Overseas Chinese owe success to internal migration By Shelly Simonds To understand the success of Chinese communities overseas, people need to examine the history of migration within China, said visiting Professor Philip Kuhn. Presenting the 58th annual Morrison Lecture at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies last month, Prof Kuhn, the Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History at Harvard University, discussed China's history of internal migration. He said it prepared rural citizens for life in the city and, eventually, for life as immigrants and he discussed how Chinese communities overseas were later influenced by events in their ancestral land. By the 17th century, China began experiencing large internal migrations as land shortages forced families to look for opportunities in centres of commerce, like Amoy and Canton, which grew with European trade. Prof Kuhn calls Chinese society during this period a "gigantic school for emigrants" as country people learned how to survive in an urban environment. Internal migration also gave experience with commerce and the formation of civic institutions. Addressing the diverse histories of Chinese immigrants overseas as one history was full of pitfalls, said Prof Kuhn, as Chinese communities in places like Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore had been shaped by experiences in their new countries as well as by events in China. After the large-scale emmigration from China during the 19th century, emmigrant communities held on to their cultural identity through dialect groups and regional associations. During the 19th century, successful community members helped to establish temples and schools which taught members of the Chinese community in regional dialects. "Another important type of skill learned in this school for emigrants was how to do business in an environment where political power was held by others," said Prof Kuhn. That skill was an asset to later generations as they moved overseas and learned to operate in a business atmosphere controlled by colonial authorities, becoming key players in the commerce of colonial empires. The latter half of Prof Kuhn's lecture focused on how immigrants' perceptions of their ancestral home changed over time. And how political and social trends in China provided new ways for prominent Chinese to solidify their status in the overseas community. World War II gave rise to a period of pan-Chinese movements and schools in China began advocating Mandarin as the national language. This had a direct impact on Chinese communities overseas. For instance, Chinese education became the pet project of prominent businessmen and civic organisations,such as the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, within the overseas community . But some communities such as Singapore and Malaya (now Malaysia) paid a price for embracing the pan-Chinese movements in their ancestral homeland. British colonial rulers and non-Chinese were suspicious and antagonistic of Chinese nationalism. "The emergence of the nation-state in China proper made it harder for the ancestral land to co-exist with other symbols of social and cultural identity," said Prof Khun. "Embattled Chinese communities thereby lost some of their earlier capacity to manoeuvre within political systems ruled by others." The annual Morrison Lecture was founded by Chinese residents of Australia and others to commemorate the work of George Morrison of Geelong, who lived in China during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.