and Educational Affairs (henceforth the Bureau) at Jida. Established in 1906 in Nanjing and restructured in 1927 as a national university, Jida was for a long time the only higher education institution for migrants’ descendants who returned to study in China.Footnote ¹⁴ The Bureau was founded in 1927 to help the Chinese public know ‘what the Nanyang, what Nanyang huaqiao, and what the relations between Nanyang huaqiao and the homeland are’.Footnote ¹⁵ It was renamed the Bureau of Cultural Affairs of the Nanyang and the Americas in 1929 and then the Bureau of Overseas Cultural Affairs in 1934, indicating its expanding scope of research and programming.Footnote ¹⁶ NYYJ was the first academic journal on migration studies in modern China, assembling many first-generation migration scholars, including Liu Shimu (刘士木, 1889–1952), the long-time director of the Bureau, and Li Changfu, one of its early editors. It suffered delays and suspension from 1937 to 1939 as Shanghai fell to Japan and then from 1941 to 1943 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. With NYYJ’s focus already on Chinese migration and migrants, this study analyses its editorial remarks and major research articles and reports, including those on the methodology of studying migration and race.

Examining DFZZ and NYYJ together provides an effective way to understand the perspectives of Chinese intellectuals. While NYYJ focused on the Nanyang and featured specialists on that region (particularly Jida scholars), DFZZ covered Chinese migration across the world and included not only migration specialists but also experts in fields such as education, economics, and law— many of whom had travelled and studied in the West, unlike many Jida scholars who were trained in Japan. They included academics, educators, lawmakers, and journalists who often espoused the nationalist and reformist agenda and wrote for an growing urban reading public in the late Qing and then the Republican eras.Footnote ¹⁷ With such varied authorship, readership, and coverage, they reflected both the breadth and the depth of Chinese understandings of migration, colonization, race, and nation.

Scholars have studied these two periodicals, though not always together or in such a systematic way. As mentioned earlier, Chan studies Jida scholars and their writings as part of the critical ‘diaspora moments’. Historian Leander Seah examines the institutional history of Jida, approaching it not from the official Chinese point of view but through the rich transregional ties and personal stories of students, alumni, and researchers.Footnote ¹⁸ This article focuses on the ‘colonial question’ and draws on not just Jida publications (specifically NYYJ) but also DFZZ. The latter has been used widely by scholars to study modern China, but less so by migration scholars, illustrating both the historiographical gap between China studies and Chinese migration studies and the potential of bridging these two fields, as migration comprised a significant proportion of the writings in DFZZ and concerned a wide range of topics such as nationality law, economy, diplomacy, and global peace.Footnote ¹⁹ Among the few migration studies based on DFZZ is historian Glen Peterson’s analysis of its presentation of Chinese migration to the urban reading public. Based on 75 articles from the periodical, Peterson argues that its portrayal of overseas Chinese was ‘at best episodic, fragmented and partial’ and fed into the nationalist discourse on the so-called ‘overseas Chinese problem’.Footnote ²⁰ This study provides a more comprehensive survey (with 238 articles from DFZZ), showing the broad spectrum of its coverage of migration, especially that related to colonization and localization.

Advocating colonization with a bitter taste, 1900s–1910s

Writings about migration in DFZZ were embedded in the deep sense of national crisis. Since the First Opium War (1839–1842), migration flows could no longer be fully controlled by the Chinese state. The Treaty of Nanjing that China was forced to sign in 1842 granted amnesty to those Chinese who had resided under, dealt with, or entered the service of Great Britain. The Convention of Beijing in 1860 permitted Chinese labourers to emigrate under contracts with British firms (later also applicable to French, Spanish, and American firms). The infamous ‘coolie’ trade (1845–1874) revealed the pernicious nature of Western exploitation of Chinese labour and became ‘the hinge’ of the Qing government’s shift to more positive attitudes towards migrants, as well as its efforts to negotiate with other nations to reclaim its authority.Footnote ²¹ In its first year, DFZZ published many reports and commentaries on the unequal treaty system and the Qing government’s incompetency in protecting migrants. One opinion article in 1904 discussed the government’s agreement to send contract labourers to the Transvaal, a British colony in southern Africa, arguing that the scheme would ‘taint the national reputation and harm fellow Chinese’.Footnote ²²

With feelings of national humiliation, Chinese intellectuals were naturally vocal in criticizing colonialism and racism, though colonization as a symbol of national and racial prowess was often embraced. The best example was Liang Qichao (梁启超, 1873–1929), the foremost intellectual and reformer in modern China. Liang touted the enterprising spirit and the achievements of eight Chinese colonizers in Southeast Asia in an article published in Xinmin congbao (新民丛报) in 1905. Their marginalization in Chinese history explained why Chinese people were now ‘excluded from a world of nations competing for survival’, Liang declared. China should reinvigorate this colonial spirit and follow other colonial powers’ model of supporting colonial enterprises, especially in the Nanyang, which was China’s ‘natural colony’ due to historical ties and geographical proximity.Footnote ²³

While Liang’s essay has been frequently cited by scholars, he was not the first one to apply ‘colonization’ (zhimin 殖民) to Chinese migration. One year earlier, the newly founded DFZZ reported on a successful enterprise initiated by Fujianese Wong Nai Siong (黄乃裳, 1849–1924) and his son-in-law Lim Boon Keng (林文庆, 1869–1957), who contracted with the local rulers at Sarawak to recruit 1,000 poor farmers from their homeland to develop the land along the Rajang River.Footnote ²⁴ While this report described the ongoing and largely economic initiative as colonization, Liang’s 1905 essay emphasized the political power (even if temporary) established by Chinese migrants in Southeast Asia and reclaimed and enshrined them in Chinese history. His main goal was to highlight the need to develop sea power, the importance of support from the homeland for colonial enterprises, and the correlation between political capability and international competition.Footnote ²⁵ While often cited and iconized in the historiography of Chinese migration, Liang’s ‘migration-as-colonization’ framework and his fervent endorsement of social Darwinism represented only one dimension of Chinese intellectuals’ thinking on the issue; the other dimension would be their serious reckoning with the ‘survival of the fittest’ theory and its accompanying racial ideology.Footnote ²⁶

In this sense, the following DFZZ editorial, published around the same time as Liang’s essay, could not be more representative of Chinese intellectuals’ intricate views on colonization: they both championed and denounced it. Titled ‘On colonial policy’, the editorial challenged the so-called natural law of ‘survival of the fittest’ justified by and justifying the colonial powers. ‘Europeans and Americans adopt the cruellest colonial policies, enslaving other people, seizing their property, suffocating them, [committing] crimes as high as the sky’, and they were justified as the fittest.Footnote ²⁷ The Chinese were not unfit but competitive, which was why they were feared and excluded by the United States. Referring to the exclusion laws in Australia (1901) and the United States (1904) and Chinese merchants’ boycott of American goods (1905), the editorial argued that the real reason was not that the Chinese were inferior but that there was no national strength or legal authority to protect them. ‘If we resent the American exclusion laws’, the editorial proposed, ‘why not adopt the colonial policy to compete with the other powers’, as ‘the capability of a race to colonize has become the foremost key to its status in the world’.Footnote ²⁸

While echoing Liang’s emphasis on the importance of colonization, this DFZZ editorial did not simply praise colonization but vividly described and condemned the injustice caused by Western colonialism, embodying the bifurcated nature of the modern Chinese narrative about migration: promoting colonization and racial fitness while detesting colonialism and racism. The anchor point was the need for a strong Chinese state along with judicial autonomy which had been compromised by the extraterritoriality clause under the unequal treaty system.

In the same context of national crisis and colonial competition, Chinese intellectuals showed great interest and passion in promoting domestic migration to China’s borderlands, especially in the wake of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 that broke out in Manchuria and opened the door for increasing Japanese colonization in the area.Footnote ²⁹ An editorial in DFZZ in 1907 focused on the urgent need to send migrants to the borderlands to both defend China from foreign encroachments and relieve the population pressure. It discussed the history of colonization in China: ‘Historically our nation expanded its territory mainly to showcase the emperors’ ambitions rather than using it as a grand strategy for people’s welfare, so the wider the expanded territory, the less the preserved wealth.’ As a result, ‘the later generations of Confucianists view territorial expansion as a major mistake to avoid, and the school of colonization has all [but] disappeared in China’.Footnote ³⁰ To defend Manchuria, which was almost ceded in the Russo-Japanese War and to avoid losing Xinjiang, the editorial argued, the Qing court should not be content with simply retaining these territories but rather should populate them for better defence and better use of their resources.Footnote ³¹ It resembled Liang’s strategy of reinventing the Chinese tradition of ‘colonization’ to fit the need of the present; at the same time, its call for defending the borderlands from foreign invasion and advancing public welfare, rather than merely satisfying political ambitions, helped justify the domestic initiative of relocating people (移民) and differentiate it from past Chinese territorial expansion and contemporary foreign colonization.

DFZZ continued publishing commentaries in support of populating the frontier, including one in 1917 comparing China with other colonial powers. ‘It is said that France has colonies but no colonists, that Germany has colonists but no colonies, and that Britain has both and thus is the champion of colonization in the world.’Footnote ³² In contrast, China had both colonists and colonies but no colonial undertaking. It had sparsely populated fields in the Northwest, and it allowed the Japanese to live and conduct business in Manchuria and Eastern Mongolia, while Chinese from Fujian and Guangdong sojourned in British, French, and Dutch colonies where they were faced with restrictions while still exerting influence. This was ‘really exceptional in the world history of colonization’.Footnote ³³ Directly labelling the borderlands as Chinese colonies and migrants as colonists, the commentary revealed the growing public unease about China’s status at the time, with the increasing Japanese aggression (such as the notorious Twenty-One Demands in 1915) and the intensifying colonial competition during the First World War.

It is worth noting, however, that the phrase DFZZ often used to describe Chinese migration to the borderlands was not ‘colonization’ (殖民) but ‘relocating people’ (移民 or 徙民), indicating the authors’ cautious differentiation between domestic migration and colonization. In his iconic essay on colonization mentioned earlier, Liang Qichao also chose to focus on Chinese migrants’ settlement and influence outside China which, as he emphasized, was different from that within Chinese territories such as the historical expansion to southern China and Koxinga’s defeat of the Dutch in Taiwan in the 1660s.Footnote ³⁴ In other words, there had been a distinct and consistent tendency among Chinese intellectuals to designate ‘colonization’ as foreign expansion and define it as state-led migration and exploitation.

Viewing colonization as both necessary (proving China’s fitness in the Darwinian world) and detrimental (with China itself being a victim), Chinese intellectuals also paid close attention to the drafting of China’s first nationality law, a project symbolizing the colonial encounter between the Qing government and the Dutch colonial authority. The law was promulgated in 1909 to counter the Dutch naturalization policy in its East Indies colonies so that the large number of Chinese there could still be counted as Chinese subjects. It established jus sanguinis, a principle that has persisted in Chinese nationality laws ever since, which based Chinese nationality on bloodline.Footnote ³⁵

DFZZ posted the official draft of the law in March 1909, along with excerpts of petitions from Chinese merchants (including those from Surabaya) to the Qing government calling for a prompt response to the Dutch policy.Footnote ³⁶ A few months earlier, DFZZ also published an opinion article written by Yang Yuhui (杨毓辉), a noted reformer during the Self-Strengthening Movement (1861–1895) who demonstrated remarkable familiarity with the nationality laws of other nations. According to Yang, the nationality issue involved two critical questions. One was about international conflict, i.e. how to deal with the Dutch colonial authority concerning the status of Chinese subjects there. The other was about domestic stability for those who had naturalized abroad but lived in China and claimed the protection of a foreign nation. Many of his proposals were later reflected in the nationality law, including the requirement that Chinese citizens obtain Qing government recognition if they naturalized abroad; the rule that women and children derive their nationality from the male head of the household; and, drawing on laws from countries such as Austria, France, and the United States, the minimum of ten years’ residence and 20 years of age for a foreigner’s naturalization in China.Footnote ³⁷

This first Chinese nationality law embodied the bifurcated nature of Chinese perspectives on migration and colonization. First, it claimed the Chineseness of all Chinese abroad regardless of their local and generational status. The jus sanguinis principle in fact reflected the significant trend of racialized nationality laws adopted by many nations at the time, including newly created nation-states (such as Italy with its nationality law in 1911 and Germany in 1913) as well as those in transition from imperial courts to modern states (such as Japan with its nationality law in 1899).Footnote ³⁸ A survey in 1935 showed that 48 out of 79 states were basing their nationality laws entirely or principally on jus sanguinis so that they could retain and increase manpower ‘as a guarantee of security in the midst of the existing frenzy of insecurity and nationalism’.Footnote ³⁹ With the first Chinese nationality law, the Qing government presented itself as an active player in the national and colonial competition and retained its subjects abroad.

The other dimension of the law, of course, was its recognition of the encroachment of colonization on China’s sovereignty. In this context, ironically, the law turned inward and tightened its control of migrants, making it hard to lose Chinese nationality or circumvent Chinese laws when returning to China. In his article, Yang acknowledged people’s right to migration and naturalization abroad, but his emphasis was on regulation and control in defence of national sovereignty and judicial authority.Footnote ⁴⁰ A contemporary Chinese commentator observed that the 1909 law was ‘remedial’: it was less about defining qualified nationals for suffrage in line with modern constitutional movements and more about retaining overseas subjects as ‘a source of strength … if properly fostered and utilized’.Footnote ⁴¹ By emphasizing bloodline (particularly the male lineage), as historian Dan Shao points out, the law had reinforced filial piety and loyalty to the imperial state.Footnote ⁴²

Republican Revolution, nationalist state, and a different path: 1910s–1930s

Chinese migrants played an important role in the Republican Revolution in 1911 and had been enshrined by Republican nationalists as ‘the mother of the revolution’ (革命之母), a term with a ‘hazy origin’ that was used to create ‘umbilical ties’ between migrants and China.Footnote ⁴³ The new republic was soon plagued by Yuan Shikai’s (袁世凯, 1859–1916) failed attempt to revert to his own dynasty and then by chaotic manipulations by warlords. The Beijing government (1912–1927), as the nominal central government, set up various agencies and issued policies and laws concerning migrants that were largely ineffective.Footnote ⁴⁴ The reformed Nationalist Party launched the Northern Expedition and unified China, establishing a central government in Nanjing in 1927.

For Chinese intellectuals, the Republican period (especially with the Nationalist government) was a time of change and opportunity for reimagining Chinese migration and conducting migration studies (NYYJ was founded in 1928). The end of the First World War and the Wilsonian idealism of national self-determination also helped delegitimize the colonial model. He Haiming (何海鸣, 1887–1944), one of the earliest migration scholars, wrote in DFZZ in 1921 about the US-initiated Washington Conference and suggested that the protection of Chinese abroad be placed on its agenda: ‘In the past there were so-called colonial policies and colonies, but nowadays the world is moving towards the “grand harmony” (大同), justice is on the rise, and the colonies’ pursuit of self-determination can be seen everywhere.’Footnote ⁴⁵ According to He, the Chinese should not be treated differently in the Western colonies in Southeast Asia because they had helped develop the land. Embracing the rising decolonization movement, He also adopted the Darwinian approach. ‘In the name of colonial governance’, He argued, Western nations ‘actually invaded and plundered’ the colonies. However, they ‘developed the land, adding a new living space for humankind, and educating and acculturating the natives, so overall they indeed made contributions to the human world’, and the Chinese had played a role in the initial process of that development ‘no less than any other people’.Footnote ⁴⁶ He listed four ‘unalienable rights’ of Chinese migrants: the right to local citizenship (with equal rights for all local residents to vote and to run for public office), the right to work (without discriminatory policies that excluded Chinese migrant workers), the right to trade (without discriminatory taxes against Chinese merchants), and the right to education (particularly the education of Chinese language and culture).Footnote ⁴⁷ He’s article exemplified the bifurcated perspectives of Chinese intellectuals. On the one hand, their perspectives had evolved over time, sometimes even ahead of their time: the concept of local citizenship regardless of nationality is an idea still proposed and debated in the twenty-first century. On the other hand, they inherited the traditional view of China’s contribution to the world as well as the Darwinian theory about the superiority of the West.

The Nationalist government also earnestly identified with the new era, claiming itself to be the leader of the noble cause of decolonization and the guardian of Chinese migrants. It publicized the discrimination against huaqiao and advocated revising unequal treaties in the hopes of both enhancing its international status and gaining domestic support.Footnote ⁴⁸ Jida, the host institution of NYYJ, was reorganized in 1927 and its leaders were often members of the Nationalist Party dedicated to the nationalist discourse. It is important to point out, however, that Jida was ‘not driven entirely by governmental objectives’, and its many graduates were ‘real people with personal agendas’ instead of ‘mere instruments’ of the Nationalist government.Footnote ⁴⁹ Chinese intellectuals still held varying views about migration, and the juxtaposition of championing nationalism and colonization and criticizing colonialism and racism was still to be found in both NYYJ and DFZZ in the following decades.

Right into the second year of its publication, NYYJ published a special issue on world migration. The title of the issue and the majority of the articles, particularly those about Chinese migration, used yimin rather than zhimin, though the latter was used in reference to Western colonization and in the translation of Japanese studies. Again this indicates the nuance of the periodical in recognizing the importance of migration while emphasizing the exploitative nature of Western and Japanese colonization. Among the featured articles was ‘Mission of the People of a Great Nation’ by Lin Yanfang (林奄方, 1902–1979). Lin grew up in Taiwan and studied with the reformer Kang Youwei (康有为, 1858–1927). He joined the Bureau at Jida in 1928 and published many articles in NYYJ before working at the Chinese consulates in Japan and Singapore in the 1930s.Footnote ⁵⁰ Lin argued that Chinese people originated from various parts of the world and were the largest and earliest group of migrants, earlier even than the European explorers of the fifteenth century. With Western colonization, white people had occupied five-sixths of the world and all people of colour were suppressed. Lin called on Chinese migrants to unite and revive their ancestors’ spirit, ‘cultivate the barren land with hoes and resist the world powers with science’, adapt to local customs and transform them, settle down, work hard, and pass on to their children ‘a happy land rich in both resources and spirit’.Footnote ⁵¹ It was a message abundant with anti-colonial sentiments, attention to modern science and migrants’ localization, along with inherent racial and national pride.

With the global economic crisis, the tightening immigration restrictions worldwide, and the aggression of Japan in the 1930s, both NYYJ and DFZZ published numerous reports and opinion articles on the increasing vulnerability of huaqiao, especially those in Southeast Asia. In 1932, Liu Shimu explicated huaqiao’s crises: they faced political suppression and racial discrimination by the colonial governments, against a backdrop of the natives’ growing self-awareness and anti-Chinese sentiments. While Chinese migrants could be the middlemen in the past, the recent economic changes had prioritized consumption over production. Consumption was based on national competition for markets, and huaqiao had no support from the homeland in such competition. In contrast, Japanese businesses were well supported. Japanese emigration was carefully planned, and young and talented migrants were selected, posing serious threats to Chinese communities that, according to Liu, were largely ‘illiterate’ and ‘disunited’ (thus again in need of state guidance).Footnote ⁵²

Liu’s attention to Japan represented Chinese intellectuals’ deepening concerns regarding Japanese expansion in Southeast Asia and its impacts on Chinese communities and China’s interests in that region. Traditionally, ‘Nanhai’ (南海) was the Chinese term to describe the South China Sea, particularly the coastal regions within the reach of Chinese ‘trade and conquest’. However, the term ‘Nanyang’ became more frequently used and replaced ‘Nanhai’ during the Ming and Qing dynasties, and it ‘acquired a new geopolitical meaning in the modern period’, especially with Japan’s maritime expansion in the region.Footnote ⁵³ The Japanese term ‘Nanyo’ referred to the central Pacific islands southeast of Japan in the early Meiji Era and later ‘expanded to include the Pacific islands south of the equator, New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, the Hawaiian Islands, the Dutch East Indies, and the colonies of Southeast Asia’.Footnote ⁵⁴ It indicated long-held Japanese colonial ambitions that grew in more directions, not just southward but northward and eastward.Footnote ⁵⁵ Japan’s accelerating economic penetration into Southeast Asia since the First World War, along with its intensifying public attention to Nanyo—exemplified by the founding of the Nanyo Kyokai (South Seas Association) in 1915, which equated Nanyo with Southeast Asia in a way similar to the Chinese term ‘Nanyang’—directly influenced Chinese intellectuals’ interest in the region, as seen in the establishment of the Bureau at Jida in 1927.Footnote ⁵⁶ Many Chinese migration scholars had also studied at Japan, including Liu Shimu and Li Changfu.

Chinese intellectuals noticed the growing threat of Japanese emigration and colonization not just in the Nanyang but on multiple fronts. The crisis in Manchuria had worsened and led to increasing public protests.Footnote ⁵⁷ Japanese emigration to South America and to the United States also aroused concerns. In 1934, Zhang Furong (张敷荣, 1904–1998) surveyed Japanese business development in San Francisco. Studying education at Stanford University, Zhang observed that in the past 50 years the Chinese population had declined in the city while the Japanese community had grown, with more Japanese products available in American stores and with Chinese migrants’ businesses often taken over secretly by the Japanese. To resist such economic invasion, Zhang suggested, Chinese migrant organizations should conduct scientific studies of business, promote adult and civic education, and improve Chinese stores’ appearance and management. Zhang also urged Chinese migrants to unite, rather than seek personal gain, and to take responsibility for saving China, as it would not bode well if they lost their homeland.Footnote ⁵⁸

Chinese intellectuals described Japan’s expansion as even more dangerous than Western colonialism, posing a direct threat to both the natives and Chinese migrants. This emphasis supported the Nationalist government’s political strategy of ejecting Japan from its colonies, arousing patriotism among Chinese abroad, and forging unity between them and the Indigenous communities. The strategy was best seen in the inaugural issue of the government journal Huaqiao zhoubao (华侨周报, Huaqiao Weekly) in 1932. It denounced Japan for following the Euro-American style of colonization, ‘digging tombs abroad for itself’.Footnote ⁵⁹ China’s path should be different; otherwise, China would not only be excluded by imperialists but also ‘lose the favourable treatment and sympathy of weak nations and peoples’.Footnote ⁶⁰ While stressing China’s difference from colonialism and imperialism, the article still braced itself for the Darwinian world of competition and provided guidelines for China’s own strategic migration: ‘We will create a path out of the tight blockade by imperialists. We need to be brave and adventurous and, in the regions where white people do not want to go, such as Papua in the Nanyang, the inland of Borneo, South America … launch our own path’.Footnote ⁶¹

While the Chinese state was expected to be proactive, its management of migration was described as totally different from that of the colonial powers. According to the director of the Survey Unit (调查股) of the Bureau at Jida, the colonial powers established migration offices both in their own lands and in the colonies to manage the entry and exit of foreign nationals.Footnote ⁶² China did not exploit nor discriminate on either the international or domestic front: it was purely about Chinese migrants abroad, particularly their suffering and the need for a strong state to protect them. This was the victimhood narrative adopted by Chinese intellectuals and appropriated by the Chinese state, a narrative prioritizing Chinese history after the mid-nineteenth century that, as the literary critic Shu-mei Shih points out, has been dominant in modern China and has often obliterated China’s own empire-building history.Footnote ⁶³ This narrative has also dismissed the state’s often insufficient policies towards migrants and returnees and its Han-centric policies in dealing with minority groups in the borderlands. It is a narrative that advances nationalism abroad and strengthens state authority at home in the name of challenging colonialism.

Decolonization, localization, and remapping the Nanyang: 1940s

After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the growing global tide against the Axis powers, Chinese intellectuals started envisioning post-war China in the world, including the conditions of Chinese in Southeast Asia. According to Shi Guogang (史国纲, 1902–1978), former editor of DFZZ, Chinese in Southeast Asia were different from those in other places as they had important socioeconomic status and operated manufacturing businesses. China could not ignore their displacement and plight during the Japanese occupation and needed to be proactive in supporting their recovery after the war, when they could ‘be of tremendous assistance in supplying the resources needed for the development of our nation’s new industries’.Footnote ⁶⁴ As he argued, ‘we can’t lose our fellow Chinese in all the Nanyang after recovering our homeland’.Footnote ⁶⁵

In 1943, the first issue of NYYJ after over two years of suspension focused on post-war Nanyang. In his remarks on resuming the publication, the then Jida president, He Bingsong (何炳松, 1890–1946), set the tone for the new era: ‘There must be a fair and reasonable solution to the colonial question which has caused the war … post-war reconstruction is not just to redistribute the resources and redesign the markets but also to take painstaking efforts to achieve the liberation of the weak and small nations, the only way to start building permanent and true world peace’.Footnote ⁶⁶ The mission of NYYJ, according to He, was to ‘discuss how to establish theories and systems about building the new Nanyang after the war, so that the politically less advanced areas can break away from colonialism and embark on the path to independence’.Footnote ⁶⁷

Some patterns could be seen in this special issue. First, there were concerns about China’s rising status in the region, and Chinese intellectuals and nationalists were trying to clarify China’s role to alleviate such concerns. A second pattern was, again, the variety and ambiguity in their views about the nature and future of Chinese migration. The first essay of the special issue was written by Zhou Xianwen (周宪文, 1907–1989), a renowned economist trained in Japan who chaired the Economics Department at Jida and later moved to Taiwan and pioneered the study of Taiwan’s economic history.Footnote ⁶⁸ As Zhou stated, Western colonial powers studied Nanyang’s strength to exploit its resources, and Japan studied its weaknesses to enter the vacuum to take it over. After the war, ‘we need to study the Nanyang and study it not for its wealth or just for the protection of huaqiao; we study it for the independence and liberty of the nations and the peoples there’.Footnote ⁶⁹ While such lofty statements could be diplomatic, he connected them to China’s own historical experience: ‘We have suffered national suppression and exploitation the longest and the deepest, so our request for national liberation and equality is the most earnest.’ China after the war did not ‘intend to lead the Nanyang. The reasonable solution for the Nanyang question should be the freedom and equality of the various peoples and nations in the Nanyang.’Footnote ⁷⁰

For Ge Suicheng (葛绥成, 1897–1978), a geography professor at Jida, it was important to rebuild the Nanyang ‘once and for all … to secure China’s status in the Pacific and ensure global peace’.Footnote ⁷¹ While defining China’s position as different from imperialism and capitalism and supporting the independence of post-colonial Myanmar, the Philippines, and a possible self-governing Nanyang Federation, Ge struck a strong nationalist note. He proposed taking back Annam as a province of China, punishing Thailand (if not making it part of China) by abolishing its harsh policies on Chinese migrants and returning the territories it took from Vietnam and the Federation of Southeast Asia, and reclaiming Ryukyu, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Jiulong, the Spratly Islands, and the Hengqin Islands.Footnote ⁷² Jida also had the obligation to help the government plan and implement these post-war plans.Footnote ⁷³

The varying perspectives of Chinese intellectuals were summarized by Su Qianyin (苏乾英, 1910–1996), who graduated from Jida in 1933 and then taught there. After reviewing both foreign proposals and his Jida colleagues’ arguments concerning post-war Nanyang, he emphasized that China had no intention of becoming imperialist after suffering imperialism.Footnote ⁷⁴ ‘Post-war China’s revival is not based on territorial expansion but on transparent and enlightened domestic politics and on economic development’.Footnote ⁷⁵ In the end, he wrote that ‘humankind can no longer survive and endure with one half democratic and the other half colonized, one half free and the other half enslaved’, referring to the famed ‘House Divided Speech’ by Abraham Lincoln in 1858 that condemned slavery.Footnote ⁷⁶

The writings in DFZZ at this time showed similarly distinct and juxtaposing perspectives on the important questions about huaqiao, the Nanyang, and China at the end of the Second World War. Qiu Riqin (丘日庆, 1913–2005) reiterated the view that Chinese migration was different from colonization as it was based on economic factors rather than political dominance. Protecting migrants was the inescapable responsibility of a nation-state, and so was ensuring the quality of migrants and guiding migrants in retraining or returning to help develop southwestern China.Footnote ⁷⁷ Yao Nan (姚枬, 1912–1996), a specialist in the Nanyang economy, also emphasized the difference between exploitative European colonizers, who lived extravagantly without mixing with the natives and transferred their wealth back to their homelands, and frugal Chinese migrants, who settled in the Nanyang, lived harmoniously with the natives, and contributed to the prosperity of the local society. For their economic revival after the war, Yao advised huaqiao to return and invest in China and proposed more economic cooperation between the Nanyang and China.Footnote ⁷⁸ Focusing on the resettlement of huaqiao in post-war Nanyang, Shi Guogang expressed concerns about insufficient support from the United Nations. Rather than relying on others, China should take action to recruit capable returnees, train them, and send them back to the Nanyang to participate in the recovery and rebuilding of their host societies. It could be a rare opportunity for China to reconnect with migrants who had long assimilated into the local society, and funding their return to the Nanyang could be a long-term investment. While seeking to achieve these goals, China should also, through diplomatic negotiations with the local governments, ensure that huaqiao gained their legal rights and equal status after the war.Footnote ⁷⁹

With the emphasis on regaining and reinforcing the bond between migrants and the homeland, these intellectuals’ attention to migrants’ local status was still based on the fate of China, indicating their continuing tendency to view Chinese abroad as a homogeneous group in need of China’s protection.Footnote ⁸⁰ It also illustrated their ignorance or intentional denial of the long-term settlement of Chinese migrants and their active participation in local activities and movements.Footnote ⁸¹ Furthermore, it revealed their primary concern with the status of Chinese migrants (and China) rather than that of the native populations in post-war Nanyang, echoing the focus of He 20 years before on the ‘unalienable rights’ of Chinese migrants.Footnote ⁸²

The dramatic shift in geopolitics and the remarkable momentum of decolonization did lead many Chinese intellectuals to seriously rethink migrants’ own needs and even explicitly advocate for the inevitable trend of localization. The rethinking and recasting, however, was multilayered and embedded in the bifurcated nature of ethnocentrism and decolonization, a balance these intellectuals struck in different ways and degrees. Zhang Liqian (张礼千, 1900–1955) proposed China take an active part in designing the new political landscape in the Nanyang, though he also advocated for local governments to create more opportunities for huaqiao and include them in local politics.Footnote ⁸³ The huaqiao community in the Nanyang, according to He Qiba (何启拔, 1913–2008), comprised the local-born community and the emigrant community. They were vertically related based on their ancestry and culture, ‘a static relationship or just a kind of social relics’; their horizonal relationship was dynamic, but it was just ‘a sign of business transactions’ and had ‘little impact on the society itself or the evolvement of the native culture’.Footnote ⁸⁴ For the local-born Chinese, He observed, Western culture dominated their social structure (such as political and economic institutions), Indian and Arabic cultures dominated their domestic lifestyle, and Chinese culture could only be seen in some residual customs. Acknowledging the division among migrants and their descendants and the multiple layers of each community, He advocated for their unity based on the Chinese identity, with better education about Chinese culture and better economic restructuring through collectivism and scientific knowledge.Footnote ⁸⁵

The strongest voice for migrants’ localization came from Li Xiawen (李侠文, 1914–2010), editor of the influential Da Kung Pao (大公报) and its long-time leader until the 1990s. In 1947, he pointed out that the post-war situation represented an unprecedented crisis for huaqiao: there was no immediate economic prosperity; colonial governments, fearing China’s revival, refused to acknowledge Chinese migrants’ peaceful coexistence with the local population; and rising national consciousness among the natives, shaped by their suffering under colonialism and colonial propaganda, led to widespread misperceptions of the Chinese. China’s prosperity and respectable international status would be important in addressing these challenges. Chinese migrants and the younger generations also needed to engage deeply with the local society, participate in various local activities, and collaborate with each other with the same goal and interest. Inter-marriage should be encouraged, along with cultural and economic interactions. As a result, huaqiao and the locals would view each other as the same and, with roots planted in the Nanyang, huaqiao would not suffer too much no matter how the natives’ status might change in the future.Footnote ⁸⁶ As Li argued, with the historical changes and the unprecedented crisis huaqiao faced, it was necessary to reform both China’s policies and huaqiao’s businesses, and ‘the principle is for huaqiao to naturally mix with the natives to become one entity rather than an isolated group. Then huaqiao will have an ineliminable foothold in the future of the Nanyang.’Footnote ⁸⁷

Perhaps the most salient sign, and proof, of the growing interest in decolonization and localization was the changing location of the centre of Nanyang studies. The Japanese invasion and the exile of Chinese intellectuals led to the centre shifting to the Nanyang itself. With the founding of the China South Seas Society (Zhongguo Nanyang xuehui 中国南洋学会) in Singapore in 1940, the ‘umbilical cord’ with China became de-emphasized and the regional and hybrid identity was strengthened.Footnote ⁸⁸ Among the founding members were several established scholars who had written for NYYJ in the past, such as Liu Shimu, Li Changfu, Zhang Liqian, Xu Yunqiao (许云樵, 1905–1981), and Yao Nan. The Society further changed its name in 1958 to the South Seas Society to include the participation of different ethnic groups.Footnote ⁸⁹ As Xu Yunqiao, director of the Institute of Southeast Asia at the recently founded Nanyang University, reflected in 1959, the creation of the Society in 1940 represented a new stage of Nanyang studies when the local Chinese were ‘no longer an object for others to study’ but researchers themselves. The base of research, having shifted from China to the Nanyang, called for more original and collaborative research with ‘source materials’ and with more attention given to ‘Southeast Asia as a whole’.Footnote ⁹⁰

Critiquing Western/Japanese discourses and seeking a Chinese narrative

While the previous sections examined the evolvement of Chinese intellectuals’ views, this section further elaborates on the central ‘colonial question’ by focusing on their critiques of Western and Japanese colonial discourses and their efforts to create their own narratives, including the Marxist turn, which offered a fresh and critical framework to redefine the history of the Nanyang and the Chinese communities there. The best example was Li Changfu, whose intellectual journey spanned all three periods discussed above and helped illustrate both the inherent continuity and the profound transformation of Chinese intellectuals’ perspectives.

Both DFZZ and NYYJ included many studies translated from Western and Japanese sources, and Chinese intellectuals were keenly aware of the influence of the underlying colonial discourse. As highlighted in an article in the very first issue of NYYJ in 1928,

To counter the ‘evil desire’ of colonialism, NYYJ was cautious in publishing translated references and often added comments to ‘avoid reproducing errors’.Footnote ⁹² Japanese studies of Chinese migration were introduced to highlight the vitality of the yellow race, the discrimination against Asian migrants, as well as the threat Japan’s increasing aggression posed to China and Chinese migrants. In the special issue of NYYJ in 1929 on world migration, as mentioned earlier, several articles from Japanese publications were translated and republished. One was from the travelogue by Inoue Masaji, a German-educated businessman and politician and founder of the Nanyo Kyokai. Inoue argued that white nations should give up exclusionary policies and ‘Japan as the higher race among the coloured people has the mission to lead the movement against discriminatory racial and migration policies’.Footnote ⁹³ The translation represented the editor’s ambiguous position of being both sympathetic to Inoue’s analysis of Western racism and concerned about Japan’s self-assumed role as the superior race and leader in Asia. Right after this article there was another piece on Japan’s ‘Southern Advancement Doctrine’ translated by Liu Shimu, who added direct comments on the need to keep informed of Japan’s activities in the Nanyang.Footnote ⁹⁴

Western studies were also introduced by Chinese scholars to highlight Western colonialism, clarify the difference of Chinese migration, and present their own perspectives on race, migration, and localization. In 1929, the German geographer Heinrich Schmitthenner published his article on the geographic patterns of Chinese colonization, describing three different types of colonies: fern-order tranozennische Kolonien (overseas colony, the best-known type of colonization); Kontinentale Anwachsungs-Kolonien (continental growth colony, such as China’s expansion from the north to the south and Russia’s expansion to Siberia and southeastern and northeastern Europe); and die Seegemeinschatfts kolonien von thalassischem charakter (maritime community colony, such as Chinese migration to the Nanyang). It was translated in 1930 in DFZZ by Zhu Xie (朱偰, 1907–1968) who was then pursuing his doctorate in economics in Germany. In his comments on the article, Zhu underscored Schmittenner’s argument that, while China did not possess overseas colonies in terms of politics and international law, it had the other two types of colonies. Welcoming this geographical and world perspective of Chinese migration—a perspective that echoed Chinese intellectuals’ efforts to both differentiate China from colonial powers and highlight the vitality of Chinese migrants—Zhu called for greater public and scholarly attention to this topic.Footnote ⁹⁵

In 1928, NYYJ published excerpts from a book by Ellsworth Huntington, a Yale professor who argued that the rise and fall of all nations and cultures were shaped by climate.Footnote ⁹⁶ Chen Zongshan, who reviewed and commented on this translated article, applied the theory to the Chinese in the Nanyang. Even ‘the whites with the highest civilization could fall prey’ to the tropical climate, he suggested, so it was no wonder some Chinese in the Nanyang would ‘assimilate into the local culture, forget their root’, and become less successful than the recent migrants who had not assimilated or downgraded their own culture.Footnote ⁹⁷ While endorsing the racial and cultural hierarchy to warn Chinese migrants against local assimilation, Chen was sarcastic about the deceitful image of benevolent white colonizers allowing Chinese migrants to develop in the local society. The truth was that these white colonizers could not tolerate the Nanyang climate and had already claimed the best land for their exclusive use. Chen also criticized Huntington’s argument that Europeans changed their temperament because of living in the tropical areas. The cause was not the climate but unequal status, as the Europeans dominated and enslaved the natives and would not follow the law or moral principles. Under unequal conditions, ‘the weak lost their human rights while the strong lost their morality’.Footnote ⁹⁸

Another sharp critique of Western colonialism and racism is found in the essay Li Changfu wrote for NYYJ in 1939. Focusing the essay’s last section on the so-called ‘physical endurance’ of the Chinese, Li reviewed the theories of foreign intellectuals (such as German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen, American geographer Ellen Semple, and Japanese journalist Inoue Kiyoshi) and embraced by some Chinese scholars. According to Li, such theories, especially the two main ones about Chinese migrants’ physical strength in all climates and their capacity for acclimatization, had two weaknesses. One was their lumping together all the Chinese in one group and missing the internal differences. Second, they missed the factors other than physical capabilities. These theories would lead people to view the Chinese as capable of bearing all harsh conditions and serving as ‘coolies’, thus justifying the fear of the ‘yellow peril’ and the exclusion of the Chinese.Footnote ⁹⁹

In the essay, Li also discussed some fundamental questions in the study of huaqiao, particularly how to define them and what caused their migration. It is worth pausing here and looking into Li’s life and career as a case study of Chinese intellectuals’ nuanced and evolving perspectives on migration. As noted earlier, Li was one of the pioneering scholars on Chinese migration and, more generally, on Nanyang studies and historical geography, with 40 authored or translated books, over 100 academic articles, and 20 published maps. Born to a declining merchant family in Jiangsu, he was educated in both Chinese classics and modern sciences (particularly geography and agriculture). He learned both English and Japanese and studied twice in Japan (1929–1931 and 1935–1936). While teaching historical geography in 1924 at a middle school, he read Liang Qichao’s biographies of great Chinese colonizers and Harley MacNair’s The Chinese Abroad and developed an intense interest in huaqiao and Nanyang studies.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ He worked as an editor at the Bureau at Jida in 1928 before going to Japan. He returned to Shanghai in 1931, worked at a geographical society, and lectured at Jida before leaving for Japan again. He spent three months in the Nanyang in 1937 collecting research materials, and he joined Jida in Shanghai in 1938 when it was sheltered in the international settlement after Japan took over the city. He visited Taiwan after the Second World War and taught there from 1946 to 1947. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, he taught at the Geography Department at Henan University until his death in 1966.Footnote ¹⁰¹ His life and career reflected both the continuities and the changes Chinese intellectuals experienced in the twentieth century, such as his immersion in Chinese classics as well as foreign languages and modern sciences, and his research on Chinese migration, which was both influenced by Liang and McNair and explored new frameworks well into the communist era.

Li started publishing his research in 1922 and adopted the term zhimin in his early publications, apparently influenced by Liang’s ‘migration-as-colonization’ framework. He argued that Chinese colonization was one without assertions (wu zhuzhang zhi zhimin 无主张之殖民): it aimed to satisfy the government’s superficial glorification, rather than seek permanent settlement or official incorporation. People migrated to avoid persecution or pursue economic interest, rather than with the intent to colonize or with the support of the state.Footnote ¹⁰² In a major publication in 1927 titled Huaqiao, he furthered this argument that typical colonization entailed intellectuals’ promotion and the state’s backing and that, in contrast, huaqiao migrated on their own and defied all kinds of obstacles to go abroad. Their names, languages, and customs still followed the Chinese way, regardless of their nationality, and those born abroad, even if they assimilated into the host society, were forever viewed as a different race and stereotyped as the ‘yellow peril’.Footnote ¹⁰³ Similar to many other scholars at this time, Li understood the fate of huaqiao to be inextricably tied to that of the homeland, the ‘mutual constitution between nation and emigration’ as Chan describes in her study.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

Another book Li published in 1937, Zhongguo zhiminshi (中国殖民史), summarized his research on huaqiao and represented a major development in his historical perspective and research framework. He traced the Latin origin of the word ‘colonization’, which is based on colo (‘to cultivate the ground or farm’). Accordingly, people migrating to and settling in other places for agricultural purposes would be called ‘colonia’. Li cited various Western definitions of colonization and concluded that a proper definition of colonists, based on those of G. C. Lowis and O. Kobner, would be ‘a group of people from a nation or an ethnic community, who move out of their hometown to a new place to participate in social and economic activities and, moreover, to engage themselves in the development of a new society in the new natural and social environment’.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Politically, a colony referred to a dependency such as India under the British rule; however, in social and economic realities, colonies also included the territories where people migrated and settled, either within a country (such as Hokkaido in Japan) or outside a country (such as the Nanyang for Chinese migrants).Footnote ¹⁰⁶

While these were the general definitions of colonization, Li cautioned, they should be revised if applied to China. First, so-called ‘domestic colonization’ did not fit China, as one should view the Chinese people as one holistic unit.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ ‘The migration of the Han ethnic group to Mongolia and the three Northeast provinces was of the same nature as the Hakkas in the central plains moving to the south of the Qinling mountains’, and it could only be called ‘domestic migration rather than domestic colonization’.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Similarly, ‘relocating people from crowded places to sparsely populated provinces along the borders can only be called moving people to populate the borderlands (移民实边)’.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Second, the so-called Chinese colonization abroad was in fact migration, as China had no political colonies in the modern era. The past tribute system was in essence a form of international trade, and the relationship was economic rather than political. His book’s title, Li noted, could also be the history of Chinese migration and colonization (yizhimin shi 移殖民史).Footnote ¹¹⁰ In this sense, Li’s adoption of the term zhimin was more strategic than substantial, as he was adopting a popular phrase both to place Chinese migration in the world context of colonization and to highlight China’s difference from the colonial powers.

In this book, Li also adopted the Marxist approach.Footnote ¹¹¹ He described the three phases of historical research: mythical history (Erahlende Gaechichte), didactic history (Lehrhafte Geschichte), and genetic history (Gentische Geschichte). He adopted the last one as the scientific approach, placing the economy as the basis and culture and politics as the superstructure.Footnote ¹¹² There were non-economic causes for migration and colonization, such as fleeing political persecution, spreading religion, or expanding political and military influence, but the economic factor was the main reason.Footnote ¹¹³ Li stressed the need to avoid applying the generalized patterns of colonization to China. For example, colonization due to religious persecution or proselytization did not exist in China.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Even for the economic factor, its origin and performance in China were distinct from those of the colonial powers: the main cause of the world powers’ colonization was ‘the development of capitalism’, while the rise of China’s modern colonization (more specifically, the migration of Chinese workers either voluntarily or by force) was ‘the response to that development’.Footnote ¹¹⁵

These views were again carefully laid out in the aforementioned article Li wrote for NYYJ in 1939, in which he reiterated that the migration of huaqiao was caused by the labour demands of global capitalism and the agricultural crisis in China. They were the first and the second primary reasons, supplemented by other factors such as geographic proximity and modern transportation. Li cited detailed statistics and reports to show that surplus population was not a real factor and that the emphasis on migrants’ unique adventurous spirit and weak ancestral ties was subjective rather than factually or historically based.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Li also opposed defining huaqiao based on either blood or nationality. He argued that the nationality criteria suggested by legal scholars such as Qiu Hanping (丘汉平, 1904–1990) did not really work considering the long-standing dilemma caused by dual nationality: those with Chinese nationality could still be claimed by another nation and could circumvent Chinese laws through extraterritoriality. ‘We should focus not on symbolic Chineseness—nationality—but on essential Chineseness’, which was ‘the Chinese nation’ (中国民族).Footnote ¹¹⁷ For Li, a nation was different from a race, and it was ‘a historical and social concept’ and can be described as a ‘historical race’ (历史的人种).Footnote ¹¹⁸ Li cited Stalin’s discussion of the formation of a nation based on common language, territory, and economic and cultural life that led to ‘national feeling’ (民族感情) and ‘national consciousness’ (民族意识), and he also referred to Sun Yat-sen’s call for uniting the different nationalities within the Chinese territory to form a modern Chinese nation, a mission not yet completed.Footnote ¹¹⁹

Li’s definition of Chineseness was intriguing as it was not totally abstract or absolute but historical and flexible. It could be long-lasting but also dependent on the local context. He differentiated Western colonies such as British Malaya from independent states such as Thailand: the local-born Chinese in the latter were better assimilated and accepted into the native community, and they might retain their Chinese kinship but not a Chinese national consciousness. The United States was also an independent state, but it resembled the colonies as the Chinese there were ostracized and thus became a distinct national group.Footnote ¹²⁰ While assimilated Chinese might lose their Chineseness, Li suggested that Chinese identity could also be inherited and retained even if a migrant and his children abroad ‘had nothing to do with the politics in the ancestral land’ and ‘had lost all contacts with Chinese society’. If he still felt like ‘I am a Chinese, I am a Tangren (唐人)’, that was ‘the sign of the national consciousness’ and should be used to determine who were huaqiao.Footnote ¹²¹ As Li concluded, huaqiao were those ‘who migrate and live in a foreign territory and engage in economic activities’ (thus excluding those staying abroad temporarily without substantial socioeconomic involvement, such as students and diplomats) and their descendants ‘who have not lost their Chinese national consciousness’.Footnote ¹²² It is an interesting combination of the historical-materialist approach—with attention to economic life and historical development—and the emphasis on ‘national consciousness’ which could still be subjective (how one felt could be hard to define) and tends to essentialize the Chinese nation (even though Li defined it as historically formed).

Li explicated his perspectives in another long article he published in a later issue of NYYJ in 1939.Footnote ¹²³ What was most remarkable in this article was his critique of the conventional periodization, even including his own book published two years prior, Zhongguo zhiminshi, that described Chinese migration based on the shifting political power in the Nanyang. According to Li, these previous approaches were problematic as they either focused on China’s policies on migrants instead of the history of migration itself, or mixed politics with the economy without a coherent periodization framework. A more accurate approach, Li argued, and directly referred to Marx and Engels’s The German Ideology, should be the economically based historical framework, with politics and law (überbau) and philosophical, religious, and scientific ideas (ideologie) resulting from and shaped by the economic structure (basis). While Li had adopted the Marxist framework earlier, here he applied it at a deeper level. He was not merely highlighting the primary economic reasons for migration but instead radically reframed Chinese migration and Nanyang history. He proposed that they should no longer be viewed through the lens of political dominance by either China or the West, but rather be centred on the Nanyang itself and on the historical-materialist processes of migration.

As he observed, some earlier periodization frameworks, even those focused on economic factors, were unsatisfactory because they were grounded not in ‘the history of Nanyang itself’ (南洋史的本体) but rather in its being part of the East–West transportation and communication history. In comparison, he proposed ‘using Nanyang history and world history as the starting point’ to analyse the historical stages of Chinese migration.Footnote ¹²⁴ In this new framework, the Nanyang should not be described in terms of its engagement with other regions but be defined through its own historical trajectory: from primitive communism and slave society (third century bce to sixth century ce), to feudal society (seventh to fifteenth century), and finally to a colony of European capitalism, encompassing early capitalist development (sixteenth to eighteenth century) and subsequent imperialism (nineteenth century onwards). Accordingly, the history of the Chinese abroad could be divided into four stages: seasonal migration from China; transition to settlement in the Nanyang; clash with European colonizers and irregular development in local society; and, finally, distinctive growth as part of the global labour supply in late capitalism. The first two stages should be understood in the contexts of the Nanyang’s own history and Chinese history; in fact, India exerted deeper cultural and social influences than China in the region during the earliest period. The last two stages ‘belonged to world history’.Footnote ¹²⁵ While inheriting some limitations of the classical Marxist framework (such as the linear model of history), Li studied the Nanyang on its own terms and placed the Nanyang, China, Chinese migration, and European colonialism all as parts of world history.

This new perspective was dramatically different from those of previous Chinese intellectuals, including the reformers in the Self-Strengthening Movement who framed migrants in the China-centred world and Liang Qichao who touted colonization as the symbol of China’s racial and national competitiveness. Li firmly placed migration and the Nanyang within the historical-materialist framework and, armed with this new critical approach, tried to transcend both the Western-based colonial model and the China-centred national model to build a world-historical model. This was particularly important as it revealed the many potentials of the critical Marxist approach that have often been lost after Marxism became the exclusive state ideology. Li’s adoption of the Marxist approach was long before the Chinese Communist Party’s rise to power. It reflected the broader leftist turn of Chinese intellectuals in the 1930s, along with the various ‘visions of socialisms’.Footnote ¹²⁶ Unfortunately, with the ‘reconstruction of a political centre’ becoming the ‘overriding concern’ for Chinese intellectuals during the national crises, critical approaches and pluralistic visions would be subdued by political nationalism, with intellectuals themselves relegated ‘to the background’ while the Chinese Communist Party became ‘not only the embodiment of socialist truth but also the bearer of the correct method for its eventual realization’.Footnote ¹²⁷ Li and other Chinese intellectuals’ adoption of the Marxist approach in the early decades of the twentieth century to study the Nanyang in its own right in the world-historical rather than national context, however, testified to the rich and multilayered legacies of the Chinese revolution that scholars have endeavoured to recover and reclaim.Footnote ¹²⁸

Li continued his research after the Chinese communist revolution in 1949, though mainly on historical geography rather than on Chinese in Southeast Asia, reflecting both his shifting research interests and the increasingly tumultuous political environment in China.Footnote ¹²⁹ His pioneering scholarship has remained relevant and influential.Footnote ¹³⁰ His discussions of Chinese migration as related to but distinct from colonialism, along with other Chinese intellectuals’ similar arguments at that time, preceded and illuminated the current historiographic debate on whether Chinese history can be interpreted in colonial and imperialist terms, a debate stimulated by the New Qing History. In their critical reviews of the debate, Julia Schneider, Leigh Jenco, and Jonathan Chappell delineate the different arguments and approaches, including the two trajectories of calling the Qing colonial: one compares China with Western colonial empires based on a pre-post-colonial definition of colonialism, and the other approaches colonialism in its post-colonial meaning to highlight the status of Indigenous peoples and Taiwan today. While paying attention to China’s empire building and colonial projects, they suggest, scholars need to continue guarding against the ‘normative power’ of Western paradigms and concepts such as colonialism and imperialism centred on the dominance of Western nations and global capitalism. Scholars need to study the patterns and nuances of non-Western histories in their own right.Footnote ¹³¹

In this sense, the discussions of Chinese intellectuals such as Li on migration and colonialism showed their active engagement with and critique of Western colonialism as a historical process as well as a normative discourse. It was their pursuit of a Chinese narrative—a dialogue with, rather than an acceptance or dismissal of, Western discourse. Faced with an existential crisis under Western and Japanese imperialism, Chinese intellectuals both praised and problematized the colonial model and Western modernity, a paradox not uncommon in modern Chinese history. In his seminal study of the rise of modern Chinese thought, Wang Hui describes the contradictory perspectives upheld by reformers and revolutionaries (such as Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Sun Yat-sen, and Mao Zedong), who both ‘embraced and resisted historical changes’ and both ‘pursued modernity’ and critiqued ‘capitalism and its political forms’.Footnote ¹³²

In this context, the conceptualization of Chinese migration and nation by Li Changfu and other Chinese intellectuals reflected the Chinese experience and helped formulate a Chinese narrative. Li’s emphasis on historically formed and unified Chineseness represented the rooted and renewed idea among Chinese intellectuals about retaining China’s sovereignty and unity by drawing on the pluralistic and universal traditions of empire in contrast with the particularistic nature of modern nation-states that emphasized the homogeneity of the imagined national community. It challenged the Western binary between empire (pre-modern and un-modern) and nation-state (modern, enlightened, and independent). Kang Youwei, the prominent late Qing reformer, applied Confucian universalism to the modern world based on the natural law and refused to use the nation-state concept to define Chineseness: ‘China is a whole achieving its uniformity through historical evolution’, and ‘changes and varieties rather than a single origin or group constitute the essence of China’.Footnote ¹³³ Li Changfu’s definition of Chineseness much resembled Kang’s and illustrated Chinese intellectuals’ persistent consciousness and creativity in drawing on China’s own history to define Chinese identity. With the changes in his own time, Li replaced Kang’s Confucian universalism with Marxist universalism, utilizing the historical-materialistic framework to understand Chinese migration and the Nanyang in the world context, a radical step to dislodge both China and the West from the centre of Nanyang and migration histories.

The resonance of Li and other Chinese intellectuals’ discussions about migration with the larger historiographic debate on China also shows that the study of Chinese migration and the study of modern Chinese history are integrally intertwined. Chinese migration is not just part of the ‘same social-historical process’ of modern Chinese history.Footnote ¹³⁴ It is modern Chinese history.Footnote ¹³⁵ The key questions addressed by migration scholars are essentially the same as those investigated by historians of modern China. Bridging the gap between these two fields is not just about reading the same sources or examining the same historical context but about redefining China and reconceptualizing history, methodologically and epistemologically.

A critical component of bridging the gap, as evidenced by this study and emphasized by scholars such as Wang, Jenco, Chappell, and Schneider, is the recognition and inclusion of Chinese scholars’ perspectives, both in the past and at present. In a recent thought-provoking forum on ‘decolonizing Chinese history’, historian Taomo Zhou keenly observes that scholars should question China’s hegemonic narrative and essentialist approach to history, on the one hand, and be careful not to create another binary between authoritarian China and the liberal and democratic West or between the oppressive centre of mainland China and the progressive peripheries such as Hong Kong and Taiwan, on the other hand. It is a ‘false’ and dangerous dichotomy, especially considering the increasing tensions between China and the West. China’s policies on migrants have not been linear, and we need to understand mainland China ‘less as a static, enclosed society and more as an elastic, evolving social space’.Footnote ¹³⁶ We also need to bring in the perspectives of Chinese scholars (particularly those in the mainland), ‘a critical step towards further pluralizing Chineseness and the most tactical act of counter-hegemonic resistance’.Footnote ¹³⁷