The Shifting Fate of China’s Pacific Diaspora

Abstract

This chapter attempts to bring into focus one of the more contentious aspects of the People’s Republic of China’s engagement with the Pacific: migration. Overseas Chinese communities have been both the source and the target of social unrest in Pacific urban centres, and Pacific leaders identify tensions around these communities as one of the major barriers to China’s engagement with the Pacific (Little Red Podcast 2019). This chapter will focus on historical trends among the Chinese migrant community in Vanuatu and question a number of concepts that have become accepted in Pacific Studies. In particular, we question the sharp distinction drawn by scholars and media commentators between ‘old’ and ‘new’ Chinese communities in the Pacific, even though this shorthand has been adopted by the Chinese communities themselves.1