Introduction Chinese Migrants in Latin America/Caribbean And

Journal of Chinese Overseas 13 (2017) 163-180

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Introduction ∵

Chinese Migrants in Latin America/Caribbean and Africa, Then and Now

Yoon Jung Park Executive Director, Chinese in Africa/Africans in China Research Network [email protected]

In the past, South East Asia and North America were the two most common destinations for migrating Chinese. With China’s integration into the global economy, migration flows both to and from China have intensified as well as diversified (on migration to China, see Pieke 2013; on Africans in China, see Bodomo 2012, Mathews and Yang 2012, Haugen 2012, Castillo 2015, Lan 2017). As a result, numbers of Chinese migrants in the Global South, particularly in Africa and in the Latin America/Caribbean (LAC) region have increased spec- tacularly in the last two decades. Acknowledging the importance of these two regions for the study of overseas Chinese and attempting to put scholars of overseas Chinese in the two regions in conversation, I organized a double panel for the July 2016 gathering of the International Society of the Study of Chinese Overseas (ISSCO). ISSCO has been one of the few international conference organizations open and welcoming to those of us straddling two or more global regions in our studies of overseas Chinese. The double panel focused on Chinese migrants in these two sites in an effort to start examining the similarities and differences in historical and contemporary migrations, communities of overseas Chinese, local perceptions, and issues of identity.

* I want to thank Cecilia A. Green and Monica DeHart for their intellectual contributions to this introduction and Karen L. Harris for her careful editing. On behalf of all of the contributors, I would also like to thank ISSCO and the editorial team of the Journal for Chinese Overseas for encouraging both the panels and the special issue and for creating a space where those of us interested in multiple regions of the world can come together and converse.

Historically, flows of Chinese to the Latin America/Caribbean region and Africa were significantly smaller than those to South East Asia and North America.1 Most of the earliest flows of Chinese to the Americas and Africa were linked to colonial projects and indentured labor. Reception and subsequent processes of integration in different countries varied greatly. Today, in an era of a Rising China, China’s “going out” has involved renewed flows of Chinese state and private capital and Chinese people. As in earlier times, independent migrants often follow state projects and contract labor, although these days most of the labor is voluntary rather than unfree. Despite the similarities, it can be argued that the socio-economic context of the Global South today, as a site of migration, is significantly different from that of North America in the late 19th and 20th centuries. And China’s “arrival in” (Armony and Strauss 2012) these regions is greatly impacted by local perceptions of China’s global rise as well as their previous encounters with foreign powers, specifically the United States and various European countries. In two back-to-back panels, exploring both the past and the present, papers addressed the question: has Chinese migration to the Global South played out, and is it still playing out, differently from in the “West”? This special issue of the Journal of Chinese Overseas stems from this double panel.

Growing Bodies of Literature: “China-Africa” and “China-Latin America”

This special issue is informed by my thinking around the tremendous growth in the China-Africa field, challenges facing area studies, the possibilities of greater collaborative and comparative study, and lessons that might be learned from cross-regional, cross-time perspectives. The media and scholarly attention on “China-Africa” seems to be undergirded by assumptions that we are witnessing something unique and unprecedented. While the linking of these two unevenly matched “partners” — one a country, and the other, a continent — has elicited scholarly attention since the 1960s when China was actively supporting African independence movements and engaged in building anti-hegemonic solidarities (Yu 1966 and 1970; Larkin 1971; Ogunsanwo 1974; Hutchinson 1975; Snow 1989), writing on China-Africa really exploded in

1 Because of relative proximity, cultural and ethnic ties, the longue durée, and a significant body of literature on Chinese migration to South East Asia (see Wang 1999; Suryadinata 1997; Tan 1988 and 1993) overseas Chinese in and new migrations to that region are not covered here.

Journal of Chinese OverseasDownloaded from 13 Brill.com09/27/2021 (2017) 163-180 04:07:59AM via free access Introduction 165 the mid- to late 2000s when a great number of individual scholars published books on China-Africa (Alden 2007; Rotberg 2008; Brautigam 2009; Taylor 2009; Monson 2009) and others published special issues and edited volumes (Centre for Chinese Studies 2007; Strauss and Saavedra 2009; Alden, Large, and Soares de Oliveira 2009). While the first set of publications focused on the earlier period of China’s engagement with newly independent African states in the context of the Cold War, the more recent publications focused primarily on trade and investment, development, and the changing world order, mostly from the perspective of international political economy or development. Pambazuka Press, at this time, also put out a series of edited volumes concerned with African and Chinese perspectives (Manji and Marks 2007; Guerrero and Manji 2008; Harneit-Sievers, Marks, and Naidu 2010). Until around 2005/6 it was possible, as a new researcher in the field, to read virtually everything written on China-Africa linkages. These days, the most extensive and up-to-date bibliography of the growing body of China-Africa literature fills over 200 pages (Shinn 2017). In what has been described as an ethnographic turn in the China-Africa literature,2 there has been a rapid growth in literature focused on more finely- grained, close-up examinations of Chinese migrants, Chinese goods, and relations with locals in Africa, as seen in a growing number of special issue journals (Park and Huynh 2010; Monson and Rupp 2013; Giese 2015). The papers making up these publications have tended to move the lens closer, zooming in on the day-to-day, on the interactions and perceptions, and on the meanings of these interpersonal and group engagements. Mostly independent from the China-Africa literature, a body of work on 19th and 20th century Chinese immigration, overseas Chinese, newer Chinese migrations, and ethnic Chinese migrant communities — spanning nearly every continent — has been accruing steadily since 1875, when D. P. Carnegie wrote about the controversies surrounding the migration of Chinese to the Natal colony in what is today South Africa. While some of the earlier scholars of the Chinese in Africa made reference to these works (Harris 2010 and 2013; Park 2008), these two bodies of literature have tended to remain separate and distinct. While Chinese investments, capital, people and goods have also been flow- ing into Latin America since China’s going out began a couple of decades ago, these flows have not attracted the same level of media or scholarly attention. New academic interest in LAC seems to be matching pace with the rate and

2 I attribute this comment to Mingwei Huang, Chinese in Africa/Africans in China conference, Nairobi, Kenya, 18-20 August 2017.

Journal of Chinese Overseas 13 (2017) 163-180 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 04:07:59AM via free access 166 Park range of Chinese trade and investment in the region, with a noticeable surge in 2010. According to Armony and Strauss, three edited English-language volumes (Roett and Paz 2008; Jilberto and Hogenboom 2010; Hearn and Manríquez 2011) and one monograph (Gallagher and Porzecanski 2010) were among the first to examine China’s contemporary relations with Latin America (Armony and Strauss 2012); as with many of the early writings on China-Africa, all of these focused on international political economy and bilateral relations. The literature on Chinese migrants and overseas Chinese in Latin America and the Caribbean has a longer history, dating back to the late 1980s and 1990s with important works grounded in archival and ethnographic research by Christine Ho (1989), Evelyn Hu-DeHart (1994), and Walter Look Lai (1993; 1998). Since the latter part of the 2000s there has been an uptick in publications on Chinese in the LAC region, perhaps spurred at least in part by new flows of Chinese finance, development projects, and people (see, for example, Look Lai and Tan 2010; Sui 2005; and Tjon Sie Fat 2009). More recently, there has been a surge in historical scholarship on Chinese migration and Chinese communities in Latin America (Maria Schiavone Camacho 2012; Lopez 2013; Young 2014; and Chang 2017). This special issue is a child of all these different literatures and the result of a long-held desire on the part of the guest editor to marry her interest in Latin America with her long adventure in Africa (where she was resident from 1995 through 2010) and her scholarly and personal explorations of migration (as an immigrant to the US, a student in Mexico, and an ex-pat in Costa Rica, South Africa, and Kenya) through a focus on the largest, longest, and the most fluid migration flow in the world.

Beyond Area Studies and Global Studies

One of the questions arising from the scholars of China-Africa, stemming from the inevitable naval-gazing internal struggle of an emerging area of study, has been about where China-Africa research fits within the thickly walled con- fines of disciplinary and area studies. The Chinese in Africa/Africans in China Research Network, a research network of over 700 scholars and practitioners in various fields focused on China-Africa linkages, has become a virtual gathering place of trained Africanists and Sinologists and scholars from sociology, anthropology, human geography, and history as well as political science, international relations, and development economics. Increasingly, though, researchers and practitioners from other fields — media and communications, security, health, and environment — have joined the ongoing discussions. This

Journal of Chinese OverseasDownloaded from 13 Brill.com09/27/2021 (2017) 163-180 04:07:59AM via free access Introduction 167 special issue values this sort of interdisciplinarity as the only way to examine these complex histories and linkages meaningfully; however, questions remain about where China-Africa belongs. Are we a part of a new Global Studies? Is China-Africa a subset of examinations of the Global South or South-South engagements? Or should we start looking beyond two sides of a hyphen, at linkages between multiple regions? Among those examining Chinese flows to the LAC region, many have also been frustrated by the limitations of area studies, never knowing which conferences they should attend. Within the two largest Asian Studies conference bodies — the Association of Asian Studies (AAS) and the International Conference on Asian Studies (ICAS) — interest in either LAC or Africa were often limited as discussions around China tended to be dominated by Sinologists.3 Donor organizations interested in funding Asia-related academic activities, too, had to be convinced that Chinese migrants and overseas Chinese were, in fact, part of an increasingly global China.4 The Latin American Studies Association (LASA) for many years seemed ig- norant of and uninterested in Asia; however, this has begun to change in the last five years. LASA established a separate section on Asia and the Americas in 2012; since that time interest grew from two panels in that first year to over twenty panels at the 2017 conference.5 In the US, the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, DC set up their China-Latin America program in the same year; and in the past several years the University of Boston’s Global Economic Governance Initiative has established several China- and China-Latin America programs and projects, including a large database of China-Latin America finance. A core group of China-LAC researchers has also been instrumental in establishing a number of institutes, centers, and research networks, including Enrique Dussel Peter’s Center for the Study of China-Mexico (CHECHIMEX) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad National Autónoma de Mexico or UNAM) and the LAC-China Academic Network (Red Académica ALC-China). These developments led scholars to question whether “it is possible to conceive of China-Latin America interactions as a new field

3 Based on e-mail communication with one of the contributors to this issue, 20 June 2017. 4 Personal observation based on submitting grant proposals to support the activities of the Chinese in Africa/Africans in China Research Network; ultimately the Henry Luce Foundation came through as the program officer there could see the relevance of the Network to China writ large. 5 Based on e-mail communication with one of the contributors to this special issue, 20 June 2017.

Journal of Chinese Overseas 13 (2017) 163-180 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 04:07:59AM via free access 168 Park of study” (Armony and Strauss 2012) just as scholars of China-Africa relations were asking the same questions. We acknowledge the limitations of an analytical focus on “China,” “Africa,” and “Latin America” as if these were single, coherent, rational actors (Armony and Strauss 2012) and the unevenness of binary framings — of China-Africa and China-Latin America — with a single country on one side and entire continents on the other. Several projects have started to focus on broader groupings of scholars and scholarship, examining Asia and Africa (or Asia and Latin America). Doshisha University (Japan) and the University of Stellenbosch (South Africa) joined up to bring together scholars to examine “Africa and Asia Entanglements in Past and Present,” with a series of symposia (Stellenbosch 2013; Kyoto 2014) and culminating in a publication (due out in 2017). The ratio- nale behind this initiative was three-fold: “First, there is a macro-narrative that overly focuses on the geopolitical dimensions of those relations…. A second feature is that there is a voluminous body of work today on China’s engagement with the African continent (albeit with limited perspective), but a general ne- glect of the interaction between Africa and actors from other parts of Asia…. Third, there tends to be a lack of historical perspective in much of the work that is being done today, particularly from the standpoint of African researchers” (Concept Note: Africa and Asia Entanglements in Past and Present 2014). At around the same time, the AFRASO (or Africa’s Asian Options) project was established in Germany. According to their website, AFRASO is “an inter- disciplinary and transregional research project which comprises scholars from various disciplines at Goethe University in Frankfurt.” They have since hosted three major conferences (Kuala Lumpur March 2014, Cape Town March 2015, and Frankfurt September 2016) and dozens of other events. In a parallel development and involving many of the same people and groups, the first conference of the newly established Association of Asian Studies in Africa (A-ASiA) was held in Accra, Ghana, in September 2014, titled “Africa-Asia: A New Axis of Knowledge” with the support of the International Institute of Asian Studies (IIAS) and the International Conference on Asian Studies (ICAS), both based in Leiden. Following the trajectory of these initiatives, we want to chart a new course, starting by looking across both time and regions. Of course, historically, the coming together of Africa and Asia is not new. The first Afro-Asian conference took place in April 1955, in Bandung, Indonesia. The Bandung conference, organized by Indonesia, Myanmar (then officially known as Burma in English), Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), India, and Pakistan, was a response to interference by the West and the Soviet Union in the affairs of these countries. Twenty-nine countries representing more than half the world’s population sent delegates, hoping to establish a sort of

Journal of Chinese OverseasDownloaded from 13 Brill.com09/27/2021 (2017) 163-180 04:07:59AM via free access Introduction 169 counter-hegemony. While multiple attempts to build upon the momentum of Bandung failed, current circumstances seem to warrant some sort of repetition of that effort. With the current de-centering of global power, Europe and the United States can no longer claim that the rest of the globe spins around their axes. With the rise of China, the formation of groupings such as BRICS, the growing political and economic influence of regional leaders, the destabilizing role of North Korea and the Middle East, the current leadership vacuum in the United States, and political shifts in Europe, we are clearly in the midst of a new, rudderless and leaderless era. In this context, China appears to be making attempts to step in and step up its role. Simultaneously and in part in response to Beijing’s policies, “global China” — both Chinese citizens and overseas Chinese — is on the move. Recent reports indicate that there are 269 million internal migrants in China and 60 million overseas Chinese (https://www.iom.int/countries/china, accessed June 12, 2017). In 2014 there were a million Chinese migrant workers who left China on temporary assignments under the Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s International Labor Cooperation Program (ibid.). These figures do not include independent migrants from mainland China or other ethnic Chinese (from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Americas, Australasia, and elsewhere) on the move. Placing Chinese migrants and overseas Chinese on center stage, under such circumstances, is, we feel, justified.

History and Ethnography

As with the special issue of the African Studies Review Forum on African and China edited by Monson and Rupp (2012), this issue also aims to look at Chinese migrations and overseas Chinese from historical and ethnographic perspectives. The history (and historiography) of Chinese contacts with Latin America and Caribbean on the one hand and Africa on the other are receiving renewed attention in part because of China’s rise: China’s renewed interest in both regions has resulted in increased state-to-state engagements, regional activities (e.g. Forum on China-Africa Cooperation or FOCAC), investments, trade, and migration flows. This renewed interest has, in turn, generated much new scholarship — scholarship that involves looking back and digging into ar- chives and early writings (see Harris, this volume) and literature that delves more deeply into contemporary engagements and practices based on field- based research. As mentioned earlier, in the China-Africa media coverage and literature, it often appears that the linkages between the emerging superpower and the

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African continent are entirely new. Similarly, some of more recent China- Latin America scholarship argues that these ties are brand new. It is true that the Chinese state has not played a historically significant role in LAC; as such China-Africa studies have been crucial to thinking around the potential im- pacts of Chinese firms and Chinese politics as scholars and policymakers in Latin America try to imagine how the future unfolds. However, Chinese people have been around in LAC for generations. Efforts at cross-regional and cross- time comparisons and better, more detailed histories will help to debunk notions that Chinese flows to Africa and LAC and Chinese engagements with these places are somehow completely unique and without precedence. This special issue tries to value the past. We recognize that the work of historians is never done. There are always new troves of documents being uncovered, begging to be examined. Global shifts and developments in specific fields also have an impact on our ways of seeing and interpreting events of the past. We believe that there is great value in examining Chinese mobilities across regions and across time; these comparative perspectives help us to identify similarities and differences, continuities and disjunctures, and they can, perhaps, help us to understand the present. For example, Green and Harris in this volume remind us that the early presence of Chinese people in both the Latin America/Caribbean region and in Africa is closely linked to the colonial projects of European nations, specifically to plantations and the development of infrastructure to link those plantations to roads and ports. The distinction between indentured and contracted labor migration and independent, free migration is important to the study of Chinese migration and we will return to this topic below. While studies of the Chinese “coolie trade” have tended to focus on the LAC region, the coolie trade was also active in colonial Africa. Asian indentured labor — from China and India — as a replacement for or supplement to African slave labor was present “wher- ever European plantations thrived” (Hu-DeHart 2002: 70-71 as cited in Green). However, the papers in this special issue go further back in time. Earlier Chinese encounters with the LAC region and Africa have been noted by numerous scholars over the years. These include Chinese merchants in colonial Mexico and Peru — offshoots of 16th and 17th century Manila-Acapulco trade networks (Look Lai 2010b: 37 as cited in Green). Harris goes back even further, to suggestions of “indirect knowledge” of private Chinese citizens about Egypt during the Han dynasty (206BCE-220CE) (Li 2012: 12 as cited in Harris) and early reference to Africa in the Book of Han (Hong 2002: 1-2 in Harris), followed by more frequent descriptions of what is today Morocco, Kenya, Eritrea, Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, and Tanzania during the Tang dynasty (618-907) (Li 2012: 22;

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Wheatley 1964: 145-146, Hong 2002: 2; Snow 1988: 4, all cited in Harris). While these earlier “encounters” are contested, there is no doubt about the early 15th century (Ming dynasty) voyages of Zheng He and records of his early contacts with peoples of Africa’s east coast. These papers serve as reminders of the long and rich history of early encounters, a necessary corrective to the current tendency to overemphasize the present. These papers can also help us to make sense of the present. For example, Green explores two kinds of migration to the Latin American/Caribbean region — labor migration and migration that was mercantile, independent, and free, both in past and present times. These distinctions, made by other scholars working in overseas-Chinese studies, between Huagong (labor) and Huashong (merchant) Chinese migrant streams to the Americas (see, for example Hu-DeHart 2002) could serve as quite useful in understanding present- day migration streams to the LAC region as well as to Africa and elsewhere. While present-day labor migration from China is no longer indentured, much of it is still contracted by way of large Chinese firms, both state-owned and private. While some of these labor migration streams are no longer driven di- rectly by Beijing (see Sarah Raine 2009 for discussion about Beijing’s decreas- ing control of state-owned enterprises), they take place in response to state policies aimed at enlarging China’s global economic footprint and as part of the expansion of global capitalism. Independent migrations in the past and in the present are also worth com- paring across time and regions. Migrant trajectories and processes — transi- tions from (indentured or contract) laborer to retail entrepreneur, of return migration and remigration — are taking place today as they did in earlier times. Green’s article raises a number of issues and frames that are helpful as we look at other flows of Chinese people across both time and space. These include: the distinction between organized (state and company) labor migrations and (unorganized) free and independent migrations, trajectories from laborer to entrepreneur, re-migration within the region, and other forms of mobility, through inter-marriage or unions with non-Chinese. Earlier migrations resulted in different levels of “creolization” and local integration. Newer flows of Chinese migrants to these regions have led to a revival of earlier ethnic and regional migration networks (e.g., Cantonese and Hakka from Guangdong and other provinces, Green and Liu, this volume) as well as to different local expressions of re-Sinicization (see DeHart, this volume, and DeHart forthcoming). However, there are clearly distinct Chinese communities even in small countries and, on occasion, these different groups of Chinese clash, as seen in DeHart and Liu (this volume).

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The two articles focused on the contemporary period do much to break down notions of a single China and a monolithic, homogenous, and unified Chinese community. Liu highlights the diversity within Chinese communities of South Africa, from different waves of migration to diversity among Cantonese speakers, where she identifies at least five different dialect groups. DeHart, too, focuses on the heterogeneity of the Chinese in Costa Rica through her exploration of Chinese-language institutes in the small Central American country. She uses the concept of the “Sinophone” (borrowed from Shih 2007), to emphasize the ways in which Chinese culture (and, in this case, language and language teaching) is being “defined, engaged, appropriated and even op- posed” by parts of the Chinese diaspora. DeHart’s paper is particularly good at highlighting the “precarious and prob- lematic relations to China” (Shih 2007: 30) that overseas Chinese and Chinese migrants often have with China and the Chinese state. While some of the papers in this volume might utilize terms such as “ethnic Chinese,” diaspora, Chinese migrants, or overseas Chinese, there is no assumption of a shared identity or a strong connection to the Chinese state. As pointed out by Shih (in DeHart, this volume) and the two historical pieces in this article, the Chinese peoples described herein have been shaped by “historical process(es) of het- erogenizing and localizing … taking place for centuries” (2007: 14). Several of the papers also discuss anti-Chinese sentiment as manifested in the past. Green and Harris write about bias against Chinese migrants. For example, Green points to competition between the Chinese and the Portuguese and Indian shopkeepers in Guyana and Trinidad. Green mentions violent eruptions of anti-Chinese sentiment in Jamaica (1918, 1938, and 1965; see Ho 1989); these also occurred in Mexico (Hu-DeHart 2005; Schiavone Camacho 2012; and Chang 2017), in South Africa (Harris 2010), and elsewhere. These may provide insights and important lessons into the circumstances and conditions under which such violence might erupt again. Anti-Chinese sentiment in Jamaica’s past foreshadowed similar eruptions in present times. A combination of black economic disenfranchisement, relative Chinese domination of the retail sector, and low levels of assimilation, argues Green, caused the various expressions of anti-Chineseness. The scenarios are familiar to many countries in the global South today; large-scale Chinese- funded or Chinese-managed ventures, both state-led and private, with up- wards of hundreds of Chinese workers, can be found around the globe. These Chinese workers are typically housed in closed worker compounds (often in cheap converted containers) and isolated from local populations. When they move from skilled positions into menial jobs — pushing wheelbarrows, laying bricks — they exacerbate tensions in places where local people struggle with

Journal of Chinese OverseasDownloaded from 13 Brill.com09/27/2021 (2017) 163-180 04:07:59AM via free access Introduction 173 poverty and unemployment. Chinese funding and support has resulted in the completion of major infrastructure and other construction projects, including roads, railroads, airports, deep-water ports, dams, power plants, and shipyards; luxury hotels and resorts; as well numerous sports stadiums, hospitals, hous- ing developments, educational institutions, cultural and convention centers, government buildings, and presidential palaces. The sight of dozens or even hundreds of Chinese workers on these construction sites has resulted in local pushback, especially when their numbers swell. Green writes that workforc- es of several hundred on a small island of fewer than 100,000 persons, as in Dominica, “can represent quite a novelty and visual spectacle, having no parallel in living memory” (this volume, 205-242; see also DeHart 2012 on Costa Rican protests over a Chinese stadium construction). Local anger at the lack of opportunities for employment on these projects has sparked protests directed at local governments as well as the Chinese authorities and firms. Current Chinese flows are taking place as the world confronts China’s ascen- dancy in the global economy and its state-led push toward overseas development. Uneven power dynamics and trade imbalances between China and most of its partners in both the Latin America/Caribbean region and in Africa also manifest themselves on the ground. Chinese-diaspora studies tend to privilege the “homeland” state. The articles herein, while acknowledging the role of the state and the impact of cultural and linguistic China, also give agency to other actors. They acknowledge the specific contexts (in terms of both place and time) and emphasize the co-constitutive nature of migrants, states, local communities, and polities. All of the articles herein attempt to deal with the complexities, the nuances, the intricacies, and the fluidities. For example, DeHart’s article examines standard Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua) as an asset given China’s ascendance where many Costa Ricans view Chinese language fluency as a “passport into a global future.” But she also examines struggles between a Taiwanese-born, US-educated Chinese Costa Rican (or Tica), a Costa Rican- born, Chinese-educated Tico, and the Hanban-sponsored official Confucius Institute over language students and over legitimacy and authenticity.

In This Issue

The papers in this special issue begin in Latin America and the Caribbean with Monica DeHart’s article, “Who Speaks for China? Translating Geopolitics through Language Institutes in Costa Rica,” starts with an account of a Taiwanese-born, US-educated Costa Rican who, in 2004, founded a Chinese language academy in San Jose, Costa Rica, naming it the “Confucius Institute.”

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She goes on to describe a change in Costa Rica’s longstanding political alliance with Taiwan to establish diplomatic relations with the Peoples’ Republic of China, the opening of a state-sponsored Confucius Institute at the University of Costa Rica, and the protracted legal battle over rights to the title of “Confucius Institute.” While the Chinese state eventually triumphed, DeHart uses the case as an example of how debates over language can illustrate shift- ing geopolitics and its impact on the relationship between the Chinese state and overseas Chinese. In particular, she highlights the growing importance of standard Mandarin Chinese (putonghua 普通话) as a valued cultural commodity, linked to opportunities for economic and symbolic capital increasingly as- sociated with mainland China. These, in turn, are linked to debates over public versus private education, liberal versus authoritarian states, and Taiwan versus Beijing-based language authority. Ultimately, DeHart raises questions about who can legitimately speak on behalf of Chineseness in Costa Rica. Cecilia A. Green’s paper, “Chinese Transnationalism in the Caribbean: Historical and Contemporary Patterns” bridges the historical and the contemporary and discusses the Chinese presence in the LAC region. The historical context provides a baseline from which she examines patterns of the new post-1980s Chinese presence in the LAC region, with particular reference to the English-speaking Caribbean. She focuses, in particular, on some of the key emerging configurations and complications of the new dual presence in the Caribbean of both Chinese state and private entrepreneurial immigrants. The last two papers focus on Chinese in Africa, beginning with a historical piece and finishing up with Liu’s piece which examines Chinese migrants currently in South Africa. Karen L. Harris’s article is entitled: “Contested Encounters: A Select Literature Review of Dynastic China and Ancient Africa.” Her piece reflects on the very earliest encounters between dynastic China and ancient Africa and shows that the current contestation over this relatively new contact is not, in fact, new. Given the relative dearth and disparate nature of the information, Harris does this through the lens of a selection of secondary sources in three distinct periods: before 1949; from 1950 to 1990; and since 1990. It shows that China’s encounter with Africa reaches far back into the history of the continent as does the volatile contestation surrounding the contemporary contact. The last paper in this special issue is by Ying-Ying Tiffany Liu, whose “Exploring Guanxi in a Cross-cultural Context: The Case of Cantonese-speaking Chinese in Johannesburg” uses a case study of recently arrived Cantonese-speaking migrants to examine the role of guanxi in shaping Chinese newcomers’ economic activities and opportunities in South Africa. She describes how guanxi can influence personal and employment relationships; however she also notes

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Conclusion

Others have already recognized the importance of conversations across regions:

China’s presence in Latin America has also served to start a conversation that connects Latin America with Africa. This has been primarily driven by Latin American fears of becoming “China’s next Africa” (conceived as Beijing’s strategy to secure access to natural resources while flooding the region’s markets with cheap goods) but it is likely that the Chinese presence in both continents gives impetus to studies that connect these regions in innovative ways (Armony and Strauss 2012: 16)

As Armony and Strauss (2012), Rupp and Monson (2012) and others have pointed out, we need more field-based research, better case studies carried out by scholars who speak multiple languages, more contextualized and historicized studies, more comparisons across regions, and greater interdisciplinarity in order to understand the complexities of our new world. While we can continue to debate whether or not “China-Africa” or “China-Latin America” constitute new, legitimate fields of study, we must also continue to converse across regions and through time. In my view, some of the most interesting and engaging studies coming out of the China-Africa sub-field have been those that have focused on specific issues, events, industries, sectors, or even groups of people. In sharpening the focus, “China-Africa” fades into the background as other factors (or actors) become more visible. Works by Johanna Hood (2013) on race, gender, HIV/AIDS in the Chinese media; Heidi Østbø Haugen on Nigerian Pentecostal churches in Guangzhou (2017) or jewelry commodity chains (2017); Guive Khan Mohamed (2015) on China-made motorcycles in Burkina Faso; and Stephanie Rupp on ivory commodity chains (see http://www.stephanierupp.org/elephants--ivory .html) lead the way, indicating that the time has come for us to move beyond simply looking at “China-Africa” as a phenomena in and of itself. We need to start looking at these issues differently to gain perspective: examining cross sections of history, looking down or back on specific episodes or eras with modern eyes, looking comparatively across regions, or honing in on specific episodes, commodities, subjects, or themes.

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Theme-based approaches such as we’ve attempted here lead us to talk about dynamics across disparate regions and times; furthermore, such approaches allow us to think about both patterns in these dynamics as well as changes over time and place. For example, by honing in on the question of migratory flows in the past and the present and in LAC/Africa, we are better able to discern how and when place matters. This focus on a single theme can also help to disrupt ideas about a monolithic China or a monolithic Chinese culture as a starting point for thinking about Chinese migration. At the same time, they help us to think about the role of the Chinese state as one of a number of actors involved in mediating the significance of immigrants in these different places as the immigrants have become attached to state projects, private businesses, or even global geopolitics. Or with regard to migration and migration theories, how do the articles herein contribute to our thinking about Chinese migration as free or unfree, as connected to the Chinese state or private and entrepreneurial, as emigration from China versus part of a circuit or series of migratory flows? While the papers in this special issue are not, in themselves, comparative, the value of organizing them in a special thematic and trans-regional issue lies in the opportunity to see Chinese in LAC and Africa differently. We see the longue durée of Chinese migratory flows and Chinese diasporic presence in these regions. And we can start to see patterns and agency, even as we acknowledge this moment, and the importance of context and the role of the state. We hope that reading these four seemingly disparate papers in a single special issue will also persuade readers of the possibilities of cross-regional, cross-time comparisons. These side-by-side ways of seeing can help bring new insights and understandings and perhaps more importantly, help us to formu- late new, better questions, as we try to make sense of our increasingly destabi- lized world.

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