Nearly 175 people took part in the Sixth International Conference on Overseas Chinese, held at Peking University here September 21-22. The conference, organized by the International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas (ISSCO), drew participants from 20 countries. Two-thirds came from Asia, with the largest representation from mainland China, Singapore, and Japan, along with others from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and south Korea. Several noted during the conference that 20 million ethnic Chinese live in Southeast Asia, about 75 percent of all who live outside China.
Other delegates came from the United States, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, Trinidad, Peru, Cuba, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.
ISSCO was founded at a 1992 conference in San Francisco. Ling-chi Wang, one of ISSCO's founders and its vice president for a decade, noted in a keynote speech that the idea of an international association dedicated to the study of the Chinese diaspora had been discussed since the early 1980s. In the framework of Cold War politics and divisions, including those within the socialist camp, he said, it was an unrealizable objective. Only in the early 1990s did such an association become possible. Subsequent ISSCO conferences were held in Hong Kong in 1994, Manila in 1998, Taipei in 2001, and Copenhagen in 2004.
This was the first ISSCO conference in China. It was held in a new, well-equipped building at Peking University--the first modern university in China. Founded in 1898, the university today has a full-time enrollment of 30,000. A crew of students, many of whom spoke English and were eager to meet participants from around the world, were among the volunteer staff organizing the conference.
Representatives of Peking University, the Chinese government's Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, and outgoing ISSCO president Teresita Ang See of the Philippines welcomed delegates at the opening session. Former ISSCO president Wang Gungwu, of the National University of Singapore, and Ling-chi Wang, professor emeritus at the University of California in Berkeley, gave the opening addresses. (Source: Martin Koppel and Mary-Alice Waters, The Militant, vol 71, no. 37, October 8).