ABSTRACT
Over the past two decades or so, with the implementation of China’s opendoor policy and massive scale of economic reforms, the Chinese diaspora have invested a substantial amount of capital in their ancestral hometowns. Accompanying this global revival and expansion of qiaoxiang ties, the social and cultural interactions between the Chinese overseas and their kinfolk in China have also been significantly bolstered. As a result, greater scholarly attention is being directed to their relationship.2 This chapter addresses some of the issues pertaining to the historical precedent of organized Chinese transnationalism. By employing a Nanyang-centred perspective, it attempts to answer the following three questions. First, how did Chinese social organizations in Southeast Asia establish institutional links with qiaoxiang? Second, what kinds of connections did they build in constructing and, then, sustaining the ties discussed in this book? Third, how could those historical patterns of linkages be compared with the developments after 1949? With respect to modern Chinese transnationalism, what contemporary ramifications and theoretical implications can be drawn from this historical legacy?
