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Post by alexzhao on Oct 5, 2014 22:20:12 GMT -5
Hello,
I am new to Chinese Genealogy. I am interested to reseach the role of Chinese Diaspora in the industrialization of their ancient migration sending areas. Recent papers suggest that there are Chinese kinship groups who are the driver of technology and capital spillover from the Pacific Rim and South East Asia.
Are there any genealogy data model standard with respect to Chinese cultural specifics and sensitivities that help me to map this kinship groups ? I am aware of Gedcomx, but it is not bilingual and it lacks cultural sensitivities.
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Post by Doug 周 on Oct 6, 2014 13:58:37 GMT -5
alexzhao, I am confused by your request and need more specifics. My first attempt to answer your request: The only explicit conclusion of the movement of a large number of Chinese in order to benefit the industrialization of the Chinese homeland was the recruitment of Chinese laborers during WW1 to relieve the manpower shortage of the Triple Entente in WW1. The conclusion was that the impact was not significant. The forgotten army of the first world war How Chinese labourers helped shape EuropeclickThe sending of monetary funds to the homeland is similar to what the Mexicans are doing with the focus on American illegal immigration, what the Chinese did with America from when Black slavery was abolished, the current North Korean workers with Japan, the current Filipinos with Hong Kong, the Southwest Asians with the Gulf states. However, these were not diasporas. There are models for studying this, which is beyond the scope of this Forum. The best resource is helen, our historian. The above reference was from her, whom I would recommend you contact. GEDCOMX is the LDS Family Search’s attempt to graduate up from GEDCOM 5.5.1. GEDCOM is a file for transmitting genealogical information and connections from one computer program to another. It is what I call the DNA of one’s family tree. It is not designed to include cultural specifics, especially in retrospect. With the extensibles, I am sure that can be added. However, that is assuming one has the basic information to fill out the GEDCOMX initially. IMHO
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Post by alexzhao on Oct 6, 2014 18:53:54 GMT -5
Hello,
thanks for your answer. There are new trends in Migration and Diaspora research to study the growth paths of NIEc. Maybe I give you some background information - I hope I do not confuse you. In development economics there is a China model for economic growth with a Diaspora Option.
Scientific Diasporas
Economists had identified the existence of significant amount of transnational Indian, Israelian and Chinese scientists who return to their ancestral homeland to establish high tech enterprises. Economists extracts ethnic inventors from the US Patent Office and construct social networks of collaborators and citations. Bangalore (India), Taiwan and Israel have special innovation cluster and tax policies to attract ethnic entrepreneurs from the USA to return to their homeland. It is very likely that the education projects of these communities are backed by an informal contract between the young people and their wider kinship networks.
Trade Diasporas
There is a correlation between the population size of diasporas and the trade volume between sending and host countries. Similar facts in tourism with Visiting Friends and Family and Heritage Tourism. These are sources of foreign currency. This is true for all diasporas, but China is special with its trade diaspora:
The most significant Chinese trade diasporas are located in the South East Asia region. A few Chinese families got the hegemony in the privat sector. Deng Xiaoping launched his new economic policy from the ancestral homes of the Chinese South East Asian Diasporas to get acess to these capital fractions with their capital, contacts and business skills. These Chinese capitalists channel their investments through Cayman Island, Virgin Island and Hong Kong. The bulk of the FDI for the Chinese idustrialization had its origin in these groups and later Taiwan capitalists joined. The kinship relation of the trade diasporas and their ancestral villages enabled them to get more benefits from enterpreneurial local officials in comparison with Japanese, European and US foreign investors. Chinese property law was not very well developed and kinship groups and cultural norms substitute the absence of a Western style property law.
Worker Diasporas
The central banks reports the migrant remittances since the 1970s in monthly time series. Chinese migration sending areas got in 2013 an amount of 71 billions USD. I think the geographical distribution of this monetary stream favors Guangdong, Guanxi and Fujian. 71 billions USD remittances are not big for the GDP of whole China, but for a province it is huge, because it works like a puffer against business cycles and provide the provinces with foreign currency.
We have at the moment only some case studies to understand what happened on the ground. The Chinese industrialization got momentum with village enterprises. In Chinese villages there are political dominant family clans who organized the FDI, technology import and labour supply with the help of their kinship groups who are scattered around the global cities within the Pacific Rim.
The institution of the patrilinear Chinese family generates the norms for the supply of the Scientific Diasporas, because it is expected from the childs to get an good education for the sake of the family. The trade diasporas use kinship ties to ancestral villages to establish business ties with local village officials to outperform foreign competitors who has only access to province and central government. Worker diasporas send remittances back to support their relatives because they feel an obligation for the kinship folk.
I want to use a genealogy approach to enrich the case studies with more convincing details that kinship and 'imagined kinship' solved the incentive problem in government and market failure that held so many development countries back. I want to detect interesting, illuminating examples of
* Chinese Scientific Diaspora family * Chinese family conglomerates in South East Asia * Chinese Worker family
in the literature and enrich the narrative with genealogy and narrative research methodology with the help of Skype and Facebook survey and modern survey methodologies and economic lab in Second Life.
I walk through the xml specification of gedcomx and I cannot see any attempt there to support Chinese genealogy. It is not bilingual. Chine must have an own genealogy data model. How it is possible that the PRC, Singapore and Taiwan leave the standardization of genealogy data models to anglophone organizations who serve a complete different family structures ?
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Post by kerry on Oct 7, 2014 5:55:42 GMT -5
My initial response is 'good luck'.
I'll make an assumption here in that it sounds like you're "looking for data". I hope you don't get this data from genealogists because genealogical data in GEDCOM format is very sensitive with huge privacy implications. I certainly wouldn't be interested in my data being used in this way. You may find loose GEDCOM files 'in the wild' but generally they should be sanitised with references to living people removed.
The privacy implications arise whether you are talking GEDCOM format or traditional Chinese Jiapu books. Traditionally, kinship groups held their records close and didn't disclose them to outsiders lightly.
The GEDCOM model does support multilingual data but it's usage is not strictly defined or enforced by any of the software that implements it. As to a "Chinese" data model - I am curious to know what you think is missing?
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Post by Doug 周 on Oct 7, 2014 9:18:26 GMT -5
I have to agree with Kerry and ask the same question: what support of Chinese genealogy do you see missing in GEDCOM (X or 5.5.1) 1. Garbage garbage out: People are not born with their GEDCOM filled out. Genealogist are very particular with how their family tree program is organized. Data integrity is vital. As Kerry implied, even with GEDCOM, people don't follow the standards. Very few true genealogist will merge someone elses GEDCOM into their own family tree program without significant modification and fact checking. Like any database, you have to be very careful with the data input in order to get that data out in a useful fashion. 2. Breadth vs Depth Most classical Chinese genealogical interest is deep rather than broad. The main interest is to determine ones generation number from a progenitor and possibly display that lineage to that particular progenitor. It is usually a single line of names directly leading to the target person. The information you seem to be looking for is the breadth of the heritage. That is usually accomplished by the naming convention of relatives. The Chinese will differentiate by title the mother's eldest brother vs the father's youngest sister. There is no need for a family tree since the salutation automatically defines that heritage. 3. Mining social networks Why do you need a genealogy software tool to check your connections? All genealogical associations are one dimensional: familial relationships. Your social networks should provide school partners, neighbors, as well as family. Getting that information into a GEDCOM (X or 5.5.1) would be useful if you are interested in 3rd-10th cousins. The yield would be low for the amount of work as one can assume that distant relations have the same importance as non kin business associates. I am not seeing the need for the deep-in-the-past relationships. Knowing those ancestors might find a connection. You will probably not get that information because most people would not see a need-to-know. Can't you glean this information from the Social Networks? There is probably too much information in the family tree programs. You care to whom your entrepreneur is connected, not how many cousins with whom you don't do business. Genealogy programs are useful to identify long lost cousins, many of whom identification of familial connection is not important in your diaspora studies. Finally, consider enlisting the help of dazupu.net. I would recommend you have someone rather than the subject person do the data entry to insure the integrity. IMHO
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Post by alexzhao on Oct 8, 2014 23:51:10 GMT -5
Thanks for the answer. Unfortunately - you cannot mine family relationships from commercial register in the ASEAN nations. You can construct manually a multi-layer network: first level kinship group, second level business group, third level geographic region manually. We have social network analysis for Florentine families like the Medicis, but nothing similar exist for Chinese trade diaspora families who dominate the ASEAN economy. We must construct the social network with surveys and transform them in social network types to use mathematical sociology to determine the competiveness of the cross-border social networks. It will be a great success, if we can accumulate similar data resources like the stuff we already have for Florentine Renaissance families we can do much better comparative economic research with the help of mathematical sociology. www.wolfram.com/mathematica/new-in-9/social-network-analysis/HTMLImages.en/centrality-and-prestige-of-florentine-families/O_3.pngThere are ancestral temples in the Pearl River Delta. We have case studies of family clans who dominate the village politics and distribute land rights and business services for foreign investors. They actively reach out for family members in Hong Kong to get business contacts, technology and pioneering capital investments. The performance of rituals in the ancestral temples are a kind of trust building to reduce transaction cost in a insecure commercial law environment. It is a special kind of stakeholder management which differs from the doing it by the book methodologies of anglophone business schools. I want to know which business group and which political family are associated with which ancestral temple, how both groups - village politicians and diaspora business groups - manage to keep cross-border transactions running. Are where interview guides for genealogy research with Chinese families ? I am not aware of a handbook to construct qualitative good surveys.
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Post by Doug 周 on Oct 9, 2014 9:08:14 GMT -5
We are not seeming to have a dialog. This is an Chinese genealogy forum with emphasis on helping anglophonic Chinese heritage researchers. The interview guides I use are meant to hone techniques in opening doors to tease out clues about people and their stories.
Good luck in finding your own methods to study your ‘kin based’ old-boy-networks. These old-boy-networks are not unique; every successful business, whether local or international, depends on them.
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