Editorial Note

This issue begins with Philip Kuhn's discussion of the "deep interconnection between modern Chinese history and the history of Chinese emigration." He argues that the two are aspects of the same social-historical process and presents his views on Chinese emigration into the wider world both comprehensively and concisely. He points out that Chinese migration can more fruitfully be seen in the context of market relationships in which families responded to various kinds of opportunity to make a living. This is still true in the present more globalized and transnational era.

Philip Yang's discussion of transnationalism as a mode of immigrant adaptation shows how Chinese who migrated to USA live a transnational life, moving back and forth between USA and China to do business in China, USA or in both places. The expanding Chinese economy provides opportunity for a new kind of adaptation, and allows migrants to be engaged in what Yang calls "immigrant transnationalism." Based on unstructured interviews of Chinese transnational migrants in USA and China, Yang provides examples of how a transnational mode of incorporation provides entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial migrants with business and career opportunities. The article shows the dynamic and transnational nature of the "corridor" — to use Kuhn's term — between USA and China.

Jia Gao's description of the Chinese in Australia shows how the PRC migrants live between two worlds. They try to remain relevant to both Australia and China and live as transnationals, and identify themselves with their original culture and their adopted culture. This "strategic identity formation" enables the migrants to escape marginalization at both ends of the corridor. While working hard to establish themselves in Australia, the Chinese have the mass media and information technology to help link them with China and satisfy their psychological needs. It is the Chinese side of their transnational world that makes them feel that they have achieved something and gives them "a sense of self-respect and respect from others." Gao's description illustrates a special way by which, as pointed out by Kuhn, a "migrant community" is a bilateral organism.

The article by Steven Miles describes migration in the West River Basin in Guangdong. It highlights Kuhn's contention that internal and external migrations were aspects of the same adaptive processes. Arguing that the West River trajectory was "an important component of the larger Cantonese diaspora," Miles shows a migration trajectory up the West River and into inland northern Vietnam and a maritime trajectory along coastal Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia. He shows that the genealogies traced to the West River are useful for the study of Cantonese overseas migration, as shown in the case of the one compiled by a Kuala Lumpur-based Chinese businessman.

Jing Tsu's article brings us to another kind of research, studying Chinese literature to analyze nationalistic and literary discourse in early 20th-century China. Some writers of the period, for example, hailed Chinese laborers in America and elsewhere as heroes. This representation was reinforced by literary and fictional writing that yearned for a strong China and the domination of Chinese over other "races." "The diasporic frontier," writes Tsu, "constituted a flexible threshold in the nationalistic vision, according to which the Chinese diaspora was not a physical dispersion but a greater national allegiance emerging from all corners of the globe."

The fifth article by Wen-Chin Chang describes the trading culture of jade stones among the Yunnanese in Burma and Thailand. Unlike the usual emphasis on trust in Chinese entrepreneurship, Chang shows the distrust and tension in the organization of the trade in jade stone from Burma to Thailand. Chang's informants often talked of distrust and told her their stories of betrayal. She describes the jade trade as characterized by "the intensification and easing of political strains." The article contributes to our understanding of entrepreneurship in a difficult geographical and political terrain.

In addition to the articles and five book reviews, we also have a timely report on...