Between Equality and Prejudice: Chinese Planning on the Postwar Status of the Chinese Diaspora, 1940–9

Abstract

China's ruling Nationalist government saw the Second World War as an opportunity to shape the postwar world in China's favour. However, existing studies have often focused on China's plans on territorial arrangements in East Asia. This article examines how Nationalist China imagined and attempted to improve the postwar status of the Chinese diaspora in host countries. During the war, Nationalist China envisaged the removal of discriminatory treatment against the Chinese diaspora and planned to advocate racial equality. However, this equality was often intended to be parity with white people and Japanese rather than other Asians. Some Chinese officials even claimed that the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia should receive preferential treatment, which resonated with their perceptions that Chinese were superior to other Asians. As atrocities against Chinese migrants in Southeast Asia after the war mounted, China was forced to concentrate on saving their lives and assets. At the Asian Relations Conference, held in India in March–April 1947, Chinese delegates defended the Chinese diaspora against sceptical delegates of Southeast Asian nations. Although the conference delegates reached an agreement on treating foreign migrants in each country fairly, the Chinese diaspora still found itself in a precarious position.