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The Dr You Bao Shao Overseas Chinese Documentation and Research Center at Ohio University Libraries was established in 1993. Since its establishment, the center has been actively promoting worldwide institutional cooperation through conferences and joint meetings, including this First International Conference of Institutes and Libraries for Overseas Chinese Studies. The conference drew the attention of academic centers, research institutes, library collections, academic societies, university programs, and museums and brought together over 150 scholars, researchers, teachers, archivists, librarians, curators, and community activists worldwide. It includes four plenary sessions: locating, collecting, preserving, and sharing resources; cooperation of overseas Chinese research projects; digitizing and sharing resources on overseas Chinese; and publication and organization with established programs, curriculums, professional activities, and academic studies on overseas Chinese studies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the survival capability of Chaoshan people in the maritime world of the South China Sea amidst the changing monetary systems of the rival empires and political regimes from 1939 to 1945. It particularly focuses on overseas Chinese remittance business in Shantou under the Japanese rule. Local societies in coastal China and overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia experienced severe hardships due to the Sino-Japanese War, the Pacific War and the Chinese Civil War. As fighting among the rival empires and regimes intensified, Chinese migrant communities straddling between Southeast Asia and South China had to negotiate and adapt to survive these crises, regardless of whether they were government-affiliated or local autonomous subjects.

This research draws on archival materials to investigate the reactions of Chinese migrant communities in Chaoshan region in times of war and regime change. How did local maritime societies and overseas Chinese adapt to the harsh realities of the wartime? How did the Japanese Empire use Wang Jingwei’s puppet government in Nanjing to control the Chaoshan remittance network? How did the remittance network shift its operational structure in face of a wartime crisis?

Faced with the wartime crisis and the Japanese occupation, Chaoshan communities used a variety of survival strategies to protect and maintain the overseas Chinese remittance business. In dealing with remittances from Singapore, British Malay and Indonesia, they cooperated with the Japanese military authority and its puppet government to maximize the autonomy of their business operation in the Japanese-controlled East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere. On the other hand, to secure the flow of remittances from French Indochina and Thailand, the indirectly controlled territories in the Japanese Empire, Chaoshan merchants sought an alternative path of delivering remittances, known as the Dongxing route, to bypass the Japanese ban on private remittances from these two regions.

It would be a better research if more resources, including remittance receipts and documents during the Japanese occupation, could be found and used to show more detailed features of Chaoshan local society.

This research is the first one to investigate the contradictory features of local Chaoshan society during the Japanese occupation, an under-explored subject in the Chinese historiography.

This article was based on the information from The 5th International Conference of Institutes and Libraries for Chinese Overseas Studies held in the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada in which the author was a presenter in session 4.2.9a of the Early life of Yuan Shikai and the formation of Yuan family. The paper aims to include comprehensive analysis and development of the history of Chinese migration. An annotated bibliography of suggested readings was offered to highlight the subject knowledge for further research in this area.

The paper includes comprehensive analysis and development of the history of Chinese migration and the experiences and family histories of overseas Chinese in Canada. An annotated bibliography of suggested readings was offered to highlight the subject knowledge for further research in this area.

The paper offers full description and comprehensive analysis of the history of Chinese migration and overseas Chinese studies in Canada. A bbibliography of suggested readings was offered for further research in this area.

This research study has a strong subject focus on Chinese migration, overseas Chinese studies, and resource-sharing in the subject area. It is a specific field for research in Asian studies.

The result of this study will assist students, researchers, and the general public in the area of overseas Chinese studies and developing their interests in the social and historical value of Chinese migration history and resource-sharing in the area.

Very little research has been done in the area of Chinese migration and historical development. The paper would offer historians, sociologists, ethnologists, librarians, administrations, professors, as well as students in the fields of Asian history, anthropology, sociology, political science, geography, and other Asian-related interdisciplinary studies.

One of the most important cultural values in Chinese societies is family‐oriented collectivism. This cultural value has had much impact on the structures and strategies of overseas Chinese firms. Influenced by this cultural value, traditional Chinese firms prefer family ownership and stress hierarchy and centralized decision making, which in turn influence the business strategies of these firms. In recent years, however, the majority of Chinese societies have been in transition, and traditional Chinese culture is also changing. These developments have brought about changes in strategies of the overseas Chinese firms. To study these changes, this paper focuses on the manufacturing industries in a major emerging market, China, and reports evidence of changes in both culture and business strategy of overseas Chinese firms. Concludes with a discussion on the implications of the findings for both researchers and practitioners.

This paper examines the impact of culture on inter‐firm network development in international marketing. Three research questions about the influence of culture on network development were developed from the literature to focus case data collection and analysis. The data were collected from in‐depth interviews with network managers/owners of firms networking with other overseas firms entering into Australian and Asian markets. Differences and similarities between how overseas Chinese and Australian cultures impact on network development and strategies for developing and maintaining quality and long‐term relationship in cross‐cultural networks were identified. Implications for practice emphasise the importance of cultural adaptation.

Entrepreneurship research clearly documents the importance of human and social capital and stresses the way in which entrepreneurs take advantage of their own social affiliations and network strategies in pursuit of their entrepreneurial goals, yet the research on returnee entrepreneurs’ human and social capital is not sufficiently studied in the international context, in particular when returnees’ overseas human capital and social capital may be a misfit with local business environment. Using the data from Chinese returnee entrepreneurs’ venture activities in China, the purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of returnee entrepreneurs’ overseas capital (human and social) and domestic capital (human and social) on their venture performance in China, and further explore the interaction effect of different social and human capital with China’s entrepreneurial environment.

This study surveyed 500 start-up businesses created by returnee entrepreneurs in China to collect data. Self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data on their demographic information, the information about the human and social capital of these returnee entrepreneurs, including domestic and overseas capital, various performance measures, and other control variables ending up with 226 usable questionnaires.

The results show that Chinese returnee entrepreneurs’ overseas human capital and social capital, as well as their domestic social capital, but not domestic human capital, have a significant impact on their venture performance. In addition, while domestic entrepreneurial environment does not affect the impact of overseas human and social capital on venture performance, it does provide an important contextual setting for domestic capital to improve returnee entrepreneurs’ venture performance.

The findings help enrich the understanding of the dynamic interplays among Chinese returnee entrepreneurs’ domestic human capital and social capital, overseas human capital, and social capital, as well as the entrepreneurial environment for returnee entrepreneurs’ success, which makes an important contribution to the international entrepreneurship theory by showing that overseas human capital and social capital are not a misfit with local markets. It also provides empirical support for the mediating effect of entrepreneurial opportunity identification. The important role of entrepreneurial opportunity is empirically supported in an international context: entrepreneurship is all about the discovery of entrepreneurial opportunities and exploitation of this opportunity to create viable business entities for new products and services, even in the Chinese context, a culture which is very different from the ones where the entrepreneurship theory was developed.

The purpose of this research study is to explore the influence of perceived organizational support (POS) on organizational embeddedness and organizational identification in the simulated home environment. Another objective of this study is to provide an effective cross-cultural adjustment model adopted by many Chinese enterprises operating overseas. Furthermore, it examines the mediating effects of organizational embeddedness and organizational identification on POS and expatriate adjustment.

The data of this quantitative research study was acquired from a questionnaire survey completed by 326 expatriates from Chinese enterprises in a power station in Bangladesh, and regression analyses were conducted using SPSS software.

The study found that POS of expatriates is positively correlated with their organizational embeddedness and organizational identification, and it positively impacts expatriate adjustment. Moreover, the study also evaluated that organizational embeddedness and organizational identification positively influence expatriate adjustment. Finally, it was demonstrated that organizational embeddedness mediates the relationship among living POS, emotional POS and expatriate adjustment. Organizational identification mediates the relationships among work POS, emotional POS and work adjustment. Organizational identification mediates the relationships between work POS and interaction adjustment.

The research results demonstrate that the living, work and emotional support to the expatriates from the projects department of Chinese enterprises is of particular importance for their better adjustment in overseas engineering projects. Furthermore, these results are particularly conducive to the successful management of employees accommodated in fully-closed and semi-closed simulated homes.

In the setting of a simulated home in the overseas engineering projects, this research study has demonstrated for the first time that the living, work and emotional support provided by an organization can effectively help its expatriate workers acclimatize during their overseas placement.

Past research has suggested the influence of family‐oriented collectivistic culture on the behavior and performance of traditional Chinese manufacturing firms. However, insufficient empirical research has been conducted to empirically test the influence. More importantly, insufficient research has been conducted to test how the collectivistic culture in Chinese societies would affect the performance of manufacturing firms. This paper addresses these issues by comparing the behaviors and performance of two groups of firms in China, i.e., investment from overseas Chinese firms and investment from non‐Chinese Western firms, in one of China's fast‐growing manufacturing industries. Interesting differences are found between the overseas Chinese firms and those from other foreign countries. The findings support the influence of societal culture on firms' behavior and performance, but do not support the predictions on performance based on the arguments of cultural distance. This paper concludes with a discussion on implications of the findings for both researchers and practitioners.

Asserts that foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) investing in or expanding business operations in China, South and Southeast Asia often find themselves sparring with local business groups. Draws on research and experiences with firms in the region in order to enhance understandings of competitive dealings with two business networks that dominate the Southeast Asian economies ‐ the Overseas Chinese and the Overseas Indians, collectively referred to as “the Networks”. Measures the sparring rings in Asia through the historical conditions that contributed to the Networks’ fighting stances and to Asian business environments. Proceeds to place the two Asian competitors under the spotlight by highlighting cultural differences between the Networks. Predicts the Networks’ movements by elaborating on their unique management and strategic decision‐making styles and discusses, finally, the implications of the Networks’ business practices for MNCs’ strategies and organizational restructuring in the Asian arena.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comparative review and analysis of peer‐reviewed journal articles on overseas Chinese family businesses.

Journal articles were selected from relevant sources and broadly analyzed by research area, type of research (theoretical or empirical), geographical coverage, and method (quantitative or qualitative). The main themes of changes and continuity were identified and summarized.

The literature suggests that overseas Chinese family firms around the diaspora are beginning to differ from one nation to another. At the same time, the literature suggests the continuity of the challenge of the forces of globalization on overseas Chinese family firms and the need for these firms to learn to adapt and compete.

The findings suggest that future research would need to pay more attention to differences between overseas Chinese family businesses from one country to another.

This paper provides a novel comparative analytical review and summary of the literature on overseas Chinese family businesses in peer‐reviewed journals. It is useful for scholars who are new to the area.