ABSTRACT
Both the pre-First World War and the post-Cold War waves of Chinese migration into Russia and Eastern Europe have taken place in periods of intense globalization, characterized by relatively free flows of goods and people (although curbs on the latter are currently much stronger than during the first period discussed here) and separated by a period of nation-state closure. During the first period, Chinese migration to the region replicated the ‘coolie trade’ and the seafaring merchant tradition in the colonies, with the distinctive element of farmer and trapper migration to the Russian Far East that is better seen as the expansion of domestic migration to Manchuria. The current period, once again, displays close parallels to Chinese migration to South America, Africa, and China’s neighbouring countries in Southeast Asia. But if both waves of migration can broadly be seen in connection to the demand for Chinese labour and goods abroad within a framework of global structural changes, the current one is more strongly driven by the imperatives of an expanding Chinese economy. As 200,000 to 400,000 Chinese migrated to Russia and another 50,000 or so to Eastern Europe, the expansion of low-price Chinese consumer goods imports has been accompanied by the migration of tens if not hundreds of thousands to Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, Burma, Central and South America (especially Argentina) and Africa (see Nyíri and Saveliev 2002; Chin 2003). South Africa and Argentina have attracted an estimated 30,000 migrants each from the province of Fujian alone (Fujian Qiaobao 2004b). In many of these countries, Chinese merchants have established nationwide networks of wholesale and retail shops catering to urban and rural populations (Nyíri 2006; Østbø Haugen and Carling 2005).
