To the Qing government, the growing Chinese population abroad now presented both a responsibility and an opportunity (as just seen in the case of Zhang Zhidong): responsibility, to show concern for the welfare of the Chinese abroad; opportunity, to solicit financial support from them. These tasks were taken up by Chinese legations and consulates established abroad beginning in the late 1870s. To consider its sojourners overseas a resource rather than a problem was a turning point in China’s worldview.