Dynamics of Diaspora Policy in China: From Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping

• In Event: The Politics of Diasporic Mobilization and Repression

Abstract

In the recent decade, with the rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on the global stage, and the ever more legal Chinese emigrating to all corners of the world since the Chinese economic reform, overseas Chinese have increasingly supported their authoritarian motherland socially, economic, and, more importantly, politically. In some ways, this owes to the PRC’s diaspora policy and engagement which potentially strengthens overseas Chinese’s connection to its motherland. Earlier scholarship has focused mainly on Chinese diaspora policies under Xi (Jinping) era, highlighting structural changes to the governance of, emphasis on public diplomacy expectations from, and demand for telling a good authoritarian story to the world by overseas Chinese. As for studies prior to Xi era, they have offered history and facts on the policies relevant to diasporas, with a focus on their contribution to the economic development of the PRC after the market reform. While such literature contributes to this line of scholarship by drawing a fine line between Deng and Hu-wen administrations, and the Xi one, what has been largely overlooked is how diaspora policy and engagement varies specifically in the extent of its social, political, and economic incentives (and disincentives) under different leaderships. This is important because it provides implications for changes in the Chinese Communist Party’s political and ideological landscape, and to anticipate potential impacts on overseas Chinese diasporas and their political engagement in both host and home nations. To obtain relevant data for content analysis using both latent Dirichlet allocation and structural topic modeling, policy documents and official statements on overseas Chinese and Chinese diasporas are scraped from the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. Preliminary results show that while under all three leaderships, economically related policies constitute the majority of the discussion, under Deng and Hu-wen’s era, the tangible goods and infrastructure are widely seen, while such prominence declined in Xi era, which also significantly encouraged Chinese diasporas to pursue economic cooperations related to traditional and social media, software and digitalization.

Author

• Yun-Tzu Chang