Dr. Chan Man Fong's current research involves the development of the small overseas Chinese community in Southern Rhodesia (Africa) from around 1900 when Southern Rhodesia was still the private property of Cecil Rhodes and after 1923 as a British colony. The starting point of the research is the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) and the ensuing debate on the proposal to import Chinese labour for Rhodesian mines undertaken by the South Rhodesian mining engineers, managers, builders and contractors, merchants and storekeepers. This investigation will show that this Rhodesian debate had a direct impact on later legislation concerning Chinese labour to be employed within the British colonial empire as promulgated by the British government and the Chinese Imperial government in 1904; the importation conditions of 60,000 Chinese labourers to South African mines from 1904 to 1910; and the legally restrictive nature of the economic and socio-political standing of the South Rhodesian Chinese from 1904 onwards...
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