Social Change and Continuity in South China: Overseas Chinese and the Guan Lineage of Kaiping County, 1949–87

For a variety of reasons, still hotly debated by social anthropologists and social historians, both Guangdong and Fujian have been home to many large tightly-organized lineages since at least the 17th century. For a variety of reasons, overseas Chinese emigration in the pre-1949 period was also more prevalent in Guangdong and Fujian than in other Chinese provinces.