The Chinese Question

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Winner of the 2022 Bancroft Prize Finalist for the 2022 Book Prize How Chinese migration to the world’s goldfields upended global power and economics and forged modern conceptions of race. Meticulously researched….A deep historical study, and a timely re-examination of the persistent Chinese Question in America and elsewhere. A work of towering ambition….Ngai is a lucid and elegant writer. [An] important and eminently readable book. This meticulously researched history spanning nearly two centuries reveals how the Chinese Question has been deeply embedded in Anglo-American global views of China. shows how entire countries can fall prey to old racialized narratives that may lead to unintended and dangerous consequences. Ngai’s is a cautionary tale in today’s increasingly interdependent and fragile world. This book will help the reader understand a troubled past and see contemporary conflicts between China and the West in a broader perspective. Ngai brilliantly reconstructs how race became woven into the fabric of international capitalism and wired into the politics of nations. A stunning, vivid, and indispensable history. Nowadays, anglophone nations ask anxious questions about Chinese ascendance. Based on prodigious research, Ngai’s remarkable book reveals how these queries branch from an older Chinese Question. Mae Ngai shows how the racist coolie stereotype was effectively exploited decade after decade to advance global capitalism and imperialism. The sense of urgency shines through this poignant and provocative work. Powerful and empowering. Mae Ngai slays the coolie myth and resurrects the history of Chinese in early globalization with all its promise of improvement and constant struggle against racist oppression. Never has the spectacular story of the establishment and persistence of Chinese communities across three continents been better told. Truly a tour de force of scholarship [ is] a detailed, vivid, close-up depiction of the historic encounters that followed the momentous Chinese migrations of the nineteenth century. Ambitiously conceived, prodigiously researched, and engagingly presented, weaves distant places, circumstances, and experiences into a compelling narrative that speaks to us today. has deep historical significance but also pressing contemporary relevance. A remarkable combination of historical research, analysis, and empathy stretching over four continents and three gold rushes. In Mae Ngai’s skilled hands, is more than just a study of racism; it reveals the contours of capitalism and colonialism since the nineteenth century. Mae Ngai’s beautifully crafted global narrative dismantles widely accepted, and deeply racist, tropes about Chinese migration. This is one of the few books that will make you genuinely rethink an important episode. This [is a] remarkable book…[It] cuts through modern world history in a most refreshing way and contributes to our understanding of power rivalry that remains with us today. Eureka! In telling this comparative and connected history, mines a rich stream, bringing to life Chinese people who pushed back against settler racism in so-called ‘white men’s countries,’ such as California and Australia. This is a stunningly revealing and timely excavation of the racist stereotypes that continue to shape white responses to China and the Chinese. Mae Ngai has produced an epic account of Chinese pioneers who traversed the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans to three gold-bearing continents in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Beyond presenting an archivally accurate history of these encounters where race and money were the prime drivers of engagement, her research has unearthed an overtly human dimension where numbers are names, statistics incidences and hearsays realities. These encounters on the gold mines of America, Australia and South Africa led to widespread malicious economic expulsion and vindictive political exclusion which it could be argued laid the foundation for much of the burgeoning Sino-phobia evident across the globe over a century later. Ngai adeptly narrates both seismic shifts in the world economy and the nuanced dynamics of small communities, paying particular attention to the choices made by individual immigrants as they navigated harsh and unfair foreign environments. Every aspect of Ngai’s inquiry is sharply relevant today on many fronts. An ambitious, diligent work. … A multilayered world history that adds materially to the sadly evergreen topic of immigration exploitation and exclusion. This impressive volume adds a vital chapter in the history of globalization. US

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