This handbook showcases the international and multi-disciplinary scholarship on the Chinese diaspora, which has made notable progress in the last 20 years. Unlike an encyclopaedia that offers general introduction of all possible topics or an edited volume of essays that coheres around one or two principal themes, the collection is intended to capture current scholarship by providing “in-depth description and analysis of selected topics that have been significantly studied” (p. 1). The contributors include recognized authorities already familiar to the readers of The China Quarterly as well as local experts hailing from all five continents. A total of 29 essays are delivered under the following sections: 1. population and distribution; 2. Mainland China and Taiwan's policies on the Chinese overseas; 3. migration: past and present; 4. economic and political involvement; 5. localization, transnational networks and identity; 6. education, literature, and media. The essays assembled are indicative of the scope and diversity of scholarly interests. As the editor readily admits, the above division is a matter of convenience. Organizational symmetry is not part of the design (for instance, there is just one essay under population distribution but ten on migration); nor is there any attempt to synthesize the findings presented in the individual essays.
The handbook is appropriately global in scope, showing the considerable expansion of the field of study beyond its longstanding concentration on the Chinese overseas in Southeast Asia and North America. Latin America and the Caribbean are capably represented by Evelyn Hu-Dehart's nuanced historical analysis of three disparate locales spanning five centuries and a pair of essays filled with ethnographic data on recent developments in Jamaica (Yoshiko Shibata) and Peru (Isabelle Lausent-Herrera). Both Europe and Africa receive a fair amount of attention, fittingly, as the Chinese diaspora's latest frontiers. Li Minghuan's survey of Chinese migratory activities across Europe at the beginning of the 21st century and Christiansen's focused discussion on the modes of Chinese participation in the European economies are instructive. The essay on the Chinese in the Russian Federation since 1991 (Alexander G. Larin) deserves notice as it offers English readers access to a body of research contained in the Russian language. As for Africa, the handbook features two foremost experts from China and South Africa: Li Anshan's succinct discussion on the PRC's African policy and the immigrant Chinese in the continent and a longitudinal treatment on South Africa by Karen Harris.
Readers eager to learn about North America will not be disappointed by its cluster of chapters. Yu, in particular, makes a bold enunciation of the “Cantonese Pacific” as a “singular historical process” driven by the enduring geographic imaginary of the “Gold Mountain”; this organizing concept has the potential to inspire some rethinking of the trans-Pacific migration by the Chinese since the mid-19th century. This is no armchair theorizing as Yu mentions exciting projects in retrieving relevant historical sources in Canada, such as the Chinese head tax database at the University of British Columbia. The four essays on the United States furnish the most extensive coverage on a single country in this handbook. The discussion on settlement patterns (Philip Yang), marriage and gender roles (Huping Ling), globalization and localization (Bernard Wong), and Chinese American literature (Wenying Xu) are welcome contributions, even though the repetitive content on immigration trends and past discriminatory government policies can be a distraction. In comparison, the uneven coverage on Southeast Asia is a surprise given the strength of existing scholarship. The regional approach taken by the majority of the essays is fine, but if any Southeast Asian country merits more coverage in the handbook in order to present a balanced picture, it would be Vietnam as well as Myanmar. Moreover, the two essays on the communist movements and Chinese education are disappointing because of their rudimentary treatment of the subject matter.
The one issue that comes closest to being a common thread for the volume is China's current rise and its impact on the global Chinese. Zhuang Guotu's discussion on Chinese government policies toward the Chinese overseas notes a reactivation since the 1980s. China's interest has been aroused, in part because of the great wealth in the diaspora that could be aligned with the country's renewed commitment for growth, and in part because of the new wave of emigration that has ushered in the heightened transnational mobility in the present era. In commentaries touching almost all parts of the world, one author after another are struck by the transformative impact of this latest surge in Chinese migratory activities. In older communities established by earlier generations of Cantonese migrants and their local-born descendants around the Pacific Rim, including those that have seen much miscegenation with indigenes and other ethno-racial groups, the Mandarin-speaking newcomers have quickly asserted themselves. In Southeast Asia, keen observers are concerned about this latest influx coupled with a resurgent China, and how their aggregate effect might rekindle the native populations' suspicion and even animosity against the ethnic Chinese. As Wanning Sun argues pointedly in her piece, China's expansive influence in the global mediasphere has amounted to a “re-centring” of the nation among the diaspora Chinese. Indeed, for anyone interested in the importance of the “China factor” in shaping the Chinese diaspora of today and tomorrow, this handbook will be a good place to start.
