S09: Overseas Chinese

• 20+ million emigrants between 1840 and 1940
• Largest migration in Chinese history
• One stream in a larger pattern of population movement to cities and frontiers in China

• Who went abroad? Where did they go? How did they go there?
• Who were the “overseas Chinese”? What was the relationship between the diaspora and the homeland?
• How did mass migration change China?

Estimated number of Chinese students in the US

Two major waves:

• “First hundred” in 1870s and 1880s
• Boxer Indemnity Program, 1909-1929

Estimated number of Chinese students in Japan

• Sino-Japanese relationship: not just conflicts, but also cooperation, admiration, and transmission
• Japan as laboratory of reform and adapter of western lessons
• Pan-Asianism as imperial ideology: unity of the yellow race against the white race

• Japanese figures adapted Chinese cultural and literary traditions to their own experiences of liberalism and modernization.
• They created a syncretistic fusion of Eastern and Western ideas that influenced China’s approach to modernity.
• This marked the first time China recognized Japan as a viable source of linguistic and cultural practices.

中華 人民 共和國 People’s Republic of China

社會 主義 society / -ism / socialism

民主 / 自由 / 人權 democracy / freedom / human rights

文化 / 文明 / 民族 culture / civilization / nation

• Strategies for translation: combination of characters to make new words / expanding and reshaping the meaning of original Chinese words
• Source of inspiration: Modern arguments could be defined, indeed invented, in the very cultural tradition that Asian intellectuals sought to abandon.
• Mis-translations, false equivalents, and incompatibilities: e.g., German mythification of Volk = 民族 (minzoku, nation as a tribe or family) = Japanese and Chinese term for nationalism

• Social Darwinism as justification for imperialism
• Conversion to nationalism, responsible for China’s future
• Manchus seen as incompetent and racially inferior
• New avenues of activism: newspaper, protests, and political associations

• Who was Qiu Jin?
• What was her message to her fellow countrywomen?
• How did her time in Japan shape her views?

• Education as basic solution for improving status of women
• Women as contributor to public discourses and social reforms

• Women’s rights defended in terms of collective rather than individual benefit: “Better mothers, stronger nation”
• Focus on education and economic self-sufficiency, rather than gender equality, female suffrage, or political rights
• Criticizing Western imperialism while championing Pan-Asianism: Japan’s civilizing mission to lead East Asia

• Division of labor: Western supervisors, Chinese agents
• Indenture upon arrival for cost of passage
• Debt transferred from transportation to employers
• Native place associations and secret societies charged with supervision of migrants
• Networks built on kinship and native place

• Families, lineages, and villages as basic institutions for migration
• Gender imbalance: Bachelor society
• Lucrative human traffic: migration as well-integrated business
• Migrant communities institutionalized as sworn brotherhood, surname, and native place associations

• 1848-1868: 100,000+, with over 45,000 returning to China
• 1869-1882: approximately 200,000 Chinese migrants
• Of them, 12,000 built the first transcontinental railway
• Gender imbalance: Male-female ratio of 27:1 in 1890
• 70%+ settled in California, or 8% of the state population

• First int’l treaty that dealt with Chinese on equal terms, signed on July 28, 1868
• Secured the rights of Chinese to free immigration and travel within the United States and most favored nation status in trade

• Labor demands for the Transcontinental Railroad in 1862.
• American business and missionary groups viewed China as: a large market for U.S. businesses; a target for Christian missions; a “sleeping giant” needing Western influence to awaken.

• Over 200 round-ups targeting Chinese communities in 1880s
• 1880: Chinatown riots in Denver
• 1883: Forcible removal of Chinese migrants from Tacoma
• 1885: Rocky Springs Massacres

• Who was Wong Chin Foo?
• Why was he “heathen”?
• How did Wong’s time in the US shape his view of China?
• How might his essay have been received?

Sanitary Ordinance (1870):

• Required individuals to have at least 500 square feet of living space;
• Mainly enforced in Chinatown, leading to fines and imprisonment for many Chinese immigrants.
• Chinese individuals often refused to pay fines, overcrowding the city jail.

Pigtail Ordinance (1873, passed in 1876):

• Mandated that all prisoners in San Francisco have their hair cut to one inch in length.
• Ostensibly introduced to prevent lice and fleas in overcrowded jails, but specifically aimed at Chinese men, who traditionally wore their hair in long “queues.”

A Temporary Victory

• Justice Stephen ruled the Pigtail Ordinance unconstitutional and discriminatory, citing the Fourteenth Amendment.
• Ho Ah Kow won the case on July 7, 1879 and was awarded $10,000 in compensation.
• One of the few positive cases before the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

At the same time:

• Discrimination couched in the language of communal interests and public security.
• Law as an instrument for discrimination.

1882: Chinese Exclusion Act

• First law to bar immigration of a particular racial group to the US
• Chinese admission of US suspended for 10 years
• No Chinese admitted to citizenship

1888: Scott Act

• Congress extended domestic authority over immigration
• Abolished one of the exempt statuses, returning laborers
• 20,000+ Chinese holding Certificates of Return outside the United States stranded

1892: Geary Act

• Requirement to prove legal presence
• Introduction of immigration documentation and deportation systems

1904: Extension of Chinese Exclusion Act

• Exclusion law extended in perpetuity
• Triggered anti-American boycott in China

• Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco in 1871 to Chinese immigrant parents.
• He traveled to China in 1890 to visit family and was denied re-entry to the U.S. upon his return in 1895.
• The U.S. government argued that he was not a U.S. citizen due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which restricted Chinese immigration and denied citizenship to Chinese immigrants.

A landmark ruling:

• The Fourteenth Amendment grants citizenship to children born in the U.S. to all persons, regardless of race or color.
  
• The ruling was mostly race-neutral and rejected racially determined birthright citizenship (except in the case of Native Americans).

But:

• Practical implication: ruling against Wong could threaten the citizenship of children of White immigrants seen as U.S. citizens.
• Chinese individuals remained unable to become citizens due to race-based barriers until the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943.

• Trump signed an executive order on Jan 20, 2025 to prevent US-born children from gaining automatic citizenship if neither parent is a lawful permanent resident or US citizen.
• It also prohibits federal agencies from recognizing proof of citizenship for these children.

• Is “Chinese diaspora” a useful marker of identity and category of historical analysis?
• How did Chinese migration change China?