The transnational and diasporic dimensions of early Chinese migrant politics opened in the late nineteenth century when Chinese radical groups bent on overthrowing the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) vied with one another to win Chinese overseas to their modernizing projects, and immigrants who had suffered discrimination welcomed their proposals. The radicals' concentration on Chinese communities abroad as outposts of Chinese politics and culture strengthened the stereotype of Chinese as clannish, unassimilable, xenophobic, and deeply introverted.

This book argues that such a view has...

This study is a radical and controversial analysis of the life and works of Rewi Alley utilizing both Chinese materials and previously unpublished materials from western sources. Rather than a biography as such, it is a revisionist history, re-examining what we know and understand about one of the most famous, or indeed infamous, foreigners in modern China: Rewi Alley, who arrived in China in 1927 from New Zealand and lived there for the rest of his life. Alley was regarded as a great humanitarian and internationalist. Later he became an outspoken 'foreign friend' of the Chinese regime and...