Yucheng Qin, Professor of History

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Professor Qin’s area of expertise is in East Asian history with a research interest in Chinese immigrants in the United States.

At left is book cover of The Diplomacy of Nationalism: The Six Companies and China’s Policy toward Exclusion. Center is a profile photo of Yucheng Qin. At right is book cover of The Cultural Clash: Chinese Traditional Native-Place Sentiment and the Anti-Chinese Movement by Yucheng Qin.
Professor of History Yucheng Qin and the covers of his two books, The Diplomacy of Nationalism: The Six Companies and China’s Policy toward Exclusion, and The Cultural Clash: Chinese Traditional Native-Place Sentiment and the Anti-Chinese Movement. (Courtesy profile photo)

Posted Aug. 1, 2024

Yucheng Qin is a professor of history at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. His area of expertise is in East Asian history with a research interest in the Chinese immigrant experience in the United States.

Qin received his bachelor of arts in history from Jiangsu Normal University, Jiangsu Province, China, in 1986; master of arts in history from Peking University, Beijing, China, in 1991; and doctor of philosophy in history from the University of Iowa in 2002. He was an assistant research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the highest research institute in China, from 1991 to 1994.

After teaching at universities in Iowa and Guam, Qin arrived at UH Hilo in 2008.

Areas of expertise and research

Qin has authored two books that focus on Chinese immigrants in the United States.

Book cover of The Diplomacy of Nationalism: The Six Companies and China’s Policy toward Exclusion.The Diplomacy of Nationalism: The Six Companies and China’s Policy toward Exclusion was published in 2009. It is the first book-length study and an original portrait of the Chinese Six Companies (Zhonghua huiguan), or the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, the most prominent support organization for Chinese immigrants in the United States in the late nineteenth century. The book highlights the importance of the Six Companies in the development of Chinese national consciousness in the U.S. and the impact of overseas Chinese in the building of a Chinese nation-state.

Book cover of The Cultural Clash: Chinese Traditional Native-Place Sentiment and the Anti-Chinese Movement by Yucheng Qin.The Cultural Clash: Chinese Traditional Native-Place Sentiment and the Anti-Chinese Movement was published in 2016. This book examines the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, an act of the U.S. Congress that prohibited all immigration of Chinese laborers. Qin draws from newspapers and scholarship to present a new interpretation of this anti-Chinese movement, arguing that the main lines along which the anti-Chinese movement ran “had been all predetermined in the Chinese native-place rootedness which saw the problem originate and develop. This statement, however, should not cause us to overlook racial prejudice within the movement, which actually received an uninterrupted supply of ammunition from Chinese native-place sentiment and practices,” the publisher states in the book’s description.

Current research: China’s study abroad movement

Professor Qin’s current research focuses on China’s study abroad movement. “My goal is to prove that this under-researched topic is actually about the mightiest movement in modern Chinese history,” he says.

The study will shed new light on the movement’s role in modern Chinese history.

“The movement has determined the trajectory of modern Chinese history; those who have returned from studying abroad were the leaders and escorts of China’s political, economic, social and cultural developments,” explains Qin. “The influence of the movement was so particularly noteworthy and all-round in modern Chinese history that we cannot fail to regard it as one with peculiar significance and importance.”

Empowered through education

Qin received the University of Hawaiʻi Board of Regents’ Medal for Excellence in Teaching in 2012.

He requires his students to be involved in his research by writing their own papers in all his classes and taking part in Phi Alpha Theta academic conferences. “They have responded with impressive success,” says Qin.

UH history student Kirsten McDonald was the winner of the Best Undergraduate Paper in the 35th Annual Phi Alpha Theta Hawaiian Regional Conference in 2019, with the title “Son of Distant Shores: How a Native American Quietly Greeted Japan before Commodore Perry.”

Ewalea Dameg was the winner of the Best Undergraduate Paper in the 40th Annual Phi Alpha Theta Hawaiian Regional Conference in 2024, entitled “Qin Shihuanfdi: The Extraordinary Life of the Tyrannical First Emperor of China.”

“To be part of an experience that enables my students and institute to become empowered through education, and allows them to become contributing members of Hawaiian and even global community, is a process I cherish and treasure,” says Professor Qin.

By Susan Enright, a public information specialist for the Office of the Chancellor and editor of Keaohou and UH Hilo Stories. She received her bachelor of arts in English and certificate in women’s studies from UH Hilo.