This thesis aims to compare the relative chances of occupational success of Chinese in Great Britain and the United States. The study uses data from British national Labour Force Surveys (1983 to 1989) and American Census of Population and Housing Public Use Microdata Samples (1980). Using various methods of statistical analysis, mainly logit modelling, the thesis looks at three aspects of the research question. First, analysis is conducted on the relative level of occupational attainment (in access to the service class and avoidance of unemployment) of Chinese immigrants in Britain through comparisons with whites, Indians, Pakistanis, African Asians, West Indians and Irish. Secondly, similar analysis is done for foreign-born and native-born Chinese in the U.S. through comparisons with whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Japanese, Filipinos, Koreans, Indians and Vietnamese. Thirdly, comparisons are made directly on the relative chances of occupational success for being Chinese in Britain versus being Chinese in the U.S.A. In the thesis, specific attempts are made to bring out the effects of education in determining occupational success for Chinese as well as other ethnic groups in the two countries.

In 1901 the Qing regime, in power 1644-1911, took wide-ranging measures to reform the Chinese Empire. Fundamental changes were carried out within the field of education, resulting in the completion of China’s first modern educational system in 1904. Modern schools mushroomed across China and modern textbooks introducing non-traditional knowledge became common reading in the classrooms. Modern geography textbooks informed schoolchildren about the circumstances within the Empire and, to some extent, about the conditions in foreign countries. Thus these textbooks gave them an idea of their own nation in relation to the rest of the world.   The thesis examines the images of the inhabitants of the multiethnic Qing Empire, as encountered in a wide range of textbooks and other teaching materials, on the school subject of geography, used at various institutions of modern learning during the closing years of the Qing era. The focus is on the Han Chinese majority of China Proper (i.e. the eighteen provinces), although the images of the other major ethnicities of the Qing Empire are also examined, as well as the peoples of neighbouring Korea and Japan. This study highlights the extent to which the late Qing era was influenced by Japanese approaches towards reforms and modernization, especially in the field of education. During the process of introducing modern school geography in China, Chinese textbook compilers largely relied on Japanese sources on geography, thereby facing a Japanese, nationalistic and colonial discourse, which implied that Japan, as the most civilized nation in the East, was also in her right to dominate the region. Although Chinese educationalists hardly accepted Japan’s self-proclaimed position as the rightful leader of Asia, they were nevertheless influenced by Japanese descriptions of the continent and its peoples.