Chinese emigration was part of the global wave of mass migration in the nineteenth century. After establishing the main quantities, sources, destinations, and timing of emigration, this article analyses trends in return and female migration, two quantifiable phenomena that are often said to distinguish Chinese from other migrations. These trends are compared between different flows of Chinese migration, both overseas and to Manchuria, and with non-Chinese migrations. The most interesting conclusions have methodological implications: first, comparisons should be situated as historical trends to better understand patterns of convergence or divergence between flows; second, some cycles and patterns may grow more similar across migration flows even as others diverge; third, the results of comparison will change along with the scale of units being compared; and finally, both extensive comparisons of specific flows and an awareness of the global context are necessary to understand the patterns and causes of mass migration.

An insistence on the broad similarities and structural linkages of migrations across the globe since the 1840s is important because it can clear the ground for more effective comparisons. Only after questioning the a priori distinction that privileges “modern” transatlantic migrations as categorically distinct from those in the rest of the world can we begin to understand each migrant and migrant flow as emerging from a distinct nexus of global, regional, local, and historical processes. I think I am in agreement with all of the participants in this forum on this basic point. Rather than quibble over numbers and definitions, all of the contributions have attempted to refine our historical comparisons and question some of the interpretive frameworks that are rooted in depictions of the Atlantic migrations as a norm. Once this global foundation is established, we can engage in the detailed empirical and conceptual work that will better address the sticky problems of numbers and categories. Who and what is actually being counted and not counted? When and why should we distinguish between long and short distance, or between international and domestic migration? How should we deal with return and repeat migrations? What is revealed or obscured by taking individuals, families or more extended networks as the basic units of migration? What is the practical or discursive significance of “free” migration?

Each of these epigrams is from an exemplary work of primary research. While not entirely exclusive—potential for overlap appears in the ideas of “mutual development” and “transfer” of culture—they each exemplify different research agendas that result in competing narratives of Chinese migration. Sucheng Chan's work is part of a larger project of contemporary Asian American studies to incorporate Chinese as important actors in American history. It emphasizes the adaptations of Chinese social organization in the United States, and explains them as necessary and unprecedented responses to unfamiliar challenges. Although Chan pays more attention than many Asian American historians to Chinese nationalism, transnational families, and continued links to China, she does not follow the implications of these descriptions so far as to reformulate her narrative of migration as a monodirectional relocation followed by locally conditioned transformation (see also S. Chan 1991, 63–66,96–97; 1990). In their most extremely America-centered versions, Asian American histories have treated these extra-American phenomena as little more than byproducts of exclusion and racism, and denounced the idea of the temporary Chinese sojourner as an orientalist construction (A. Chan 1981).