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THECHINESE INEUROPE A/so byGregorBenton ANOPPOSITIONISTFOR LIFE CHINA'S URBAN REVOLUTIONARIES MEMOIRS OF ACHINESEREVOLUTIONARY MOUNTAINFIRES WILD LILY;PRAIRIEFIRE A/so byFrank N.Pieke TIlEORDINARY AND TIlEEXTRAORDINARY: An Anthropological Study ofChinese Reform and the 1989People'sMovementin Beijing TIlESOCIALPOSITIONOFTIlEDUTCH CHINESE The Chinese in Europe Edited by Gregor Benton DepartmentofChineseStudies UniversityofLeeds and Frank N. Pieke Institutefor Chinese Studies UniversityofOxford First published in Great Britain 1998 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-26098-0 ISBN 978-1-349-26096-6 (eBook) DOl 10.1007/978-1-349-26096-6 First published in the United States of America 1998 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-17526-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Chinese in Europe I edited by Gregor Benton and Frank N. Pieke. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-17526-9 I. Chinese-Europe. 2. Chinese-Europe-Ethnic identity. I. Benton, Gregor, 1957- . II. Pieke, Frank N. DI056.2.C55C48 1997 940'.04951-dc21 97-9663 CIP @Gregor Benton and Frank N. Pieke 1998 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1998 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written pennission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written pennission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the tenns of any licence pennitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WI P 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 ()() 99 Contents Preface vii Gregor Benton Notes 011 the Contributors ix Introduction Frank N. Pieke PART I CHINESE AND EUROPE 2 Transnational Links among the Chinese in Europe: A Study on European-wide Chinese Voluntary Associations 21 Li Minghuan 3 Chinese Identity in Europe 42 Flemming Christiansen PART II CHINESE IN WESTERN EUROPE 4 Chinese People in Britain: Histories. Futures and Identities 67 David Parker 5 The Chinese Community in France: Immigration. Economic Activity. Cultural Organization and Representations 96 Live Yu-Sion 6 The Chinese in the Netherlands 125 N. Frank Pieke and Gregor Benton 7 Chinese in Denmark 168 Mette Thune v vi Contents 8 A Sketch of the Chinese Community in Germany: Past and Present 197 Erich Giitinger PART III CHINESE IN SOUTHERN EUROPE 9 The Chinese in Spain 211 Joaquin Beltran Antolln 10 Entrepreneurs of the Chinese Community in Portugal 238 Ana Teixeira 11 The Chinese Presence in Italy: Dimensions and Structural Characteristics 261 Francesco Carchedi and Mariea Ferri PART IV CHINESE IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE 12 Chinese in Russia: An Historical Perspective 281 Alexander G. Larin 13 Chinese Immigration to Russia: A Variation on an Old Theme 301 Anne de Tinguy 14 Chinese Immigrants in Central and Eastern Europe: The Cases of the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania 320 International Organization for Migration 15 New Migrants, New Community: The Chinese in Hungary, 1989-95 350 Pal Nyiri Index 380 Preface Until recently a volume such as this would have been impossible. Since the war Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific have been subjected to the scrutiny of historians, anthropol ogists and sociologists, but those in Europe largely escaped such in vestigation. The few exceptions - Frederik van Heek's early tour de force on the Chinese in Holland, Charles Archaimbault's evocative social history of the Chinese in Paris, James L. Watson's seminal work on the ties between San Tin in Hong Kong and its British Chinese out posts - are as rich as they are few, but they are by now dated; further more, only Watson's book is easily available and in English. Chinese communities have existed in several European countries for most of the twentieth century. They are among Europe's oldest immi grant communities, and are now, in several countries, among the big gest and, economically, the most powerful. Why, then, this dearth of studies on them? The Chinese migrants themselves were for a long time in no rush to seek the limelight. Instead, they preferred to lead their lives out of sight of government (which it was their habit not to trust) and of the institutions of a society that they often experienced as hostile and dis criminatory. Historians and social scientists who might otherwise have been drawn to writing about them knew no Chinese, while those who did know Chinese were concerned with mainstream sinological pur suits, were unfamiliar with social science techriiques, and had neither the time nor the means to reflect on the Chinese around them. In more recent times, the situation has begun to change. The Chi nese groups themselves have matured, and produced their own intel lectuals equipped to articulate community concerns. At the same time, the wall that once sealed sinology from other scholarship has here and there fallen down. Today, many people trained in sinological skills are also versed in the social sciences, while some social scientists learn Chinese. Society, too, has changed, and so has China's position in the world. InEurope, the rise ofethnic studies and multicultural politics has cre ated a new interest in and perspective on Chinese immigrants, whose numbers have grown enormously since the 1970s. China is today a powerful state with a strong nationalist agenda that includes cultivating vii viii Preface Chinese overseas. Overseas Chinese capital dominates parts of South east Asia, is influential throughout the world, including Europe, and fuels the China boom. A combination of the new self-consciousness of the Chinese in Europe and a growing interest in them on the part of governments, which see them as a relatively successful, largely self reliant ethnic minority and a business phenomenon, has finally made visible the group whose sociological sobriquet was always 'the invis ible minority'. It was never possible to understand Chinese migration to Europe solely at the level of the individual European states. Their communi ties must be analysed as an accommodation both to European national entities and to the wider European context, now institutionalized in the European Union. Chinese migrants have always shown scant re gard for the lines drawn thickly and apparently at random across Asia's European promontory. Inthat respect, they were Europeans before the Europeans. Their pan-European ties are another reason for the new interest in them. This book brings together for the first time studies on overseas Chi nese across Europe, in their national settings and in continental scope. Many of the authors are younger scholars who are working on, or have recently finished, research theses on the Chinese community in their different countries. With few exceptions, their work has up to now been unavailable or available only in languages other than English, scattered here and there across restricted sources. This volume is a first flowering of Europe-wide scholarship on the overseas Chinese, and a further step towards the coordination of such research at the European level. As such, it is part of a worldwide trend towards the consolidation of Overseas Chinese Studies as an international field of research in its own right. GREGOR BENTON Notes on the Contributors Joaquin Beltran Antolin is a social anthropologist teaching history of Oriental Asia at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. He is completing a book on Zhejiang Chinese in Europe and Spain. Gregor Benton is Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds. He has published many books, mainly on Chinese Communist Party history. He is directing a project for the ESRC on Chinese com munities in Europe. Francesco Carchedi is the President of Parsec (Research and Social Intervention) in Rome. He has published extensively on immigration in Italy. He is theeditor (withGiovanna Campani and Alberto Tassinari) of L'tmmigrazione silenziosa: Le comunita cinesi in Italia (The silent immigration: The Chinese community in Italy, 1994). Flemming Christiansen is Lecturer in East Asian Studies at the Uni versity of Leeds. His publications include Chinese Politics and Society (with Shirin Rai, 1996) and Village Inc.: Chinese Rural Society in the 1990s (with Zhang Junzuo, forthcoming). Mariea Ferri is a postgraduate student in sociology at the University of Rome. Erich Giitinger teaches Chinese and German in Berlin. His research interest is on the Chinese community in Germany. Frank Laczko is a Senior Research Officer with the International Or ganization for Migration (10M) in Budapest. He is responsible for the research and information programmes of the 10M's Technical Coop eration Centre for Europe and Central Asia. He is the author (with C. Philipson) of Changing Work and Retirement (1991). Alexander G. Larin is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. His research interests include international relations in East Asia, China, and the overseas Chinese in Russia. He is co-author of several books, ix
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