Cosmopolitan Capitalists: Hong Kong and the Chinese Diaspora at the End of the 20th Century, by Gary G. Hamilton (ed.)

 

7: Deciding to Stay, Deciding to Move, Deciding not to Decide

Wong Siu-Lun

 

Hong Kong had a date with destiny. ₁ On July 1, 1997, the territory ceased to be a British colony. It became part of China again. The changeover was a historical event, which signified the end of Western imperialism and colonization in Asia. At the same time, it represented an unprecedented case of a capitalist economy being subsumed under a socialist polity. Hong Kong has been promised a large measure of autonomy within the framework of "one country, two systems." Innovative as it is, that framework remains untried. Because of the inherent uncertainty and suspense, the world continues to watch the territory with keen interest and concern. In the period leading up to the handover, those of us from Hong Kong became accustomed to the standard questions posed by outsiders. The usual opening query was "What will happen after 1997?" Then the inevitable follow-up: "Are you leaving Hong Kong?"

To leave or not to leave? As Hong Kong residents, we agonized over that question for a long time. It was a favorite topic for local opinion polls. In one of the last ones, conducted on April 30, 1997, exactly 62 days before the changeover, about 19.1 percent of the respondents said they would leave Hong Kong if given a free choice. Of the remainder. 77.6 percent said they would stay, and 3.3 percent answered that they did not know (Asia Television News, April 30, 1997).

These findings are in line with those reported in previous studies. For instance, in the 1991 emigration survey in which I took part, about 13 percent of our respondents expressed a wish to leave, 77.2 percent said they would stay, and 9.8 percent were undecided (Lam, Fan, and Skeldon 1995: 116). The only significant difference between the two sets of findings is that the proportion of people who decided not to decide has shrunk in the intervening years. As the fateful date drew near, more and more people apparently felt that they had to make up their minds.

Some of these decisions were already translated into action before the July 1 handover. After the Sino-British agreement over the future of Hong Kong was signed in 1984, there was a gathering wave of emigration. The number of emigrants rose from about 22,400 in 1980 to 30,000 in 1987. Then came the Tiananmen incident in China in 1989, which dealt a great blow to popular confidence in Hong Kong. Gripped by depression and panic, many people in the territory flocked to various consulates to apply for emigration. The number of people who were leaving doubled the following year. It reached a peak of 66,000 in 1992 and hovered at this level till 1994. Since then, the outflow has subsided. For 1996, the number of emigrants came down to 40,300. But it is still too early to say whether this represents just a temporary ebb in the flow, or whether it signifies that the peak of the exodus is over (on these emigration figures, see Wong 1994a; South China Morning Post, September 12, 1996, p. 1; Ming Pao Daily News, May 2, 1997, p. A16). Whatever the case may be, we can certainly say that Hong Kong has averaged an annual loss of approximately 1 percent of its population through emigration during this decade.

The sense of loss is induced not simply by the scale of the outflow. It is compounded by the quality of the emigrants, who are predominantly yuppies—young, educated, middle-class professionals who are bilingual and posses other skills. Their popular destinations are the "migrant states" (Wang 1993) of Canada, the United States, and Australia, which are actively recruiting talented immigrants throughout the world. There has been some alarm in Hong Kong over the apparently harmful effects of this depletion of local elites. But as I have argued elsewhere (Wong 1992), I believe such an alarm, pertaining in particular to the problems of brain drain, social anomie, and legitimacy crisis, is largely exaggerated and misplaced. More importantly, the alarmist view betrays narrow vision. It is too engrossed with the internal impacts of the current wave of emigration and thus loses sight of the wider significance of the phenomenon.

In a forum I attended in April 1997 in Manila on the transition in Hong Kong, a participant invoked the familiar specter of the worst case scenario—what if catastrophe strikes, Hong Kong collapses, and its people run amok? Has the Philippine government prepared any contingency plan, he asked, to repatriate the large number of Filipinos working in the territory? The official in charge of labor and employment in the Philippines gave an eloquent answer that cut to the heart of the matter. He said, "Hong Kong is an idea. Hong Kong is a dream. Hong Kong is a reality. It will not disappear after the handover. If worse comes to worst, it will resurrect itself elsewhere." Then he added, "There will always be employment opportunities for Filipino domestic workers."

What the Philippine official tried to capture is an entrepreneurial spirit that the Hong Kong emigrants carry with them, a spirit that is highly mobile and resilient. Many of these emigrants are turning themselves into entrepreneurs and small businessmen after their relocation. They are spinning transnational business networks that bind their host countries with Hong Kong and China. Thus the present wave of emigration is actually enhancing the global reach of the Hong Kong economy by spawning a host of cosmopolitan capitalists abroad. In the process, it creates a strong force that contributes to the invigoration of what Hamilton (1996) calls "overseas Chinese capitalism," a form of capitalism that is not domestic in nature, that defies national and geographical boundaries. But what constitutes this strong force? The key sources of dynamism, I shall argue, spring from the interaction between ambivalent identities and family strategies, the use of personal networks as a form of capital, and the changing meaning of home as upheld by the Hong Kong migrants.

 

Identities And Families

In Hong Kong, the desire to emigrate is linked with an individual's sense of identity. But that identity is not simply a product of personal preferences. It is rooted in family experiences and strategies. The family is the basic unit in shaping decisions on whether to leave or to stay. As the key decision-making unit and the bearer of the entrepreneurial spirit, the Hong Kong Chinese family typically seeks to maximize its autonomy and avoid subjugation to state domination. Such an orientation produces a special style of overseas Chinese capitalism that is not dependent on any particular political order (Hamilton 1996).

 

Ambivalent Identities

In our 1991 emigration survey, we discovered that our respondents, who were all ethnic Chinese, tended to embrace a mixed and ambivalent sense of identity. They were torn between regarding themselves primarily as "Chinese" or "Hongkongese." Their views were split. About 48.4 percent of the sample opted for a basic identity as a Hong Kong person, while some 45.9 percent regarded themselves as Chinese. And their professed identities affected their attitudes toward emigration. As I have observed in an earlier publication,

"... it was found that those who identified themselves as Hongkongese were actually more likely to consider leaving the territory. Respondents who declared that they would stay were more inclined to regard themselves as Chinese. Such a difference emerged most clearly when respondents were asked about their decisions after 1997. For those who identified themselves as Chinese, 59.9 percent said they would definitely stay. Just 5.1 percent indicated that they would definitely move after 1997. But for those who regarded themselves as Hongkongese, only 45.5 percent said they would definitely stay and about 6.4 percent indicated that they would definitely move. It seems that the Hong Kong identity is a mobile one, not fixed to a locality." (Wong 1994a: 381)

Besides being mixed and mobile, the identities as upheld by the Hong Kong emigrants have several additional characteristics. First, they are tinged with a strong sense of pragmatism. The Hong Kong migrants tend to approach issues of passports and nationalities largely as an instrumental issue. They referred to the acquisition of foreign passports as the purchase of "insurance policies" to guard against political risks. In our 1991 survey, we asked our respondents the question, "As 1997 approaches, some people in Hong Kong are emigrating to foreign countries. Do you think their action is morally right or wrong?" The majority of the sample, about 55.6 percent, would not be drawn into making an answer. They suspended judgment, maintaining that it was neither right nor wrong. For the rest, around 22.5 percent actually approved of the act and only 11.3 percent felt it was wrong (Wong 1994a: 381).

Second, the identities tend to be multiple and pluralistic. Hong Kong migrants are keen collectors of passports and nationalities. In order to maximize options and security, they are seldom content to stick to just one "insurance policy." For instance, the Yip family which I interviewed as part of our emigration project, is quite typical. In the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen incident, the Yips rushed to apply for emigrant visas to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and Singapore. All these countries accepted them. Then, one by one, the Yips gave up the visas when they were required to move. They held on to the Singapore offer, which did not force them to make up their minds, until several years after 1997.

Third, these identities are often very costly to acquire. Many Hong Kong migrants have to give up their careers or part with their savings in exchange for new sets of passports and identities. In our 1991 survey, we asked respondents who were already working whether they expected their income to increase or decrease if they were to emigrate. Over half of them, 51.9 percent, anticipated a reduction. Only 29.4 percent believed that they would earn more after relocation (Lam, Fan, and Skeldon 1995: 130). In other words, most of them were not economic migrants looking for quick improvements in their livelihood overseas. If they leave, they have to pay quite dearly for their decisions. They either have to accept a lower income, or invest considerable sums in business immigration programs with little hope of profits or even of getting their money back (Smart 1994).

Fourth, the identities are flexible and situational in nature. Migrants from the China coast have perfected the art of managing multiple identities, which is the source of their cosmopolitan charm. Let me just cite as an example the Shanghainese cotton spinners in Hong Kong, whom I interviewed in the late 1970s:

"According to the situation, a Shanghainese can activate regional ties of various scope.... Like insects with a protective coloration, his identity can undergo subtle, and if need be, rapid changes to suit the context of interaction. In international forums such as textile negotiations, the cotton spinners usually present themselves as industrialists from Hong Kong, a vulnerable free port of the developing region of Asia. Vis-à-vis their foreign buyers or the senior British officials of the colony, they are Chinese. Meeting in regional associations, they are people from Ningpo or Shanghai city who enjoy their local cuisine and theatrical entertainment. When they participate in the activities of their trade association, they are modern, Westernized businessmen. (Wong 1988: 111-112)

Then lastly, these identities are effective shields to deflect state domination. Hong Kong migrants tend to use them as bargaining chips when negotiating with political authorities to gain autonomy of action. Modern governments, in their efforts at nation building, are often keen to demand exclusive allegiance from their nationals and to impose rigid classifications of citizenship. But in the case of Hong Kong, the large number of its people holding foreign passports of all sorts have forced the Chinese government to relax its nationality law and adopt a flexible definition of a Chinese national in Hong Kong post-1997. In effect, the Chinese government turned a blind eye to the issue of dual nationality in the territory. It announced that all ethnic Chinese in Hong Kong shall be regarded as Chinese nationals after the handover as long as they do not declare formally to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) government that they are holding foreign passports (South China Morning Post, April 5, 1997, p. 1; Ming Pao Daily News, April 5, 1997, p. A1). Similarly, foreign governments, such as Australia, have introduced flexible residential requirements to accommodate the high mobility of the new immigrants from Hong Kong and elsewhere.

 

Family Experiences

So far, I have been discussing the question of identities mainly at the level of individual attitudes as revealed in survey findings. In our research project, we tried to supplement the survey method with longitudinal in-depth interviews with 30 families selected according to their emigration propensities and socioeconomic backgrounds. Through those interviews, we came to realize that the diverse identities held by our respondents were rooted in their social experiences, particularly those transmitted through their families. We discerned four patterns of these identities and family experiences. We call them respectively the loyalists, the locals, the waverers, and the cosmopolitans.

Loyalists

The loyalists welcome reversion, which they see as good for their families. They are not well-to-do. Economic concerns dominate their views. To them, the past means hard times. The closing of the border between Hong Kong and the mainland in the early 1950s divided some of these working-class families. Others later fled rural poverty and entered Hong Kong illegally. They are now grateful that the turn towards privatization in China has improved the position of those family members whom they left behind. They expect China to continue its economic progress after reunification with Hong Kong. Loyalists were born in China and spent their formative years there. Because they emigrated to Hong Kong late in their lifetimes, their ties to Chinese kin are ongoing and dense. They cross the border often to see their Chinese kin, and hope for closer contact after reunification. With few relatives living abroad, the loyalists have no plans to leave. Their attention is drawn to China.

Locals

The locals expect China to continue to its economic and political progress, but they have few personal connections to China. Nor do they express an affinity to the British. They are firmly attached to Hong Kong and accept the changeover without fanfare. They were born to working-and lower-middle class families who were not subject to political movements on the mainland. Most are fairly young. Because they were brought up in Hong Kong, they are politically neutral. They are closely attached to the local cultural lifestyle, which includes wide-ranging personal freedoms and the right to self expression. Trepidation about reversion is based mainly on their fear of losing this Hong Kong way of life. These locals have most of their important kin in Hong Kong. They no longer have close bonds to China. Few have relatives abroad. Thus, emigrant kin do not form a dense overseas group that these families wish to join. They are not torn in different geographical directions. Their focus is on Hong Kong.

Waverers

Waverers are those families that want to emigrate but have been turned down by foreign countries. Over the course of our interviews, many changed their attitudes from critical anxiety to one of "wait and see," and even to acceptance of reversion to China. Waverers are mostly working class. Their lack of resources makes it hard for them to emigrate. Once rejected, they do not have the resources to reapply to other countries. They have not merely given up, however. They modify their attitudes. Cynical and negative about China when we first met them, they are now more optimistic. They expect no immediate change in Hong Kong, and they do not expect their children to suffer. But they distrust the Chinese system and prefer what the British have done in the colony to what they see in China. Although they were born mainly in Hong Kong, many of their kin live abroad and others have applied to emigrate. They recognize few kin across the border on the mainland. Their circle includes those who are thinking of going abroad or who have already gone overseas, which colors their attitude toward the changeover. However, the bitter choice of the waverers is sweetened by Hong Kong's prosperity. They end up reasoning that while they can not leave, at least they will be economically better off in Hong Kong.

Cosmopolitans

The cosmopolitans were opposed to reunification with China and preferred life as it was under British rule. They are mostly from political refugee families that fled China. They generally have upper-middle-class backgrounds and were once regarded as class enemies by China. They have deep misgivings about the Chinese political system. Many of their close family members suffered persecution under Chinese communism. The collective memory of losing family properties on the mainland fueled their anxiety about the changeover. But their response was not panic and exit. Instead, they planned their move carefully for years. They organized for emigration well in advance of 1997. Others have not experienced class-based discrimination in China. Yet their experiences as businessmen or professionals in China shook their trust in China's ability to handle the delicately balanced Hong Kong economy. The cosmopolitans were born mainly in Hong Kong. Some were born in China of well-to-do parents and fled after land reform. They lacked ongoing contact with their kin on the mainland because of this politically caused rupture. Most have kin living in the West, as well as close friends and classmates abroad, with whom they keep in contact. They are part of a stratum that spans the seas.

After looking at these thumbnail sketches of the four types of identities, it should be clear that regularities in political views toward the changeover are formed by family experiences. But it is equally evident that socioeconomic status and personal networks also figure prominently. Let us now turn to the significance of networks in influencing decisions to leave or to stay.

 

Networks As Capital ₂

In our research, we discover three salient features in the use of personal networks for emigration purposes in Hong Kong. First, there is a quantitative variation in terms of occupational class. On the whole, the higher the class position of the family, the larger the number of social ties that can be mobilized for emigration. Options increase as one moves up the social ladder. Second, there is a qualitative variation, too, in the type of networks used by members of different occupational classes. Working-class emigrants tend to depend heavily on kinship ties, while affluent emigrants are more inclined to activate diverse bonds of friendship. Third, members of the lower middle class, whose livelihood hinges on bureaucratic careers and wages, have the lowest emigration propensity. It seems that the assets they possess are the least mobile and transferable.

These findings suggest that it may be fruitful to regard networks as a form of capital. This idea is akin to the concept of social capital as proposed by scholars such as Pierre Bourdieu (1986) and James Coleman (1988). By putting forth the notion of network capital, we are trying to elaborate on Bourdieu's idea and relate guanxi and connections directly to the question of social inequality and class formation. When network capital is put on a par with other forms of capital, such as economic and cultural capital, we may come to a better appreciation of the diversity and fluidity in the class structure of Chinese communities such as Hong Kong. It would also lead us to identify at least three analytically distinct class segments that correspond to the three forms of capital, namely entrepreneurs with networks as assets, capitalists with economic means of production as properties, and professionals with knowledge and skill as resources. These class segments are of course only abstract theoretical constructions or ideal types. In reality, they overlap and seldom exist in a pure form.

 

Institutionalization

In comparison with economic and cultural capital, network capital is the least institutionalized form of assets. On the whole, economic capital is institutionalized in the form of property rights, and cultural capital in the form of educational qualifications (Bourdieu 1986: 243). Both forms depend heavily on the reliability of social institutions or system trust. Network capital, on the other hand, is basically a diffused asset. It may sometimes take institutional form as an association of one kind or another, but it is generally lodged in reciprocal relations that may or may not be maintained by the parties concerned. In order to reduce uncertainty and to reinforce mutual obligations, personal trust plays a more prominent role as a cementing force in the accumulation of network capital. Therefore, relatively speaking, network capital is less dependent on system trust though it can never be completely free of this form of trust as resources such as classmate networks are derived from reliable educational institutions. (On the distinction between personal and system trust, see Luhmann [1979] and S. L. Wong [1991]).

Because of the different degrees of institutionalization, the three forms of capital tend to have distinctive patterns of geographical mobility and are drawn to different destinations. The movement of economic capital typically follows the logic of comparative advantage. In the case of Hong Kong, for example, industrialists in the cotton-spinning sector had a tendency to diversify their investments into Southeast Asia, Latin America, and parts of Africa where labor costs were relatively low and textile quotas were available (Wong 1988: 39).

The movement of cultural capital is affected by the recognition of credentials and compatibility with educational systems in host countries. Consequently, as revealed in our study, the most popular destinations for the present wave of educated migrants from Hong Kong are English-speaking countries such as Canada, the United States, and Australia.

Network capital, being less dependent on system trust, has greater scope for diffusion and is better able to transcend boundaries. It tends to spread with the Chinese diaspora through personal connections. It can venture into territories with shaky institutional frameworks for business operations, such as the People's Republic of China and Vietnam, and still manage to flourish (Smart and Smart 1991; Wong 1995).

 

Network Capacity

After contrasting network capital with other forms of capital, it is necessary to examine the heterogeneous nature of networks and its implications more closely. Different types of networks exist, with various capacities for facilitating mobility and economic competition. There are kin and non-kin ties, and there are strong and weak linkages (Granovetter 1982). In our study, we have found that reliance on kin ties and strong linkages is more characteristic of the working class. Members of the affluent class are actually disinclined to make use of such ties and often refuse help from family members and relatives. They tend to draw on diverse, weak ties of friendship instead.

We can say that a restricted and elaborated style of network construction exists among our respondents. Dependence on kin relations and strong ties is the hallmark of the restricted network style, while flexible use of non-kin relationships and weak ties is the key feature of the elaborated network style. An elaborated network style is useful in economic competition because it generates greater access to sources of information and provides more autonomy. It can create networks rich in "structural holes," that is, networks with relationships of low redundancy. Ronald Burt (1992: 21) asserts that such "optimized" networks have two design principles. The first is efficiency, achieved by concentrating on the primary contact and allowing relationships with others in the cluster to weaken until they become indirect relations. The second is effectiveness, attained through differentiating primary from secondary contacts in order to focus resources on preserving the former.

 

Moral Economy

The "design" principles as set out by Burt alert us to what may be called the moral economy of network capital. In the attempt to optimize benefits, individuals have to be calculating to manipulate relations in their favor. Granovetter seems to be conscious of the moral ambivalence inherent in network construction when he states wryly, "Lest readers of SWT [Strength of Weak Ties] and this chapter ditch all their close friends and set out to construct large networks of acquaintances, I had better say that strong ties can also have some value" (1982: 113; see also Burt 1992: 262).

This defensive statement reveals the basic reason why those who are skilled at networking, such as entrepreneurs, tend to incur popular hostility and resentment in a society (Yang 1994: 51-64; Chu and Ju 1993: 133-134, 150-3). They appear too cunning and pragmatic. They spurn the sacredness of personal relations, turning ends into means. Thus they are open to charges of undermining social solidarity and eroding group allegiance. These are the dark sides of network capital.

 

Conversion And Reproduction

Another source of the hostility toward network construction can be traced to the sites of tension with other forms of capital, especially with cultural capital. In Hong Kong society, studies have shown that people tend to seek advancement through two major channels of mobility: the entrepreneurial route of starting one's own business and the credential route of acquiring professional qualifications (T.W.P. Wong 1991: 164-165). Both network capital and cultural capital are apparently valued and sought after. Yet other studies have revealed a strong anti-capitalist sentiment and deep distrust of entrepreneurs among the educated and professional elites (S. L.Wong 1994b: 230-232). Evidently friction and rivalry exist between carriers of network and cultural capital.

Such tension draws our attention to the problem of conversion and reproduction of various forms of capital. The conversion of cultural capital into network capital in the process of migration is relatively well documented by now. Research on small factory owners in Hong Kong has found that many of these entrepreneurs were immigrants from China with high educational attainment. But their credentials were not recognized in Hong Kong, thus forcing them to seek advancement through industrial endeavors instead (Sit and Wong 1989: 97-100). In the present wave of emigration from Hong Kong, the educated and professional elites are facing a similar barrier overseas, where their qualifications and experience are not fully recognized. A substantial number of them are thus turning themselves into entrepreneurs by setting up small businesses in destination countries such as Australia (Lever-Tracy et al. 1991).

However, conversion is by no means a one-way process. We have found that our respondents express a nearly universal concern for their children's education. Hong Kong Chinese entrepreneurs, whether potential or actual, share with others the same preoccupation with the cultivation of cultural capital for themselves and among their offspring (Ong 1992). Thus there appears to exist a cyclical, inter-generational process by which network capital is converted into cultural capital and vice versa. But precisely how is network capital reproduced in the family and passed down through the generations? What role does gender in particular play in the accumulation and transmission of this type of capital? We know very little about these issues and more research is clearly needed.

 

Neither Emigrants Nor Returnees

Although many Hong Kong people have left the territory in the past few years, a sizable portion of them are coming back. However, the precise magnitude of this reverse flow is not known because the Hong Kong government does not collect systematic migration statistics.

We have an official estimate that about 12 percent of those who emigrated during the 1980s have returned. But an academic study suggests that the return rate for that period is much higher, probably close to 30 percent (Kee and Skeldon 1994). Whatever their exact numbers, they are substantial enough to have confounded the official population projections. In 1996, the Census and Statistics Department in Hong Kong revealed that the local population has grown much more rapidly than expected. It had reached the 6.31 million mark, exceeding the official projection by more than 7 percent. This sizeable discrepancy was attributed mainly to large-scale return migration, which was said to amount to more than 100,000 in the single year of 1995-96 (Ming Pao Daily News, September 18, 1996: A2).

Those who are coming back to Hong Kong are often called "returnees." But this is actually a misnomer because nobody knows whether they are coming back to stay (Kwong 1993: 151-152). Furthermore, it is unlikely that they are giving up the citizenship they acquired abroad. For most of them, it seems that the decision of whether to leave or to stay has been deferred indefinitely. They are thus neither "emigrants" nor "returnees" in the strict sense. Rather, they are engaged in a form of "experimental migration" (Wang 1993: 133), made possible by the growing permeability of national borders and advancements in global transportation and communication.

 

The "Astronauts"

The fluidity of their status is better captured by the new and figurative term "astronauts," which carries a double meaning. At one level, it is a Cantonese pun, which means literally "persons with absentee wives," highlighting the fact that many of those who come back are leaving their spouses and children abroad. At another level, it refers to their frequent long-distance flights shuttling back and forth between Hong Kong and their new countries of adoption.

These "astronauts" constitute a novel phenomenon with several significant features. First of all, they tend to possess more versatile skills and valuable assets that set them apart from traditional Chinese migrants who were predominantly coolies and traders. Mostly educated and bilingual, they include quite a number of professionals and entrepreneurs in their midst. Their talents are being actively courted by Hong Kong and various destination countries that compete to attract them to their fold. They can therefore afford to pick and choose, and move to and fro. Together, they form a horde of what I call "roaming yuppies" in the contemporary world (Wong 1994a).

Secondly, they are creating a pattern of migratory movement that is unprecedented in Chinese communities. Instead of individuals, families are now on the move together. In the past, the usual pattern was for able-bodied men to venture overseas to seek a better livelihood. Parents, wives, and children were generally left in their native communities, sustained and cared for by relatives and neighbors. The current practice is to relocate the entire family abroad. In many instances, able-bodied men then return to Hong Kong to work, leaving the women, the young, and sometimes even the old to fend for themselves and adjust as well as they can to their new environment. The gruesome murder of an elderly couple from Hong Kong in their Canadian home in April 1997 provides a poignant example of the unforeseen consequences of this shift in migration pattern. The couple, both in their seventies, were due to return to Hong Kong to celebrate their newly acquired Canadian citizenship when they were apparently beaten to death by burglars. Their eldest son, who emigrated to Vancouver in 1989 and sponsored them to join him in 1992, moved back to Hong Kong with his wife and children in 1995 after securing a job at one of the local universities. Therefore, the elderly couple, living by themselves in their house in Vancouver, was vulnerable to attack (South China Morning Post, April 2, 1997).

 

Where Is Home?

When families rather than individuals are on the move, the notion of home base inevitably undergoes change. Contemporary Hong Kong migrants have to confront the question, where is home? For their predecessors, the Chinese sojourners going overseas in the past, the answer was unambiguous. Home was the native village in China, where one's ancestors were buried. They maintained a distinction between what G. W. Skinner (1971: 275) calls residence and abode. The former was permanent while the latter was temporary. Should they be unfortunate enough to die overseas in their place of abode, it was imperative that their bodies, or at least their bones, be sent home for a proper burial (Sinn 1989: 71).

For the present-day "astronauts" from Hong Kong, however, the matter is far less clear-cut. Their conceptions of home are more divergent. Some still uphold the traditional idea that the most desirable resting place remains the native village. Failing that, they should at least be returned to Hong Kong for burial, with the name of their native place engraved on their tombstones as symbolic reminders of home. Then there are those who have uprooted themselves and found their home in their adopted land. A recent obituary published in the South China Morning Post is illustrative. It reads: "CHAN, SHUN, born in China, lived in Hong Kong and settled in Vancouver since 1989, passed away peacefully on May 25, 1997. Survived by his loving wife, sons Tom and Caleb, daughters Helen, Esther, and Jacqueline, and 17 grandchildren." The memorial service was held at the University of British Columbia's Chan Shun concert hall, of which he was a benefactor, and he was buried in a cemetery in Vancouver (South China Morning Post,May 29, 1997: 8; The Hong Kong Economic Journal, May 29, 1997: 14).

Yet, for the majority of the Hong Kong migrants, the idea of home is probably more slippery and less definite. They tend to maintain multiple abodes in various places, being unsure in their own minds of where they would call home. In a study based on in-depth interviews with 18 returned migrants from Canada working in Hong Kong, Wendy Chan (1996: abstract) sums up their feelings of uncertainty and anguish this way:

"The results of my study suggest that the returned migrants were "reluctant exiles" in the first place, and they are now living in a state of migrancy and "homelessness." However, while my subjects have failed to find home in the rationalist sense of the term, they still cannot accept homelessness as celebrated in the postmodernist view, and hence, the search for home continues. For they are "home but not home."

In their search for home as described by Wendy Chan, one place is conspicuous by its absence. They may be agonizing over the choice between Vancouver, Toronto or Hong Kong, but none of them mentions his native village in the Chinese mainland as a possibility to be considered. It is apparent that China is no longer home to them. Such an orientation and sense of estrangement from China has been thrown into relief by Cheung Yuen-ting, the director of the movie The Soong Sisters. In the program publicizing the gala premiere of her film, Cheung (1997) writes:

"Born and raised in the British Colony of Hong Kong, I have never set foot on China until 1989, only to discover a country and a people I did not understand. With the coming of 1997 (the year that Hong Kong will stop being a colony and go back as part of China), I try to re-establish a link with the past, to study the history of China as we step towards the future, and to find out who I really am.

During this search, I discovered three women who lived at the turn of the century, the Soong Sisters, whose situation bore a striking resemblance to our predicament. Sent by their pioneering father to study abroad during their childhood, when most Chinese women still had their feet bound, they came back from the West as total strangers to a country they called their home—a home they hardly recognized, and a home that hardly recognized them....

As a filmmaker facing the imminent handover, and all the unknowns of the future, I can understand and share the sentiment of these women living a century before me. And by writing about them and China of the time, it seems that I have come to understand more about myself and China now."

 

Cultural Affinity And Economic Rationality

It is this weakened emotional attachment that has enabled many roaming yuppies from Hong Kong to venture into China as investors in the past decade and to approach the mainland as an economic frontier. Probably for the first time in the history of Chinese migration overseas, these Hong Kong migrants are not returning to China as their home. Unlike the sojourners before them, they are not going back to their native villages to have their status confirmed and achievements celebrated. They do not feel the urge to display their wealth and glorify their ancestors. They are free from the heavy bondage of kinship and community obligations. Thus they are able to combine cultural affinity with economic rationality. They can mobilize social networks with flexibility, as these networks are no longer firmly embedded in strong attachments. Moving into China as entrepreneurs, they can look for economic opportunities dispassionately, unclouded by emotional bonds and insulated by psychological distance. We may say that they are engaging in a form of secular rather than sacred return. China is no longer the normative center of their cultural universe. As a result, they are able to forge a cosmopolitan form of Chineseness and entrepreneurship that is emerging as a potent, transnational force in the global economy today.

 

Conclusion

Emigration is nothing new to Hong Kong. Since it became a British colony in 1842, Hong Kong has been a port of embarkation for large numbers of people moving from China to other parts of the world. Throughout the modern era, Hong Kong has been a city of migrants. Historical transition is not new to the territory either. It has lived through the Chinese Revolutions of 1911 and 1949 but still managed to survive.

When Hong Kong confronted the last transition in 1949, the agonizing decision many Chinese had to make was whether to stay on the mainland or flee to the territory for shelter. At that time, the historian Chen Yin-ke made a fateful decision. He rejected the option of seeking refuge in Hong Kong because he could not bear the humiliation of living under British colonialism. He chose to stay in Guangzhou, as far away from Beijing as possible but still on Chinese soil. That did not spare him, however, and he died a tragic death in 1969 during the Cultural Revolution.

But as a historian of great vision and integrity, he held the unfashionable conviction, as early as 1919 during the May Fourth movement, that the modernization of China can succeed only by building on the strengths of traditional culture, such as respect for the family and the refined art of handling human relations. He predicted that as industrial enterprises developed in China, the commercial skills of the Chinese would flourish, "and the Chinese should be able to become the rich merchants of the world." (Wu Xue-zhao 1992: 9) That prediction, on the rise of capitalism with Chinese characteristics, seems to be coming true at long last. Yet, he did not anticipate that one of the main forces propelling that form of capitalism would be unleashed from Hong Kong, a place he spurned, a place tainted with colonialism, a place that is not quite genuinely Chinese but that has become rather cosmopolitan, and a place that permits its inhabitants the liberty to indulge in the agonies of deciding whether to leave or to stay, or to move back and forth without making a final decision.

 

Notes

Note 1:  This paper draws on the research findings of the project "Emigration from Hong Kong: Families, Networks, and Returnees," funded by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council from 1994 to 1997. I wish to thank the other members of the research team, in particular Janet Salaff, Ronald Skeldon, Fung Mei-ling, and Chiu Yue-tat, for their contributions and support. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the University of Washington on May 6, 1997, less than two months before Hong Kong's reversion to China. I have preserved the tone of the paper as it was delivered on that occasion.Back.

Note 2:  This section draws on my forthcoming article, co-authored with Janet Salaff, entitled "Network Capital: Emigration from Hong Kong" in The British Journal of Sociology. Back.

 

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