The following network aims to explore Chinese Rotarians' connections beyond the Rotary Club and to investigate where, how far, and on what occasion they interacted outside of the club. The affiliation network we here propose consists in a two-mode network linking individuals with the institutions they were affiliated to. The network we obtained using Cytoscape comprises 831 nodes and 1080 edges. It is made up of 6 connected components, with no isolated nodes. The most central institutions in the network fall into three main categories: universities (education or teaching activities), associations (commitment to public welfare) and government or administration (salaried occupations). Even when individuals did not actually meet through these institutions (for instance, in the case they graduated from the same university of worked for the same administration, but not the same year), they nonetheless shared their particular rules, philosophy and modes of operation.

The most striking feature in the network of Chinese Rotarians is that the most central, connecting institutions (i.e. the institutions that are shared by a large number of Rotarians, or in network analysis terminology, the institutional nodes with high centrality degree) are all in some ways connected to the United States - either located in the United States proper (universities) or established by Americans in China (Y.M.C.A., St. John's University, American University Club, Peking Union Medical College). In parallel with these American institutions, however, we also find more "typically" Chinese organizations, such as the Chinese Medical Association, the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce, or the Municipality of Greater Shanghai. This reveals that Chinese Rotarians participated in a mixed, bicultural network of affiliations, made up of both American and Chinese institutions, which epitomized their unique position as “cultural intermediaries”, “bridge builders” or “border-crossers”. Our findings also suggest that the Rotary Club in China was part of a wider network of institutions that bridged Shanghai/China to the United States through its members’ common education, occupations and concern for social welfare.

The original data, edge and node lists used for building this network, as well as basic networks metrics related to the individual and institutional nodes, are available in the "Tables" section. An interactive version of the network is avaible online through the URL we provide below on this page. 

NB In the current layout, red dots refer to individuals, whereas green squares refer to institutions.