ABSTRACT
New Chinese migrants as traders have appeared most prominently in the undersupplied economies of Eastern Europe, Russia, Burma, Laos, and Cambodia as they were undergoing a surge and diversification of consumer demand in response to the release of economic and social controls. An empirical, quantitative examination of the dominant types of population movements associated with the new migration flows would reveal fundamental differences compared to traditional qiaoxiang migration to Western Europe. International migration from the People's Republic of China (PRC) after 1978 has undergone not only a quantitative increase but also a qualitative change. New migration can be seen as the product of increasing overpopulation within the context of the emergence of a consumer society, which produces both economic opportunities and expectations. New migrant communities do not conform to the segmentary structure. Traditional overseas Chinese communities have segmentary organisational structures wherein different dialectal, surname, and occupational communities are represented by religious, charitable, commercial, native-place, or surname associations.
