Editors' Note

Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Chinese Overseas. The study of Chinese overseas has been growing in importance since World War II. With Chinese in almost all the countries in the world, their presence as well as their global networks and contribution to local societies have been the focus of interest of scholars, politicians, business people, and lay people. To date there are scholars and students of Chinese overseas all over the world. Their writings are mainly published in books and a diverse range of journals in social studies. However, there is not one internationally-refereed journal that is professionally devoted to the study of Chinese overseas. JCO aims to fill this gap by providing an interdisciplinary forum for the promotion of research and writing on Chinese overseas.

There are many terms for ethnic Chinese of different nationalities living outside mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. We have decided to use the now popular and hopefully not so controversial term "Chinese overseas" as the equivalent of haiwai huaren in Chinese. We are aware of the politics of labels, and in this journal, we allow authors to use their preferred term as long as it is consistent within an article, and is academically sound. For example, "overseas Chinese" may be used to emphasize the historical perspective, and in some contexts, reads better in English than "Chinese overseas." In yet other contexts it may be convenient to use the term "Chinese diaspora" when the global space is emphasized. We support the liberal choice of a convenient term, provided one is aware of the political implications of the various labels.

There are five articles, two reports and five book reviews in this inaugural issue. The five research articles show the importance of using the transnational perspective to study Chinese overseas and that the study of China too can benefit from studying Chinese overseas. Prof. Wang Gungwu provides us with a perceptive discussion of Chinese writers in Southeast Asia and North America. Of particular interest is his analysis of ethnic Chinese writers having different selves in relation to his/her fellow Chinese community, and in relation to other ethnic groups in the country. These writers have their different images of China, too. Having to deal with the local-national and impacted by the process of globalization, ethnic Chinese writers are very much concerned with identities. Prof. Wang suggests using the Chinese categorization of nei (within) and wai (without) to better understand how overseas Chinese writers adjust to the "criss-crossing circles." In the next article, Elizabeth Sinn analyzes the place of Hong Kong in her discussion of the Chinese diaspora as a transnational space of consumption in "Preparing Opium for America." She gives a detailed description of Hong Kong as the chief supplier of prepared opium, especially for the Chinese in the United States. Michael Szonyi's "Mothers, Sons and Lovers" describes the complexity of the overseas Chinese divided family before 1949. In contrast to the usual image of passive women left behind in China by emigrants, Szonyi draws our attention to the roles played by wives and other relatives in managing investments in China. Emigration created both opportunities and suffering for women left behind in China. Szonyi points out that migration as a strategy to raise the economic well-being of the family in China was risky as family members, including wives, might betray the sojourner's trust, not just on investments but also on matters sexual. Glen Peterson's "Overseas Chinese and Merchant Philanthropy in China" shows the significance of the transnational perspective in helping to understand merchant philanthropy in China, such as in Guangzhou, where the phenomenon can be better understood by considering both the merchants in China and Chinese merchants overseas. Homeland philanthropy was embraced by merchants in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, and Peterson argues that the ideology behind this shifted from "Confucian culturalism" to modern nationalism. The article by Sun Wanning looks at media and the Chinese diaspora. She demonstrates "how the processes of media production, representation and consumption are integral to the formation of a Chinese diasporic imagination," and argues...