Overseas Chinese in China's Policy

Abstract

During the first decade of the People's Republic of China from 1949, overseas Chinese affairs were considered important to the national interest of China, and a special department called the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission was established under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But during the period from 1967–69, when the Cultural Revolution was caught in the wild wind, overseas Chinese and their institutions, particularly the ones at home, were considered ideologically suspect and undesirable because of their allegedly bourgeois background and foreign connexions. The privileges previously given to them as a cushion to adjust themselves gradually to the socialist system were repudiated and removed. The Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission was disbanded.