Returned Overseas Chinese And Qiaoxiang:Their Settlement In Anxi, Fujian (1949-1960)

The settlement of returned Overseas Chinese refugees is an important issue of the Department of Overseas Chinese Affairs in the People’s Republic of China. After the establishment of PRC, a large number of Overseas Chinese went back to China, some of them aspired to serve the Beijing government, but most of them were forced to withdraw into mainland of China because of surging anti-Chinese movements in post-colonial Southeast Asian countries. Under the guidance of the principle of Internal Affairs and Diplomacy of PRC, settlement policies towards returned Overseas Chinese generally observed the principle of "settlement by native place, rural areas oriented,talented priority"and the policy of "scattered settlement based, and centralized settlement as a supplement".When Chinese refugees increased as Indonesian government adopted discrimination policy again Chinese and anti-Chinese riots got rampant in the late of1950s, considering the critical problems caused by increasing returned Chinese refugees, the government gradually changed the settlement principle, emphasizing on setting up farms to replace scattered settlement method.At the same time, taking into account the specificity of returned overseas Chinese, government arranged a series of socialism education program, with aim to integrate the returned Chinese into socialism China.However, there were many problems in the settlement process, on the one hand, the local government didn’t implement the policies formulated by the central government thoroughly and effectively, and the Department of Overseas Chinese Affairs was influenced by "leftist" ideology. Therefore, generally, significant achievements have been gained in the settlement of returned Chinese refugees, but there also existed inevitably mistakes and errors in the process of implementing the policy, resulting in negative effect to the returned Chinese and local native community. On the other hand, considering the specificity of returned Chinese, all levels of government have adopted proper policies favored them, however, this priority policy, at some extent, destroyed local native people’s demands for seeking fair treatment. Therefore, both local native people and the returned overseas Chinese were intended to dissatisfy with the government overseas Chinese policies,meanwhile, this priority policy created contradictory among them.There are abundant researches on overseas Chinese farm settlement, but the little study on returned Chinese refugees’employment in their hometown and returned Chinese students affaires. Unlike the most returned Chinese settlement area, Anxi county, as an important receiver and settlement for the returned Chinese, Anxi presented its special features.Anxi has not established a large scale farms for returned Chinese refugees, but Anxi was exploring the effective way to integrate the returned Chinese refugees into local society by organizing them into local production/employment/school.Thus, this paper is trying to focus on issues.In addition, the relationship between the returned Overseas Chinese and local native people has not been emphasized and conducted greatly. In traditional view, local native people were unsatisfied with the priority policy towards the returned Chinese and jealous of better life of the returned Chinese. This paper argues that jealousy is a certainly fact, but it can not be used fully to explain the contradictory relationship between the returned overseas Chinese community and local native community, thus requiring us to explore the various roots existing in the people’s daily production and life in the qiaoxiang. In sum, this paper, based on Anxi case, is attempting to examine the settlement situation of returned Chinese refugees and its influence on local society, aiming to rich the qiaoxiang study in1950s,the transition period both for returned Chinese refugees community and local native community.