ABSTRACT
The past decade has seen a growing body of literature pertaining to the rise of China and its elevated status in the new international order. In the meantime, impatient with the lack of constructive dialogues between China specialists and IR theorists, scholars have called for the “integration of Chinese foreign policy analysis with wider debates in the international relations field” which could benefit both.1 For the establishment of a Chinese school of IR, empirical contemplation and theoretical formulation need to be applied to the country’s specific political, socio-cultural and demographic environments. The existence of a large diaspora population, numbering approximately 45 million, who have maintained substantial and unbroken linkages with the homeland for many centuries2 is one of the factors unique to China. What, then, is the role of Chinese international migration,3 which has figured prominently in the country’s past and present developments, in the ongoing discourse on China rising and its international relations? Does the Chinese diaspora play an active part – as some other diasporas such as the Jewish, Indians, and Armenians have – in the hostlands’ and homeland’s foreign policy processes? If not, why not?
