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The book has sought to demonstrate via an examination of individual, state, institutional, and advocacy network behaviour that the human rights issue has become a dominant feature of the international system, and that the attention of these actors to human rights abuses inside states has led to the erosion of the traditional, Westphalian concept of state sovereignty, and a movement towards individual (rather than state) sovereignty. The consequences of the interaction between these global actors and China over the matter of its human rights record are summarized in this concluding chapter. The three main sections of the chapter look at the process of China's enmeshment in the human rights regime and in the discourse on rights, constraints on internalization in China, and China's own impact on the human rights regime.

In recent years the Chinese approach toward global governance has shifted beyond a traditional defensive stance and toward more active engagement. This new alignment in Chinese foreign policy suggests a growing confidence on the part of the CCP leadership in China’s domestic governing arrangements as well as its capacity to lead by example in international affairs. New shifts in Chinese discourses, diplomacy, and responses to key global challenges seem to reflect a new global leadership ambition on the part of the Xi Jinping administration. China’s deepening engagement in global governance is a reflection of its rising power and international status as well as a long-standing aspiration to contribute toward the making of international order on its own terms.

This chapter provides a summary of the emergence of Chinese masculinity studies in the Anglophone world in recent years and concludes that even though it is a rapidly growing field, good book-length studies specific to researching Chinese masculinity are still limited. The chapter then describes the contents of the book, indicating the reasons for the way the volume is structured and some of the main themes that are discussed. It then gives a rundown of each chapter, showing how they fit in the framework of the book.

This concluding chapter argues that the qiaopi trade was the basis for one of China’s earliest excursions into the modern world economy. The trade quickly progressed from the one-man operations of the early years to the piju formed by qiaopi entrepreneurs to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the swift growth of Chinese emigration and remittance. It eventually matured into a stable industry with its own perfected mechanisms, patched onto China’s other modern institutions like banks and the post office and linked to modern forms of communication and transport. The trade gave an impetus to other forms of transnational and domestic industry and to urban growth in coastal cities adjacent to the qiaoxiang. Initially based on networks of blood, place, and tongue, it later joined or created national, transnational, and international networks based on trade, finance, and general migration, mainly in territories around the South China Sea but also in the gold-rush Pacific—the Americas, Australia, and the South Pacific. These networks, maritime and terrestrial, were not just economic but also had deep cultural and social dimensions. Along them ran not just cash, capital, and goods but also people, ideas, and information. The flow of capital, ideas, and population between Chinese in diaspora and their families and communities in China was a key driver in the remaking of China along modern and transnational lines.