Guiqiao: returnees as a policy subject in China

Nearly half a million Indonesian-Chinese ‘returned’ to China in the 1950s and 1960s, motivated by new Chinese nationalism and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and by Indonesian policies aimed at marginalising ethnic Chinese. ‘Return’ meant re-embracing Chinese ethnicity, culture, and a political decision to join the new Chinese nation. However, as Wang Cangbai reveals, their journey ‘home’ was to be a painful one.