ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the industrialization processes of Nigeria and China influenced each other, and how the coming of mainland Chinese traders and products has affected Nigeria-based Chinese industrialists, Nigerian workers, and Nigerian manufacturing in general since the 1990s. It proposes that the new wave of mainland Chinese migrants brought a new structure to the Chinese community and therefore new patterns of Chinese influence on the local economy and people. In contrast to the early-wave of Chinese industrialists, who had limited their influence by locally manufacturing certain types of products that were already familiar to Nigerians and employing people who lived near their factories, the later wave of Chinese traders had a much more dramatic influence upon the life of Nigerians not merely through the immensely greater variety and popularity of their goods, but because they undermined local manufacturing industries and impacted the livelihoods of many Nigerian workers.
