Chinese migrations

This book looks at major forms of population movement throughout China's history, such as southward and westward movements, migration to the borders, and punishment migration. It examines some of the major themes associated with migration in China--the official discouragement of migration, exile, extremism, gender and migration, family and migration. It looks at the structures of migration, at the means to move, at migrant recruitment, and at remittances; and it looks at China's qualified attitude toward emigration, such as the decisions in the Ming dynasty to turn away from maritime expansion, onto the more recent acceptance and encouragement of the spread of ethnic Chinese around the world. The book also goes beyond the migrants themselves to discover what they carried with them from one place to another, within China and beyond: religions and ideologies, trade goods and crops, disease, and technology transfers.