Changes in the Chinese Overseas Population, 1955 to 2007‪.‬

THE LITERATURE HAS ADOPTED TWO DIFFERENT perspectives in understanding the development of Chinese overseas communities. The first one, discussed widely in studies of overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, stresses the influences of China as the homeland, and the ties of Chinese immigrants to ancestral roots. The second one, used frequently to discuss Chinese in North America, focuses on conditions of the receiving country as key to understanding the social construction of Chinese as a racialized and marginalized minority. This paper uses population data in different regions and countries to assess the efficacy of these two perspectives, and discusses how homeland influences and changing conditions of receiving societies have played different but important roles in shaping the distribution and growth of global population of Chinese overseas in the period after the Second World War. CONTENDING VIEWS OF ORIGIN AND DESTINATION