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CCS Fall 2026 Webinar: Making Modern China in Hawaiʻi

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n the early twentieth century, American civic leaders promoted Hawaiʻi as a center of Pacific cooperation and a model of interracial harmony while sidelining Native Hawaiians. Drawing on Chinese-, Hawaiian-, and Englishlanguage sources, Bohan Zhang examines how Chinese communities in Hawaiʻi and visiting Chinese scholarly diplomats appropriated the forums of the Pan-Pacific Union and the Institute of Pacific Relations to pursue their own goals. Following Honolulu-born Ho Kim Tong and the delegates with whom he interacted, the talk moves from an AllChinese baseball team’s 1915 tour of China to a 1920 U.S. congressional visit and the Pan-Pacific conferences of the 1920s. It shows how athletes, community hosts, and scholarly delegates practiced citizen diplomacy through sport, hospitality, and conferences to present China as a modern nation and assert its place in the Pacific. The talk closes by considering why faith in Honolulu-centered internationalism waned in the early 1930s.

Event Sponsor
Center for Chinese Studies, Mānoa Campus

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