China’s new global position: Changing policies toward the Chinese diaspora in the twenty-first century

Spurred by globalization, human mobility is transforming national policies in both sending and receiving states, and China is no exception. As a sending country of millions of migrants, China is increasingly relying on its transnational communities in reaching domestic and foreign policy outcomes. This chapter explores how China’s strengthened economic development and global position generate new political possibilities for the Chinese state to mobilize support from the growing number of new Chinese migrants. New policies, institutions and governmental practices directed at the diaspora, especially in postmodern societies, are analysed. On this basis, it is argued that in the late twentieth century Chinese diaspora policies were primarily directed at transnational Chinese as providers of material and nonmaterial resources for the internal modernization of China. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, these policies have gradually been changing into more overt political strategies of underscoring Chinese migrants’ soft power role as potential public diplomats in support of China’s foreign policy interests. I conclude that this enlargement of China’s new diaspora policies and operations that tie global Chinese diaspora networks into reciprocal relationships with the Chinese state is reconfiguring the spatiality of the Chinese state that will impact on the way we conceptualize the state, citizenship and national belonging. This chapter explores how China's strengthened economic development and global position generate new political possibilities for Chinese state to mobilize support from the growing number of new Chinese migrants. It argues that in the late twentieth century Chinese diaspora policies were primarily directed at transnational Chinese as providers of material and nonmaterial resources for the internal modernization of China. The chapter also argues that China's most recent policies of claiming the Chinese diaspora as "public diplomats" is part of China's quest for soft power enhancement through "public diplomacy", constituting a major policy shift away from engaging the diaspora primarily for the purpose of domestic economic development. It summarises the objectives of China's diaspora engagement during the formative period of 1980s to the beginning of new millennium. The chapter utilizes the term "diaspora" to designate a wide array of people living beyond the borders of China as first-generation migrants or descendants with