BOOK REVIEWS

The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas, by Lynn Pan (ed.)

This illustrated encyclopedia is an ambitious but comprehensive work about the overseas Chinese. It was arranged by Lynn Pan, founder and co-ordinator of the Chinese Heritage Centre in Singapore, and is the Centre’s most important publication to date. The project’s main sponsors are rich businessmen of Chinese origin such as Li Ka-shing, Liem Sioe Liong and Wee Cho Yam. The contributors, of which there are around 50, are researchers from all over the world, which shows how geographically dispersed the Chinese communities now are. It is perhaps notable, therefore, that only one mainland Chinese researcher participated in the book.

Suitable for specialists and non-specialists alike, this book takes shape around five main topics: origins, migration, organisations, relations with China and relations with overseas Chinese communities. These communities comprise no less than 30 million people: 88% living in Asia, 8% in the Americas, 2.7% in Europe, and 1.3% in Oceania and in countries in the Indian Ocean (1). Thirty-five of these countries are described in this book.

It is a vast topic, yet the book stresses a unifying element: “the Chinese identity”. A typological diagram is even provided in the introduction. This identity is presented as being multiple and shifting depending on the interactions between groups and individuals, and is defined in several of the chapters based on “ethnic boundaries”, a concept that is currently fashionable in anthropological circles. The statement made by the famous Indonesian businessman, Liem Sioe Lim, is understandable only if this notion of “boundaries” is introduced:

I have 225,000 employees, only a small number of whom are Chinese. I am proud to be an Indonesian and I love my country.

Within this very specific context the “boundaries” are the constraints that this businessman of Chinese origin has to accept in order to ensure his integration into local society. It is currently true that the Indonesian Chinese are not allowed to work in the public sector. Indeed, any Chinese in this country who was to make a point of his ethnic identity would only accentuate the native Indonesian (Pribumi) discrimination towards his community.

Another way of exploring “the Chinese identity” is to use as a marker the loyalty of the overseas Chinese to their home town or village (qiaoxiang). In a piece entitled “A hypothetical dialogue on overseas Chinese commercial networks”, the subject is discussed through a dialogue between two imaginary speakers. One claims the existence of a Chinese capitalism that has its roots in a Confucian model organised around a rigid central family structure. The other is not at all convinced that the overseas Chinese invest in their ancestors' homelands, seeing more the character that offers incentives on a fiscal and legislative level as in the special economic zones in the People’s Republic of China. The latter speaker would also consider that over-stressing the cohesion of the overseas Chinese communities would only serve to exacerbate the inter-community tensions in their countries of residence, especially if in an economic crisis.

The section entitled “The Communities”, which accounts for no less than half of the volume, also illustrates this debate. It becomes very clear that a single model cannot be used as the sole basis to analyse a population that is constantly changing. Far from being closed and homogeneous, the “community” comes across rather as united by description and as a conceptual tool. In this respect it is regrettable that the book has proceeded to adopt a national bias in its approach to the overseas Chinese communities regardless of the methodological precautions stated early on (p. 70 and p. 137). In fact, the Chinese in Europe constitute more a transnational community than a group of separate national communities.

By the same token, it is also regrettable that the transnational angle makes no further appearance in the research on the qiaoxiang. The section that was dedicated to this in fact describes cultural characteristics in terms of regional origins without establishing any links between the qiaoxiang and the host country: in other words, no explanation is given for why a Chinese from a given village or region would emigrate to one country rather than to another.

This encyclopedia remains, however, very attractive thanks to its biographical information, its coverage of subjects in general, and its illustrations. It also addresses completely new subjects. Marlowe Hood, a Franco-American journalist, gained access to the legal files of illegal immigrants from Fujian province now living in the United States. He describes the “invisible” migration networks and the quasi-institutionalised system of corruption within local Chinese government. Another example is Paul Bailey, professor of history at the University of Edinburgh, who exposes the too little known situation of the 150,000 Chinese workers who came to France during the First World War. We learn that in the mid-1920s the General Association of Chinese Workers demanded damages from the French government for having refused them all entry. Yet as other work by Live Yu-Sion (2), contributor for the section from France, shows the authorities were not as unpleasant as Bailey would have us believe as they financed the construction of a Chinese cemetery at Noyelles (in the Somme).

This encyclopedia’s other great value is in its having managed to bring together so many different approaches, researchers and journalists and having been able to address all the issues so thoroughly without always looking for answers. And it is because this volume offers a flexible and dynamic definition of the Chinese identity that it constitutes from beginning to end a rich reflection on the question of otherness.

Translated from French original by Tina Frow