Jinxin (Remittance Trade), Chinese Diaspora Capitalism, and the History of Enterprising Chinese Australians in the Early 20th Century

The social network approach has been employed in the research of Chinese diaspora capitalism to explain how economic behaviours were constructed and reconstructed locally and internationally with social associations. My research advances the same issue of Chinese diaspora capitalism but asks how the world economy functionally influenced the Chinese approach for organizing business in Australia, Hong Kong and China. Taking the case of Chinese Australian remittance businesses (Jinxin) in the early twentieth century, this paper will show how local firms and community organizations produced and reproduced the dynamic processes of Chinese enterprises in order to enhance diaspora mobility, social creativity, and commercial strategies. This paper argues that cultural pursuits and social-networks cannot adequately explain the Chinese Australian remittance trade, and that one must look beyond that to the emergence of Australian economic power in the Pacific region in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Writing the history of enterprising Chinese Australians is a project of the transformation of Chinese immigrants from gold diggers to trans-local capitalists at a time when the world economy was undergoing fundamental changes.

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