Chinese entrepreneurship in a globalized world: place, space, and mobilities

Abstract

Diasporic Chinese entrepreneurship is a longstanding phenomenon for scholarly research (Zhou 2021). While the study of overseas Chinese entrepreneurs is an important subject matter in itself, much of the social science literature has taken on the perspectives of migrant-receiving countries and drawn on the diverse adaptation or integration experiences of Chinese migrants and their descendants to develop concepts such as ethnic enclaves, social capital, embeddedness, bounded solidary, and enforceable trust (Portes and Zhou 1992; You and Zhou 2019). Although historically, entrepreneurship has been a vital aspect of diasporic Chinese life and is crucial for understanding Chinese migration, immigrant transnationalism, and ancestral homeland or hometown development, scholars have increasingly shifted their focus to consider a rising China as the context from which contemporary Chinese entrepreneurship is developed and globalized. In Mainland China, nation-wide economic reforms enacted since the late 1970s have given rise to a burgeoning entrepreneurial sector, in which participants consist of not only Chinese citizens, but also diasporic Chinese, including internationally educated students, migrant returnees and transnationals (Saxenian 2002; Wang, Zweig, and Lin 2011), as well as international migrants who have arrived in China to pursue economic opportunities with or without initial intention to be entrepreneurs (Lyons, Brown, and Li 2012). While many scholars of Chinese entrepreneurship have written on the relations between diasporic Chinese entrepreneurs and their ancestral homeland from historical and cultural perspectives, few have attempted to examine China as the “host” context for diverse entrepreneurial undertakings. How unique is China for entrepreneurship? What does China mean as a place for individuals to launch their entrepreneurial pursuits? In this special issue, we address these questions through four studies of entrepreneurship by Chinese mainlanders, diasporic Chinese, and international migrants in China. We challenge the widely held cultural explanation of Chinese entrepreneurship and highlight the significance of China as a host context in which place and space intersect through the movement of international and internal migrants in affecting entrepreneurship. This editorial first provides a brief overview of the four contributions to this special issue, followed by some thoughts to move this line of research forward.