Don't Leave Home: Migration and the Chinese

by Wang Gungwu

"More than 25 million Chinese left their homeland from the middle of the 19th century to the early 20th century to settle abroad together with their families and descendants." Don't Leave Migration and the Chinese describes this massive wave of migration and the smaller ones that occurred in the last three decades of the 20th century.

314 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2002

About the author

Wang Gungwu is an academic who has studied and written about the Chinese diaspora, although he has objected to the use of the word diaspora to describe the migration of Chinese from China, because it is inaccurate and has been used to perpetuate fears of a "Chinese threat". He was born in Surabaya, Indonesia, and grew up in Ipoh, Malaysia. He completed his secondary education in Anderson School, Ipoh before going to the university.

He studied history in the University of Malaya, Singapore, where he received both his Bachelor and Masters degrees. He holds a Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (1957) for his thesis on The structure of power in North China during the Five Dynasties. He taught at the University of Malaya (in both Singapore and Kuala Lumpur) before going to Canberra in 1968 to become Professor of Far Eastern History in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS) at Australian National University. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong from 1986 to 1995. In 2007, Wang became the third person to be named University Professor by the National University of Singapore.