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13The history of the formation and development of the Chinese diaspora
Hovhannisyan A. Yu. Russian-Armenian University (Yerevan, Armenia) andranik.hovhannis@gmail.com
Keywords: China, the Chinese Diaspora, Huaqiao, Chinatown, overseas Chinese migrants
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andranik.hovhannis@gmail.com
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История формирования и развития китайской диаспоры
Ованнисян А. Ю.
Российско-Армянский университет (Ереван, Армения)
andranik.hovhannis@gmail.com
Аннотация: китайская диаспора - самая многочисленная этническая диаспора в мире. Процесс формирования китайской диаспоры начался более двух тысяч лет назад в результате социально-исторических факторов внутри китайского государства. В результате четырёх масштабных волн миграции за пределами Китая обосновались десятки миллионов этнических китайцев. На сегодняшний день, по самым скромным подсчётам, за пределами КНР проживают около 50 миллионов этнических китайцев. В данной статье автором исследуется история формирования китайской диаспоры, выделяются её отличительные особенности, а также, инициированный с конца 1970-х годов, процесс возвышения мировой китайской диаспоры.
Ключевые слова: Китай, китайская диаспора, хуацяо, чайна-таун, зарубежные китайские мигранты
In recent decades, in connection with the collapse of a number of multinational states, political and economic crises, armed conflicts and revolutions, huge masses of people find themselves outside their ethnic homeland. Communities of immigrants are developing all over the world, which are significantly different both from the host society and from the diasporas that have been formed for centuries.
The first mention of Chinese migration occurs in the era of the Qin and Han dynasties and dates back to 221 BC - 220 AD, when the first Chinese immigrants traveled along the Silk Road to the West and, by sea, to the East to Japan. However, during this period, migration was irregular in nature, and we can speak of a full-fledged beginning of Chinese
migration only from the beginning of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) [3, Vol. 1. p. 24]. From the beginning of the Tang dynasty to the end of the Southern Song dynasty (618-1279), due to internal problems, the bulk of the population of China begins to concentrate in the southeast of the country, resulting in serious problems associated with overpopulation and lack of land. All this forced landless peasants, workers and traders to go to Nanyang (the designation of Southeast Asia by the Chinese) in search of job. Many of them remained in today's Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines. They formed the first generation of overseas Chinese. Their total number totaled more than 100 thousand people [3, p. 31]. Chinese traders actively traveled to Nanyang to sell
textiles, tea, porcelain, metal and buy spices, sandalwood, medicinal herbs, etc [10, p. 74].
In the era of the Yuan and Ming dynasties (1271-1644), foreign trade and sea voyages were actively expanding. However, during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), only official and state-sanctioned sea voyages and trade missions were allowed. Private trade abroad was banned, however, traders continued to trade in Southeast Asia in violation of the ban. Chinese merchants (who were at the time the ban was overseas) did not have the right to return to their homeland and had to stay outside the country [5, p. 64]. This measure has led to significant changes in Chinese communities abroad. If previously the bulk of Chinese traders and businessmen always returned home after foreign trips, then after the ban came out they began to settle abroad for permanent residence and form a stable position of Chinese capital in the economies of Southeast Asia. Thus, by the 15th century, the region's economy was ruled by Chinese traders and merchants [1, p. 82].
With the arrival of Europeans to Southeast Asia in the 16th century, the Chinese began to play the role of intermediaries between them and the local population. As economic prospects expanded, the Chinese presence in Southeast Asia expanded. Spices, sugar, metal became the main items of Chinese trade [5, p. 87]. With the expansion of the European colonization of Southeast Asia, Chinese migration to the region also expanded. The social structure of foreign Chinese diaspora has changed. The Chinese began to occupy four main positions in the colonial economy: tax and duty collectors, intermediaries in trade between the local population and Europeans, financiers (moneylenders) and workers (mainly in the extraction of tin and rubber). At the end of the sixteenth century, the Dutch West Indies Company began to trade in Chinese seized at sea workers. Similarly, the first Chinese coolies (workers) appear in Southeast Asia.
The reign of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) was the period of the most massive migration of Chinese citizens abroad. The territories of Southeast Asia needed Chinese goods and attracted a large number of Chinese merchants, landless peasants, fishers, and artisans. The most active was migration to Siam (Thailand). At the beginning of the XVII century, the Chinese population of Siam totaled no more than 3 thousand people. However, during the Qing Dynasty, due to the good relations between China and Siam, over 7 thousand Chinese came to Siam annually. As a result, by 1821, the Chinese population of Siam totaled more than 700 thousand people. During the Qing Dynasty, the distribution area of overseas Chinese spread to 30 countries. It should be borne in mind that there are no exact data
on the number of overseas Chinese in this period. According to one source, by 1840, the total number of Chinese living abroad was more than 1 million people. According to other sources, the number of Chinese living in Southeast Asia alone was 1.5 million [6, p. 133]. The attitude of the authorities towards migration abroad during this period has repeatedly changed. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Qing government introduced a ban on foreign trade and migration in order to prevent financing and the return of the Ming dynasty rebel forces. However, merchants, especially from the coastal provinces of Guangdong and Fujian, constantly violated the bans, actively developing trade in Southeast Asia. Only in the 19th century the Qing government outlined a line between the rebels and the merchants who lived abroad. The attitude towards foreign Chinese by the authorities began to change in the second half of the 19th century. This largely served as the beginning of the mass migration of Chinese abroad. A new designation of foreign Chinese appeared - "huaqiao" (the hieroglyph "qiao" was used until that time in relation to aristocratic families, civil servants and scientists who left their ancestors' land). This appeal showed respect and dignity of overseas Chinese.
During the Opium Wars, China became the main source of labor for America, Southeast Asia, Australia, and South Africa. After the first Opium war (1840-1842), restrictions on migration abroad were virtually no longer respected. After the second Opium war in 1860, these restrictions were lifted. As a result, mass coolie migration began. Some workers left China as free migrants, paying for their own tickets and choosing a job. Many of them left in search of happiness for gold mines in Australia, New Zealand and North America. For example, during the "gold rush" (1848-1855), almost 472,000 Chinese came to San Francisco, the United States [10, p. 62-63]. Others went to work as recruiting agencies as contract workers, signing the corresponding contract. Still others traveled through the credit system when their journey was paid by the employer, and the employee had to work out this amount for a certain period. The number of coolies exported from China to work during the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries amounted to more than 5 million people, 2 million of them to countries in Southeast Asia. In 1872, the Qing government decided to send students abroad to study. This marked the beginning of the mass departure of the Chinese to study. The total number of Chinese students (who left in this way during 1846-1949) was about 150 thousand [12, p. 152]. The bulk of them came from aristocratic strata, who were supposed to bring advanced knowledge from abroad and serve the goals of modernizing the country.
According to Chinese experts, the total number of people who migrated from China during 1840-1941 totals more than 10 million, about 100 thousand people a year [12, p. 163]. Most of the migrants came from southern provinces, primarily Guangdong and Fujian. All of them considered themselves "Huaqiao" and were devoted to China and Chinese culture. In response to mass migration, at the end of the 19th century, the Chinese government began to create foreign consulates in places of mass residence of Chinese migrants in order to protect their interests.
Appendix 1. The migration system of Southeast Asia during the colonial era (1870 to 1940)
At the beginning of the twentieth century, mass migration from China continued. During the First World War, more than 100 thousand Chinese from Shanghai, Shandong and Zhejiang provinces were recruited into the Allied forces of the Entente [5, p. 178]. After 1920, the number of migrants from China decreased. Exit visas were introduced, which greatly complicated the procedure for traveling abroad. Combined with discriminatory migration policies of host countries in the West, this has led to a decrease in the level of migration from China to these countries. However, the trend of migration to the countries of Southeast Asia continued. In 19221939 about 5.5 million people migrated from China. Most of them (5.1 million) migrated to Southeast Asia. The main flow of travelers was in the period of the 1920s. During the economic crisis of the 1930s, many Huaqiao enterprises began to go bankrupt, and overseas Chinese began to return home. In 1931-1934, the number of Huaqiao returned to China by 354 thousand people on average exceeded the number of people leaving China.
After the creation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese government imposed tight control over border crossings, and the number of migrants from China almost vanished. In China, a residence registration system ("hukou") was introduced, which provided tight control over the
movement of citizens within China, as well as an exit visa system for crossing the border [8, p. 142]. Perhaps the only source was going abroad for training, as well as in the framework of economic assistance to other countries. So, during 1949 and 1960, the flow of students traveling abroad was entirely directed to the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. However, the bulk of them after training returned to their homeland. In the early 1970s, 13,000 Chinese engineers and technicians traveled to Tanzania through economic assistance channels. During the period of the Cultural Revolution (1965-1976), any trip abroad with personal goals was recognized as a betrayal of the homeland, respectively, the number of people traveling abroad was almost reduced to zero. Families of immigrants often came under repression. Only with the beginning of the era of openness reforms in 1978 did the situation begin to change. In the period 1949-1978, the replenishment of the foreign diaspora occurred mainly due to migrants from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, Chinese born abroad, and also due to the secondary migration of ethnic Chinese mainly from Southeast Asia. Significant volumes of re-emigration from Southeast Asia are explained by the wave of discrimination, violence and xenophobia against ethnic Chinese that covered these countries in the 1960-1970s. The migration vector has changed in the direction of North America, Australia and Western Europe. Thus, the Chinese population of Europe has grown 6 times over this period, and North and South America - 7 times. The bulk of the diaspora naturalized and moved from the category of "Huaqiao" to the category of "Huazhen", that is, citizens of other states, but of Chinese origin.
In general, the entire history of Chinese migration can be divided into four stages. The first stage covers the period from ancient times to the 19th century, characterized by migration mainly to Asian countries, mainly its south-eastern part. The second stage covers the period from the 19th century, the time of the decline of the Qing Dynasty and the significant weakening of China, and until the formation of the PRC in 1949. During this period, the geography of Chinese migration expanded significantly, but the main channel of migration was the coolie trade. The third stage includes the period 1949-1978, a specific feature of which is the closeness of borders and the almost complete absence of migration from China. The fourth stage, which began with a reform policy in 1978, is distinguished by its large scale and new qualitative characteristics. During the first two periods of migration, several main types of migrants formed: temporary migrants ("huaqiao"), merchants
("huashang"), workers ("coolies"), secondary migrants ("huai").
First of all, it is necessary to consider the phenomenon of temporary migrants, or "huaqiao". Researcher R. Skeldon as follows describes the classical model of Chinese migration: "no self-respecting Chinese will leave his homeland forever, but will remain in other countries as a temporary person" [8, p. 132]. This temporality can be very long, but all Chinese people dream of returning home sooner or later. According to V. Parsel:"his dream is to return to the rich homeland, die and be buried in the land of his ancestors" [6, p. 30]. This model is based on two Chinese concepts "luoye guigen" ("fallen leaves return to their roots" - the concept shows the inevitability of the fact that sooner or later all migrants will return to their homeland) and "luodi shenggen" ("give roots at the place of settling" - if it is impossible to return to their homeland, it is permissible to settle in the place of residence). The bulk of Chinese migrants consider themselves "luoye guigen". And only the inability for any reason to return to their homeland can transfer them to the category of "luodi shenggen" [9, p. 156].
Chinese researcher Hong Liu, examining the difference between "huaqiao" and "huazhen", emphasizes that "huaqiao" maintain political and economic loyalty to China, while "huazhen" become more loyal to their state of residence than China [3, p. 64]. The type of migrant workers "huaqiao" is not associated with a certain type of professional activity. It includes both traders and workers, as well as journalists, teachers and representatives of other professions who have traveled abroad. This concept unites all Chinese citizens who are abroad. Developing the idea of Huaqiao, the Chinese authorities, on the one hand, demanded loyalty on their part to their homeland, and on the other, under the pretext of protecting their rights, they got the opportunity to intervene in the affairs of other countries. Merchants and merchants (huashang) who traveled abroad to conduct business were usually temporary migrants. However, over time, in the case of successful development of trade, they left their permanent representatives on the ground (who were the younger members of the family or other relatives), the merchants themselves carried out the function of regular interaction with China. Their representatives settled abroad with their families and for many generations did business in the area, continuing to maintain their Chinese roots, as they were the basis of their commercial activities. Characteristically, the more successful and extensive their business was, the stronger the Chinese identity manifested in the families and the stronger the ties with China. This kind of migration
was the dominant type of migration, from the early period to the middle of the XVIII century, the area of its distribution was mainly Southeast Asia. In the XIX century, they were replaced by coolies as the dominant type of migration. Migrant workers (coolies) were mainly representatives of the urban poor and landless peasants. The coolie contract involved a short-term trip to work that was not originally associated with a permanent residence. At the end of the contract, a large proportion of the contract workers returned to China. The coolie phenomenon is associated with industrialization processes (in particular, the construction of railways in North America), plantation economics, and mining. The period of this migration turned out to be short, and by the beginning of the twentieth century the migration of coolies to America ceased, and by 1920-1930 to Asia. Secondary migration is primarily associated with the search for the most favorable conditions for living and working. This type of migration was largely due to the successes achieved by Chinese migrants (primarily merchants), on the one hand, and the negative attitude in places of residence, on the other. This type of migrant was much less than others attached to their historical homeland, and some "huai" in the third and fourth generations were assimilated in new communities.
It needs to be noted, that historically, Chinese migration, unlike the European one, was not sponsored by the state and did not aim at expanding imperial possessions. On the contrary, most of the time it was semi-illegal or illegal. According to A. Larin, "Chinese migration is a special phenomenon: its participants, unlike the Western colonialists, conquerors and racists, throughout their history were engaged in exclusively peaceful work, without violating local laws" [4, p. 155]. The peaceful nature of migration and the lack of expansionist intentions are largely due to the very idea of migration among the Chinese. As temporary persons, they do not want to assimilate in host societies, and their degree of assimilation is very low. According to Professor V. Gelbras, "the Chinese as "a super-large ethnic group" are characterized by three foundations of identity - the blood of their ancestors (nationality), territory and culture [2, p. 116]. They carefully preserve the traditions and culture of China." And this, according to the American researcher G. Reddington, is the main factor in the power of the foreign Chinese diaspora, the basis of the possibility and ability to cooperate and interact with each other on a global scale. According to him, the basis of the Chinese diaspora is formed by a romanticized view of China and Chinese civilization [7, p. 92].
There is a widespread belief that the Chinese overseas, regardless of the geography of exit,
represent a single well-knit community. At the same time, it is important to emphasize that the Chinese are not a homogeneous group. The social lines of the division between groups speaking different dialects are strong enough; each of them has a closed character. Foreign Chinese are divided by "qiaoxiang" ("native place of huaqiao"), as well as linguistic affiliation (depending on the dialect: cantonism, South Minsky, Chaoshan, hack, etc.). In this regard, they are united precisely by patriotism, a sense of belonging to one great culture (and not to a small ethnic group), as well as economic profit, which is the second determining factor in the success of the Chinese diaspora. In Western
literature, there is a generally accepted opinion according to which the Chinese diaspora is a community based on commerce. In a similar sense, domestic researcher V. Woodpeckers use the term "trade minorities" in relation to Chinese migrants in Russia. These definitions reflect not only the main type of activity of migrants, but also the channels through which this community is being formed (a significant number of Chinese citizens go abroad to conduct business and for the most part in the field of trade), as well as the structure of the community itself.
Confucian philosophy, which puts the family at the center as a unit of society and the basis of any activity, has had a significant impact on the migration process, forming its family character. It is also the basis for the emergence of the Guanxi system, which has formed a circle of interaction between migrants in recipient countries and at home. So, the initial unit of commerce (trade) in Chinese culture is the family. The entire Chinese community system is built on two main principles -"xinyun" (personal trust) and "guanxi" (personal relationships), which are also basic for business. It needs to be noted, that the Chinese are highly adaptable to any sociocultural and economic conditions, which in turn is one of the key factors for the significant success achieved by Chinese business abroad. On the other hand, they are characterized by a high degree of patriotism and loyalty to China, which, combined with adaptability, forms a global Chinese network. In the global network of the overseas Chinese diaspora, there are an informal market, suppliers and sources of financing, which create a unique structure of the overseas Chinese economy. Chinese networks originate in the business guilds of imperial China, which represented the interests of merchants and, at the same time, had a number of social functions. In fact, they were mutual aid organizations, and they have retained this function to this day. Despite all the prohibitions of these guilds by the Chinese authorities, they continued to exist, often
clandestinely. And today we can observe a modification of these guilds in the structure of existing global Chinese networks.
Conclusion
In general, over the four main periods of Chinese migration, a significant number of Chinese citizens settled abroad. Various types of Chinese migration were formed, but initially they were based on the model of "temporary migration", which, under the influence of historical conditions, eventually transformed into a model of sustainable migrant communities abroad. At the same time, the peaceful and predominantly commercial nature of migration, the low degree of assimilation, high adaptability and strong patriotic feelings of Chinese migrants, which are traditional characteristics of Chinese migration, served as prerequisites for creating a global, economically powerful and united foreign Chinese community. In the modern world, the diaspora is an objective reality that will occupy an increasing place in the life of the PRC, and the strengthening of China on the international platform entails the rise of the world Chinese diaspora.
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