Abstract
This introductory article reflects critically on the history of Chinese transnationalism studies in relation to intensifying cross-border engagements by PR Chinese state and nonstate actors today. Revisiting 1990s scholarship on Chinese transnationalism(s), it argues that the global China concept helps us attend to the significant impacts of China's economic and geopolitical rise on earlier patterns of transborder cultural flows, hence to the ways that new patterns can be interpreted. The article considers the continuities and tensions the seven articles in this issue elucidate between state-led transnationalism “from above” and the myriad forms of transnationalism “from below” instantiated in the lived experiences of ordinary people. From an ethnographic perspective, this issue considers a wide range of transnational movements affecting cultural life within and beyond the PRC, investigating how these intensified transborder flows are reconfiguring social identities this century. Three core themes emerge: the often unpredictable responses to state initiatives by Chinese people living transnational lives; the transnationalization of class reproduction for both working-class and middle-class subjects as a consequence of new cross-border flows; and the revitalization of old forms of racism and the emergence of new ones as a result of evolving transnational mobilities of Chinese media, people, and capital today.
