Panel 26: Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association (Baohuanghui, the Society to Protect the Emperor) in Transpacific Politics and Business Ven- tures, 1899-1911
Baohuanghui Badges and Medals: Kang Youwei’s Scheme to Develop Credentials and Raise Funds, 1904-1905
Robert L. Worden
Former Chief of the Asian Division, Library of Congress
As the Chinese Empire Reform Association (the Baohuanghui, the Society to Protect the Emperor) emerged as a political force in Chinatowns in Canada, the United States, Mexico, and elsewhere in the world around 1904, Kang Youwei recognized the need for an official credential of membership. After initially developing gold and silver medals as awards for officers and special members of the Association, Kang settled on a scheme to design and produce badges for individual members. The badges had a dual purpose: as a symbol of membership in the Association and to raise funds for its programs. They also were an overt sign of support for the reformist cause and personal allegiance to Kang Youwei. The production phase was assigned to Kang’s daughter, Kang Tongbi, then a college prep student in Connecticut. This paper will focus on the correspondence, invoices, and other documents in a recently discovered collection (the Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection) to describe the design, production, and dissemination of the medals and badges. As with most Baohuanghui endeavors, controversies arose, both political and financial.
Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association in Mexico: A Promising Experiment that Ended in Disaster
Evelyn Hu-DeHart
Brown University
Kang Youwei and leaders of his Canadian and US movement had great ambition that extended beyond the Anglophone North America to reach out to Latin America, countries such as Brazil, Cuba, El Salvador, and especially Mexico, where they actually established a foothold in the northeastern town of Torreón in first decade of the 20th century. The Commercial Corporation and local merchants led by Wong Foon Chuck invested heavily in local and regional enterprises in commercial agriculture, banking and modern transportation, as well as many retail businesses, employing hundreds of Chinese immigrants. This Chinese immigrant community was wiped out in one violent afternoon when Mexican revolutionary troops stormed the city in May 1911 and massacred over 300 unarmed Chinese.
Kang Youwei and the Baohuanghui’s Mobilization Overseas and the Turn From Constitutional Reforms to Revolution in China, 1907-1911
Jane Leung Larson
Independent Scholar
Even as the Chinese Empire Reform Association (known as Baohuanghui, the Society to Protect the Emperor) reeled under business collapses and internal dissension and mourned the death of the Guangxu Emperor in 1908, its political influence and activities reached a pinnacle inside China and may have inadvertently hastened revolution. In 1906, Kang and his followers welcomed the Qing’s plans for a gradual transition to a constitutional monarchy. In 1907, Kang convened a Baohuanghui congress in New York to adopt a new organizational name—the Imperial Constitutional Association (Diguo Xianzhenghui) and programmatic charter to set the organization on a new path. In 1908, Liang Qichao’s affiliated Political Information Society (Zhengwenshe) moved from Tokyo to Shanghai and set up provincial branches, newspapers and schools in China.
A lengthy and controversial petition on behalf of the 200 Xianzhenghui chapters was written by Kang in 1907 and likely introduced at the Xianzhenghui congress in New York. Widely publicized inside and outside China, it helped galvanize Chinese citizens and sympathetic officials to join a national movement (19081911) to petition the Qing to convene a parliament and promulgate a constitution. Kang’s petition contended that “constitutional government must be established before we can save our country, and parliament must be convened before we can have constitutional government.” Among the petition’s more inflammatory demands was that the Qing government update the official name for China from its dynastic designation to a formal name symbolizing unity between the ruling Manchus and the majority Han, Zhonghua, a name eventually adopted by both the Republic and the People’s Republic of China. Other proposals included the retirement of Empress Dowager Cixi and the return to power of Emperor Guangxu, modernizing the administration of the country from top to bottom; creation of a strong navy; and building a citizen army by universal conscription.
With a new Chinese American wife at his side, Kang returned to Asia in 1909 to await his chance to serve a reform government in China. But, in 1911, the demand for constitutionalism and yearning for political participation outpaced the Qing government’s ability to meet reformers’ expectations. Revolution became inevitable.
Four Strategies to Rescue China Through Activities in the United States: Kang Tongbi and the Baohuanghui, 1903-1909
Yang Zheng 郑扬
University of Connecticut
This paper focuses on Kang Tongbi’s political activities in the United States between 1903 and 1909. She came to the United States to promote the reformist cause of her father, Kang Youwei, as well as to pursue her personal education. The four strategies she used on behalf of, under the instruction from, or together with her father, were: contacts with American political figures; lecturing on the cause of Chinese reforms and on the rights and status of Chinese women who lived in the United States; organizing women’s chapters of the Baohuanghui; and giving newspaper interviews. Over the course of her six years in the United States, Kang Tongbi became a political leader of the Baohuanghui, focusing on women, and she actively sought American support for the Chinese nationalist cause. Kang Tongbi frequently gave lectures to both male and female members of the Chinese community and occasionally to a Western audience, including a Christian group led by John Alexander Dowie. She consistently supported Chinese women in their efforts to appear in public and participate in the public sphere, just as American women could do. Finally, Kang Tongbi’s life in America was partly shaped by the new celebrity culture fostered by early twentieth century newspapers. Media representations of her as an elite Chinese woman in the United States enabled her to introduce the Baohuanghui’s goals and activities to mainstream American audiences.
Panel 27: Republican Era Visions and Promotional Campaigns
António Barrento
University of Lisbon
During the 1920s and the 1930s, interest in tourism and tourist practice expanded in Republican China. In this context, the Nanyang emerged as a significant outbound touristic locus on the level of the discourse on leisure travel, while it was furthermore to be the tourist destination of an affluent few. This being so, the Nanyang Chinese communities in the region were to rank high amongst proposed and actual tourist attractions. An example of this is found in an account of a long trip to Southeast Asia by a traveler named Liang Shaowen, published in 1924, which was ultimately to be a journey to the Chinese local communities, with visits, amongst other places, to the Association of Chinese Merchants in Singapore, the Chinese neighbourhood in Penang, and various Chinese schools. In his tour, Liang Shaowen was to even decide to inspect the tin mines near Ipoh, partly, he said, to understand the living conditions of the Chinese community, and was, during the time there, to dedicate much of his time to also examining the local Chinese institutions of learning.
These tours were nationalist journeys in a variety of ways. For one thing, while it is not particularly surprising that the Chinese communities should generate an interest amongst Chinese tourists abroad, one of the usual components of tourism being the attraction of self-identifiable cultural realities, the recurrent focus on them seems to have been particularly related to the strong nationalistic context of this period us. Also, visiting the Chinese communities was to be an important element behind the nationalist tourist gaze of some of the tourists to the region. This can be seen, for instance, in an article of the China Traveler magazine written by a tourist who was part of a touring party that went in 1935 to the Philippines, the East Indies and Singapore. As the author tried to define what had been obtained from such a trip, he mentioned some knowledge of the region and of its special food and customs, but this was just one aspect of many. Gained had also been, as he mentioned, an understanding of the conditions of the Chinese overseas, an admiration for their nationalist spirit, a mutual understanding between compatriots in China and outside China. Finally, the inspection of the Chinese communities was in some cases to be the starting point for analyses of Chinese character and of the Chinese nation. Many of the touristic narratives to the region included general nationalist considerations on the weakness of the Chinese or the fate of the Chinese nation, that were directly related to the observation of the condition of the overseas Chinese in the region.
Aviation, Gender and Modernizing the Chinese Race, 1938-1944
Alan Baumler
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Aviation and “air-mindedness” were an international obsession after World War One. In a series of air tours North and South America from 1938 to 1944 the Chinese government used female pilots (mostly notably former movie actress Lee Ya-ching) to demonstrate China’s modernity to foreign, Overseas Chinese, and domestic audiences. Modernity and gender were presented in very different ways to different audiences. Flight was connected to narratives of personal liberation and modernizing the individual, but also to narratives of national power. The tours presented different views of Chinese gender and modernity for non-Chinese elites in North and South America, where Guomindang interest in elite support was quite different. These tours were part of the evolution of a (strongly gendered) Chinese soft power diplomacy that eventually culminated in Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s tours of the United States.
The tours were also part of the Nationalists’ on-going attempts to mobilize Overseas Chinese communities. The fliers were met with patriotic parades and banquets and were a major opportunity for Overseas Chinese elites to engage with their non-Chinese counterparts. The Chinese government used the tours to raise money and recruit personnel among the Overseas Chinese communities and used the tours to create a more modern and technological image of the Chinese race among both Chinese and non-Chinese communities. Aviation was particularly important in these contexts given the established discourse that Asians were biologically incapable of flight. Flight was also tied to gender, and the tours (and related exhibitions inside China) were part of working out which of several possible international models of modernity and the female body the Chinese state was going to accept and propagate to domestic, foreign and Overseas Chinese audiences.
The paper draws on published and archival sources to study how flight and gender were presented in mass media both in text and visually. In many cases this corresponded to the propaganda plans of the wartime Chinese government, which drew on both existing orientalist tropes about Chinese women and foreign images of the modern technological woman. In many cases however, the official narrative was subverted either by the press or by the individual fliers.
A Chinese Contribution to the BBC’s Asia Programs During WWII
Da Zheng
Suffolk University
This paper studies Shih-I Hsiung’s contributions through his active participation in the BBC’s Asia programs in England between 1940 and 1942. Hsiung grew up in China and went to England in 1932. He became a renowned writer with the staging of Lady Precious Stream and The Romance of the Western Chamber. In the late 1930s, he was invited to prepare weekly news commentaries for the BBC targeting the audiences in Asia. He wrote news articles in both English and Chinese languages, and in 1941 he was asked to broadcast news commentaries in Chinese, some of which were subsequently published in journals in China. These radio programs were well received in Hong Kong, China, and Southeast Asian countries. After the Pacific War broke out, the British government decided to discontinue those programs in early 1942, and Hsiung appeared on other BBC programs occasionally in the successive years, discussing various cultural and literary subjects, such as Chinese drama, religion, and political figures.
By studying this historical episode, the paper aims to underline the significant role Hsiung played in the international coalition in anti-Fascist efforts. Though Hsiung is generally known for his literary and theatrical accomplishments, his cultural and political contributions during WWII deserve recognition. Utilizing language skills, cultural knowledge, and social influences, he helped bring about overseas support for his home country and boost the morale of the Chinese in their resistance against Japanese invasion. Through radio broadcasting, which was a sophisticated transcontinental network, Hsiung effectively enabled the audience in China and Asia to be informed and connected.
Panel 28: Making Money as an Overseas Chinese
The Chinese Restaurants in Hanoi and the Ethnic Chinese Immigrants to Vietnam
Satahiro Serizawa
Nara University
This paper aims to show some of the characteristics of the recent localization of Chinese cuisine in Hanoi, Vietnam by focusing upon the Chinese migration. The case of the import of Chinese cuisine and the ethnic Chinese migration to Vietnam, especially in the case of Hanoi, the capital city in Vietnam, is very unique when compared with the cases of Chinese residents and their restaurants in other countries and cities in the world. Hanoi is situated near the border between China and Vietnam, and the China- Vietnam conflict in 1979 brought severe damage upon the ethnic Chinese community in Hanoi. Many of the present Chinese restaurants in Hanoi were re-born or newly-established after the 1990s when normalization between China and Vietnam was introduced and many Chinese tourists came to Vietnam without any special connections to the local ethnic Chinese (Hoa) community.
Counting on this important factor of tourism to the establishment of Chinese restaurants in Hanoi during these decades, I have divided them into two categories in this paper: (A) hotel restaurants inside of a hotel; (B) the independent restaurants outside of hotels. I and the research assistant visited 33 Chinese restaurants in the city; 7 hotel restaurants and 26 independent restaurants from February 2011 to July 2012. The research was conducted as a part of the project in the SEASREP Foundation sponsored by the Japan Foundation: “the Contemporary Chinese Migration to Southeast Asia and Japan: Case Studies of Vietnam, Malaysia and Japan.” And the research project titled as“Anthropological studies on the relations among peoples and their ethnicity seen through the markets between China and Vietam” in 2014-2016 sponsored by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in Japan is providing the occasion to collect additional information.
In this paper, I will introduce the uniqueness of Chinese food culture in the Vietnamese context and explain the recent development of Chinese restaurants in Hanoi in terms of historical and geographical conditions. And I will address two important topics relating to the ethnic Chinese migration by looking into several cases of the restaurants: social networks of business, and international marriage and entrepreneurship. The ethnic Chinese immigrants utilize their social capital to open their restaurants in Hanoi. International marriage brings the decision of new Chinese immigrants to settle down and the occasion for the spouse to open their own independent restaurant.
China’s Normal Return Back to the World and Dynamic Transformation of Chinese Community in Korea
Young-rok Cheong 鄭永祿, Seoul National University
Hwa-seung Lee, Seoul Digital University
Chinese community in Korea could provide an interesting case of dynamic transformation of status of migrants in host country with exceptional economic development of mother country in diaspora study. Before diplomatic normalization of 1992 liked with mediocre performance of socialist planned economy of mainland China had driven scale down of Chinese community size and status in Korea. Many of Chinese having lived in Korea exited to other countries including the US. Some Chinese returned back to Taiwan, which provided better opportunities to them in special cases.
Economic rise (return) of China to the so called G2(number 2) status in the World, however, brought a dynamic change in Chinese community in Korea. One example is recent naming of a local Chinese in Korea to a top general manger level of a leading Group company for better China business. In addition, president of Seoul Overseas Chinese association was elected as a regular CPPCC member in local Shandong province level. Previously, these could not be possible and even imaginable. Korean wave in China also directly and indirectly reveal Chinese ethnic background of many workers in entertainment business in Korea, who were previously not well identified as Chinese. It will be more conspicuous considering the trend of Chinese students studying in Korea.
In this essay, we would like to analyze formation of new Chinese community in Korea since diplomatic normalization of 1992 focusing on main stream business area; M&A related deal, tourism and entertainment industries. We would like to argue economic determinism of immigration mostly finding and referring as many cases as possible in diversified area. Document reading and interviews of related persons or experts will be mostly adopted for this purpose.
Chinese Laundries in Aotearoa (New Zealand)
Joanna Boileau
Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust
This paper will report on a major Chinese heritage research project which I am working on in Aotearoa/New Zealand, funded by the Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust (CPTHT).
The paper will begin with a brief introduction to the history and aims of the CPTHT and the variety of projects it funds. It will go on to discuss one of the current projects: a research project into Chinese laundries. Laundry work was one of the three main occupations that Chinese immigrants to New Zealand took up after the gold rushes, along with market gardening and fruit and vegetable and grocery stores.
The aim of the laundries project is to research and document the history of Chinese owned and operated laundries in New Zealand, from the earliest laundries in the 1890s to the 1970s when few remained. This involves documentary research and research within the Chinese community, including distributing questionnaires and conducting oral history interviews. The final product will be a publication on the history of Chinese laundries in New Zealand, covering as far as is possible all known New Zealand Chinese owned and operated laundries and the people who ran them.
The paper will present the preliminary findings of my research to date including a brief overview of the history of Chinese immigration to New Zealand and the development of Chinese laundries. It will discuss the key themes emerging from the oral history interviews conducted to date and some of the social, technological and economic changes which lead to the decline of Chinese laundries by the 1960s. These included increasing suburbanisation after the Second World War, the wide availability of home washing machines, changes in fashion, more informal dress, and the development of easy care, machine washable and non-iron fabrics.
Panel 29: Overseas Chinese Legacies in New Zealand and Australia
The New Zealand Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust: Origins and Role
Peter Chin
Chair, New Zealand Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust
In 2002 the Government of New Zealand formally apologized to all Chinese Poll Tax payers and their descendants for the imposition of a poll tax and on the enactment of discriminatory laws against the early Chinese entering New Zealand. As a gesture of goodwill, and after due consultation, the Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust was established (in November 2004) with Government funding of NZ$5 million to fund historical research, commemorative works and cultural heritage projects. This was an acknowledgement to the Poll Tax payers, their descendants and future generations, of the hardships caused by the Poll Tax and other discriminatory legislation, and as a way of creating understanding of the Chinese community and their place in the wider New Zealand society.
In my paper I will cover:
- A brief history of the early Chinese in New Zealand and the ways they were discriminated against;
- The efforts made over the years to persuade successive Governments to acknowledge the injustices;
- The apology and the consultation which led to the formation of the Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust;
- The set-up, objectives and work of the Trust since inception and its ongoing role;
- Reflections as to the future relevancy of the Trust.
Heads-I-Win-Tails-You-Lose: The Test it Was a Crime to Fail
Michael Williams
Western Sydney University
Philanthropy in a Regional Australian Chinese Community 1857-1917
Leigh McKinnon
Golden Dragon Museum
Bendigo in central Victoria, Australia, was one of the world’s richest goldfields and attracted fortune seekers from all over the world, particularly at the height of the goldrush in the 1850s. The city was home to a large Chinese born population in this period, which at its peak numbered around 5,000 indiviuals, around a quarter of all residents in Bendigo . From the late 1850s onwards sections of the Chinese community in Bendigo began to gain notice in the local press for their fundraising efforts for the local hospital and benevolent asylum. These ranged from donation drives to charity operatic performances to eventually the formation of the famous annual parade at Easter. This paper will explore the various modes of fundraising for charity used by Bendigo’s Chinese community, the various organisations and groups that were engaged in these philanthropic activities, as well as the historical context and impact of this minority community’s very considerable fundraising for charitable causes. In the period under consideration charitable donations from the Chinese of Bendigo go from being mainly the province of various place based, commercial, or mission church groups, to being channelled mainly through a single committee in which members of these various groups worked together towards a common fundraising goal. At the end of the period covered within the paper the metamorphosis of this common fundraising initiative into a pan-Chinese “Chung Wah Society”, the modern Bendigo Chinese Association, will also be considered.
Panel 30: Chinese migrants in Latin America/Caribbean and Africa: Examinations of Race, Class, Gender in Inter-group and Intra-group Relations
Part 1
Organizer & Discussant: Yoon Jung Park
Independent Researcher
In the past, South East Asia and North America were the two most popular and common destinations for Overseas Chinese. With China’s integration into the global economy, migration flows have intensified as well as diversified. As a result, numbers of Overseas Chinese in migration destinations in the Global South, including Latin America/Caribbean and Africa have increased. Acknowledging the importance of these two regions for the study of overseas Chinese this panel focuses on Chinese migrants in these two distant sites in an effort to start examining, side-by-side, the similarities and differences in historical and contemporary migrations, communities of overseas Chinese, local perceptions, and issues of identity.
Historically, flows of Chinese to LA/C and Africa were significantly smaller than those to North America; however, most of these original flows were also linked to indentured labor and colonial projects as in North America. Reception in different countries varied greatly. In an era of a Rising China, China’s “going out” has involved flows of both Chinese capital as well as Chinese people. As in earlier times, independent migrants often follow state projects and contract labor. Despite these similarities, it could be argued that the socio-economic and historical context of the Global South is different from that of South East Asia and North America. In these two back-to-back panels, exploring both the past and the present, we ask: Has/does Chinese migration to the Global South played/play out differently than in the north/west?
In the first panel, Cecilia Green will present a broad overview of both historical and contemporary Chinese flows to the Caribbean. This will be followed by three papers that examine relations between local populations and Chinese migrants and between different groups of Chinese migrants. Yanyin ZI explores the spread of cheap Chinese consumer goods through retail shops and the growing conflicts between Chinese merchants and their local customers in Botswana, while Yan LI examines local attitudes and perceptions of Chinese workers and entrepreneurial migrants in Dominica. Katy Lam presents a paper on competition, constructions of Chinese migrant identity, and notions of suzhi as they play out amongst Chinese traders & business migrants in Ghana. Yoon Jung Park will serve as a discussant for this panel, commenting on the papers from the vantage of her own work on Chinese South Africans, newer Chinese migrant flows in South Africa, and local perceptions.
The second panel examines national identity, race/ethnicity/color, and gender in both historical and contemporary Chinese migrant communities. Fredy Gonzalez introduces us to a little-known group of Chinese Mexican braceros who worked as “Mexican” cooks for railroad workers in the US and their struggles with exclusion and Mexican national identity. Ying-Ying Tiffany Liu examines everyday performances of race relations in Johannesburg, with a focus on the often uneasy relationship between Chinese employers and Zimbabwean employees in Chinese restaurants. Kathy Lopez explores the roles of gender, class, and color in shaping elite and popular attitudes toward Chinese migrants and their local-born children in Cuba and Jamaica. And Sarah Hanisch examines female migrants in Lesotho arguing that traditional practices and gender roles must be understood both in the current context and in their places of origin. Huamei Han will serve as discussant and comment based on her own recent work on race and Chinese migrants in several African countries.
Chinese Transnationalism in the Caribbean: A Historical and Comparative Framework
Cecilia A. Green
Syracuse University
In this paper, I propose to present an exercise in the historical and comparative framing of the new Chinese private entrepreneurial migration to the Caribbean. There are three dimensions to this framing exercise. The first involves clearly distinguishing the current from the historical migrations in terms of type of migration and respective terms of reference, and, in addition, briefly considering comparative outcomes, within the Caribbean, of the earlier migration. The second involves distinguishing among various contemporary migratory streams from China, in particular those to the Global South, and investigating the extent to which this variety might be replicated in the Caribbean. The third involves comparatively examining the experiences of settlers in different islands within the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), given the context of (pre-political) economic union on the one hand and rival diplomatic alignments to China or Taiwan of individual island-states on the other. This last exercise is based on ongoing research in four islands of the six-member OECS, two of which are diplomatically allied with China and the other two with Taiwan.
Ethnic Stigmatization and Chinese Suzhi in Africa: Imagined Community and Ethnic Boundaries Negotiations
Katy Lam
Hong Kong Baptist University
Taking Ghana as the country studied, the notion of a Chinese migrant community is problematic, because whether such a community exists and what it is composed of are arguable. Certainly, “natural” factors like period of arrival, length of Ghanaian experience, and social and professional backgrounds have contributed to a heterogeneous and segmented Chinese group. However, what really alienate Chinese from other Chinese in Ghana are fierce competition, unhealthy business practices between Chinese companies, distrust, experiences of cheating, and rumors circulating among Chinese. Nevertheless, one cannot say that a Chinese community is absent in Ghana, as it does exist, at least in “imaginary” both externally by the media and the hosting society and internally by the Chinese themselves.
In recent years, established and localized Chinese private entrepreneurs and Chinese state-owned enterprises (CSOEs) directors in Ghana actively create institutions like Chinese associations and norms for building a socially superior and socially responsible “Chinese community” to be viewed both internally and externally. While other Chinese, like private traders, have attempted to do the same, they have not been able to obtain the blessings of the Chinese Embassy to Ghana. It is primarily the localized CSOEs directors and successful entrepreneurs who belong to the same social class, are engaged by the Chinese Embassy to take leading roles in institutionalizing a “good” Chinese community. This paper will focus how such “Chinese community” in Ghana is a class-based group rather than a shared (Chinese) ethnicity representation. Building a “Chinese community” in Ghana is instrumentalized by the Chinese Embassy for Chinese image improvement and control at local level, as well as by the established Chinese entrepreneurs and CSOEs expats for enhancing their own local business development and network.
The Seven Year Itch: A Content Analysis of Online Comments on China’s Presence in Dominica
Yan Liu
Syracuse University
During the past two decades, China’s presence in the Caribbean has expanded rapidly in the forms of two parallel movements: the state-backed aid and infrastructure development projects and the new wave of entrepreneurial migration into this region. Local people’s attitudes towards China’s new role are mixed. While some embrace the new opportunities brought by the new partner, others fear that the projects will leave Caribbean countries saddled with heavy debts, environmental and labor issues. This present study examines local internet users’ attitudes towards China’s involvement in Dominica, using data collected from the online discussion section in a Dominica news website. Content analysis results reveal both negative and positive perceptions towards Chinese involvement. Among the negative attitudes, non-transparency and the debt problems are the most prominent. Furthermore, preliminary longitudinal analysis suggests that negative perceptions become more prevalent over time.
Unveiling the Masks of Batswana Customers in China Shop: We Don’t Like China Shops But We Still Need Fong Kong Goods
Yanyin Zi 訾彦訚
Kyoto University
In 1990 there was an unprecedented growth of retail shops owned by Chinese merchants popularly known as “China shops” in Botswana, expanding from the cities into the rural areas. The booming of China shops in Botswana created jobs and provided cheaper products for the daily needs of the local people. However, the shops are criticized for saturating the local market and are recently facing strict regulations in an increasingly hostile business environment. Chinese merchants continue to face numerous challenges from the local people on employment and service issues. Made in China goods are called fong kong goods (Barrett, 2007) in Southern Africa where Botswana is located. With a reputation for poor quality, they are generally regarded as cheap copies or even fake goods (Park, 2013). The Botswana government has attempted to regulate and control fong kong goods, but they continue to thrive.
Using an anthropological approach, this research analysed the conflicts between Chinese merchants and Batswana customers through interview and participant observation. After investigating the logic chain of Chinese merchandise, the background of Chinese merchants, the service issues and local attitudes towards China shops were analysed taking into account the social status of the Chinese merchants and Batswana customers. Push-pull theory is adopted to unravel the complicated context of Chinese merchandise in Botswana society, aiming to present a balanced view by exploring various voices and arguments. The ongoing research found that despite the infamous reputation of Chinese merchandise, they stay in Botswana as long as they continue to fulfil the popular demands from local customers. In addition, many local customers use the reputation of Chinese merchandise and the short comings of Chinese merchants to get benefit from China shops.
This research is based on fieldwork in Botswana between November 2011 and September 2015 (11 months in total), conducted in Mandarin, English and Setswana. I interviewed Chinese migrants, Botswana local assistants and customers in the China wholesale and retail shops in the capital city of Botswana and rural towns.