Bourgeois Hong Kong and its South Seas connections: a cultural logic of overseas Chinese nationalism, 1898–1933

This paper elaborates upon a cultural logic of overseas Chinese nationalism. Around the early twentieth century, some bourgeois members of overseas Chinese in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Seas mobilised Confucianism as an ethno‐symbol. The latter helped the overseas Chinese bourgeoisie to counter the quest for greater secularisation and to confront the surge of anti‐imperialist movements. The implication of this research is threefold. First, this research seeks to recentre the role of overseas Chinese in China's modern transformation. Second, this study calls for decentring the May Fourth agendas in the understanding of overseas Chinese nationalism. Third, the project tries to situate overseas Chinese nationalism in an extraterritorial space, including the Confucian zone created in the dialogical connections between Confucian intellectual elites (such as Zheng Xiaoxu and Chen Huanzhang) and overseas Chinese bourgeois networks that converged in Hong Kong and spread transnationally.