ABSTRACT
In the early 1990s, Hungary became a transit country for snakeheads, Chinese migration traffickers. Occasionally, Chinese already in Hungary also used the organization's services. Chinese who decided to leave Hungary faced a number of choices. Some reached Western Europe legally, on tourist visas or using friends' invitations, and Others went to the United States or Canada on student or investor-immigrant visas. Hungary was able to keep a stable Chinese community until 1995-96 thanks to the highly profitable nature of the import and reexport business, the East European centre of which she had become for Chinese merchants. The Chinese in Hungary are not economic migrants in the traditional sense. Most of the ten-thousand-strong Chinese community in Hungary are operators of their own businesses. By 1995, Chinese entrepreneurs had developed Hungary into a distribution centre for Chinese consumer goods in East Central Europe.
