Overseas Chinese

The Overseas Chinese examines the ethnic identity of the Chinese from a contextual approach through essays observing the manner of adjustment in the different areas of their dispersal throughout the world. The authors evaluate the Chinese minority cultures scattered in many nations to discover the extent of ethnicity remaining and the reasons for any loss of culture. They found tremendously variant degrees of assimilation into the cultures of new homelands. In some cases—including Thailand, Peru, and the Philippines—the Chinese intermarried and adapted quickly, allowing much of their ethnicity to disappear. However, other cases, sometimes even in the same country as in the case of Thailand, the Chinese remained a separate ethnic group. Still other situations showed radical differences in ethnicity between a single generation. The authors examine the nature and reasons for these varied responses to different context by Chinese emigrants.