Qiaoxiang Ties

What is a diaspora? How are its members linked to one another and to the home country? Are only business interests served by the institutions in which the diasporas are grounded? How do the transitional cultures which make them function relate to the global spread of free market institutions? This interdisciplinary volume examines a specific aspect of the Chinese diaspora, which revolves around the cultivation of quaoixchang ties, or links with the home town, as revealed through extensive case studies of the way in which entrepreneurs of Chinese descent from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia brought their business ventures into South China after the implementation of the open-door policy in the late 1970s. The historical case studies here examine the methods used by businesspeople and their voluntary associations in Hong Kong and Singapore during the first half of this century to build up relations with various governments in South China. The anthropological case studies focus on the way business people and local administrators use qiaoxiang-ties in the day-to-day handling of business. Among the topics covered are: mobilization politics and the case of Siyi businessmen in Hong Kong; culture as a management issue and the case of Taiwanese entrepreneurs in the Pearl River delta, the Singapore-Anxi connection and ancestor worship as moral-cultural capital; and economic culture in theory and practice. The volume includes an appendix of Chinese sources for the study of qiaoxiang ties.