Trans-nationalising Chineseness

Overseas Chinese Policies of the PRC's Central Government

Abstract

This paper examines evolution and the scope of the PRC's policies towards overseas Chinese in the reform period. It analyses the mechanisms for incorporating the overseas Chinese into the Chinese modernisation strategy and considers how the Chinese leadership utilizes the global regimes of migration, trans-nationalism, media, and multiculturalism to affirm the CCP's political legitimacy, to extend China's political standing, to reassert Chinese culture, and to benefit China's economic performance. The argument contends that China's adaptability to the flexible nature of the global economic system signifies departure from its position as single territorially-restricted unit. It employs new type of ideology of ethnic nationalism to engage in single but territorially dispersed project ensuing in the Chinese nation-state being trans-nationalised.