Historical Migration and Going Overseas
China's ancient agricultural civilization gave rise to a deep-rooted attachment to the land. From the Central Plains southward, entire clans migrated, opening up new plains along rivers and expanding living space. From the Ming dynasty onward, overpopulation in the south drove waves of large-scale emigration to the Nanyang (Southeast Asia). Before the Opium War, 1.5 million Chinese were already in the Nanyang.
Zheng Zhilong and Zheng Chenggong represented a crossroads between agricultural and maritime civilization. Zheng Zhilong's fleet numbered 3,000 vessels; China had a chance to take part in the Age of Discovery. But the Qing dynasty's sea ban forbade coastal residents from going to sea and burned their houses, cutting off Zheng Chenggong's livelihood. This policy caused China to lose its commercial influence over Southeast Asia.
Modern emigration to the Nanyang was heroic and tragic. After the Opium War, China exported labor to the colonies in the form of coolies; during the War of Resistance against Japan, Chinese fled abroad to Southeast Asia. Those from southern Fujian migrated in the largest numbers and spread the widest. Overseas Chinese leaders such as Tan Kah Kee supported the war effort and China's rebuilding, and qualities such as "love for one's homeland, hard work, pioneering spirit, and integrity in word and deed" became the cultural bedrock of the overseas Chinese community.
The Belt and Road and Enterprises Going Global
After reform and opening up, the southeastern coast was the first to be drawn into global economic integration. People from Guangdong are settled merchants; those from Zhejiang are traveling merchants; the Fujianese combine the two. One Fujianese entrepreneur, after 20 years of building businesses in Guangdong, decided to move to Indonesia, believing that "the future opportunities for private enterprises lie in South and Southeast Asia."
Local officials there told him that investors were the most valuable kind of partner and deserved every accommodation. This inspired him to respond to the national call and take part in Belt and Road construction.
At roundtables organized by the Guangdong SME Development Promotion Association, entrepreneurs have expressed concern about the export environment. US–China trade frictions persist, Europe's economy is slowing, and geopolitical contention is pushing supply chains out of China. After 2018, Pearl River Delta firms began investing in Southeast Asia, initially to avoid tariffs, and now as part of a broader reshaping of global supply chains.
Views among entrepreneurs are varied: China will become the world's largest market; the domestic supply chain is highly complete; ASEAN cannot fully replace Chinese manufacturing. But Shen Minggao, Global Chief Economist at GF Securities, notes that "the industrial relocation of US, European, Japanese, and Korean firms is an active strategic move," whereas Chinese enterprises "are mostly relocating in pursuit of orders."
Japanese outbound investment follows a "national suitcase" model: the supply chain arrives pre-packaged with finance, logistics, and regulatory support. Japan's JETRO operates 74 offices in 56 countries; ITOCHU's footprint spans more than 60 countries. By comparison, Chinese private enterprises going abroad lack government backing, easily getting relabeled as "Hong Kong capital" or "Singapore capital" over time and gradually losing their identification with the home country.
Going Global and the Exploration of a New Human Civilization
In ancient times, China expanded its territory through the migration of the Han people, bringing advanced productive capacity to less developed regions. Ancient Greek commercial civilization, constrained by geography, had to pursue wealth through trade, eventually driving the great voyages of exploration.
The Western commercial system has never been dependent on political authority; it possesses its own independent discourse, its own code of commercial ethics. Over the past few hundred years, Western commercial civilization rose, while China, with its rupture between agricultural and maritime civilization, was insulated from this commercial cross-fertilization. The impact of industrial civilization on agricultural civilization accelerated that divergence.
Reform and opening up brought China into the modern commercial world, and quantitative change eventually triggered structural adjustment in the global economy. Today, the focus of China's economy is on building a new economic structure and an institutional top-level design. The question of private enterprises going global has not yet been fully reflected in the overall economic design — it appears only in connection with the Belt and Road Initiative.
Private enterprises going global today is no longer traditional clan migration, but rather the migration of "industries and industrial chains." The ancient agricultural civilization is at last merging into the world's commercial civilization, forging a new human civilization bearing Chinese characteristics.
"Investment, properly understood, is not the export of capital but the export of culture, management, and industry. Investment without cultural export is speculation." The underlying culture of the Belt and Road and the cultural foundation of private enterprises going global need to be clearly defined.
For enterprises, going global is a commercial investment whose success is determined by the market. For the state, it should be an expression of strategy. An enterprise's competitiveness reflects the nation's industrial competitiveness; its overall image reflects the nation's image.
China's reform and opening up has only brought it into the early phase of industrial civilization. When enterprises go global and take part in Belt and Road construction, what is expressed is an active migration of industry and cultural outlook — a fresh construction of China's cultural and economic order. It must differ from Western colonial expansion: it should be constructive, peaceful, and culturally plural, an exploration of a shared community of human civilization. The agricultural civilization's view of "all under heaven" should be raised to a globalized, shared-destiny view fit for our time.
Originally published: Economic Observer · Microscope · 2023-04-21 · Read original →
Originally published in the "Economic Observer · The Walker’s View" column. The author is Executive President of the Guangdong SME Development Promotion Association. For reprints or citations, please contact the author or the Association Secretariat.