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GUANGDONG AND CHINESE DIASPORA: The Changing Landscape of Qiaoxiang. Routledge Contemporary China Series, 94. By Yow Cheun Hoe. London; New York: Routledge, 2013. xxi, 231 pp. (Maps, tables, illus.) US$135.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-415-64222-4.
This book sets out to challenge what author Yow Cheun Hoe describes as an enduring "myth that the Chinese diaspora's relations with China is something natural and primordial, and that regardless of their base outside China and their generation of migration, the Chinese diaspora are inclined to participate enthusiastically in China's social and economic agendas" (1). On the contrary, Chinese overseas have in general been distancing themselves from their ancestral homeland for more than six decades since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the rise of postcolonial nation-states in Southeast Asia, and the abrogation of anti- Chinese exclusionary policies in the former white settler colonies of North America and Australasia. Moreover, Yow argues, "not all Chinese diasporic communities are the same in terms of mentality and orientation" (1) and the degree of their attachment and connections to China often varies greatly from one community to another. In fact, Yow maintains, affective ties as a whole are less important than other considerations when it comes to determining diasporic investments in today's China. During the reform era in China since 1978, emigrants' ties to their ancestral villages, primordial sentiments...