| Publication |
2006.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Focusing on the development emphasis in discussions of Chinese migration abroad, this article interrogates the connection between the Chinese discourse of overseas development and the domestic stress on "constructing civilization" and improving the "quality" of the population. Like some Western states earlier in history, China is becoming a source of foreign investment and a participant in international development discourse (though not in its current institutions) while intensely engaged in a modernizing process at home that it feels is still far from completion. Chinese migrants abroad are central to both the process and the discourse. How, then, does the new role in overseas development fit into Chinese discourses of domestic modernization? More particularly, how do encounters with overseas subjects of development affect the position of development's putative Chinese harbingers? I argue that the view of China as having taken over the torch of the global modernizing mission unites otherwise disparate groups (government officials, migrant entrepreneurs and Christians) and is central to understanding the Chinese view of the country's position in the world.
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