Chinese shops and the formation of a Chinese expatriate community in Namibia

China Quarterly

Volumn , Issue 199, 2009, Pages 707-727

  Dobler, Gregor ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ASIAN IMMIGRANT; BUSINESS; ENTREPRENEUR; RETAILING; SOCIAL STRUCTURE;

NAMIBIA;

EID: 77249084234     PISSN: 03057410     EISSN: 14682648     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0305741009990178     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. "China shop" is the term used in Namibia, both by locals and by the traders themselves. I use "China shop" and "Chinese shop" indiscriminately here, although one could argue that the two signify different things, as China refers to the merchandise, Chinese to the owners. All China shops in Namibia, however, are owned by Chinese, and virtually all shops owned by Chinese sell the assortment of goods typical for China shops.
2. This is not the place to review the literature on China and Africa; for a first overview see Daniel Large, "Beyond 'Dragon in the bush': the study of China-Africa relations," African Affairs, Vol. 107, No. 426 (2008), pp. 45-61
3. and Giles Mohan, "China in Africa: a review essay," Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 35, No. 1 (2008), pp. 155-73.
4. For Chinese traders in Africa, see e.g. Heide Haugen and Jorgen Carling, "On the edge of the Chinese diaspora: the surge of Baihuo business in an African city," Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 28, No. 4 (2005), pp. 639-62;
5. Conal Ho, "Living transitions: a primer to Chinese presence in Ghana," The China Monitor, No. 26 (2008), pp. 9-11;
6. Antoine Kernen and Benoît Vulliet, "Les petits commerçants et entrepreneurs chinois au Mali et au Sénégal, " Société politique comparée, No. 5 (2008);
7. Margaret C. Lee, "Uganda and China: unleashing the dragon," in Henning Melber (ed.), China in Africa (Uppsala: Nordic African Institute 2007), pp. 26-40, Basile Ndjio, "Shanghai beauties and African desires. Migration, trade and Chinese prostitution in Cameroon" (forthcoming, 2009);
8. Annette Rihnstrøm Schmidt, "The anti-Chinese tide in urban Zambia" (unpublished MA thesis, Aarhus, 2008). Some estimations about the numbers of Chinese migrants in different countries can be found in Giles Mohan, "Social relationships of new Chinese migrants in Africa," The China Monitor, No. 26 (2008), pp. 6-8.
9. Related aspects are covered in Gregor Dobler, "China in Namibia," in Henning Melber (ed.), Transitions in Namibia. Which Change for Whom? (Upsala: Nordic Africa Institute, 2007), pp. 94-109;
10. Dobler, "Solidarity, xenophobia and the regulation of Chinese businesses in Oshikango, Namibia," in Chris Alden, Daniel Large and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira (eds.), China Returns to Africa (London: Hurst, 2008), pp. 237-55;
11. Dobler, "From Scotch whisky to Chinese sneakers. International commodity flows and trade networks in Oshikango, Namibia," Africa, Vol. 78, No. 3 (2008), pp. 410-32. Earlier versions of this article were presented at ECAS 2005 in London, at the conference "China and Africa - who benefits?" in Frankfurt, 2007, at ASC Leiden and at the Institute for Social Anthropology of the Free University Berlin. My thanks go to the many people who have commented on preliminary drafts and presentations.
12. Peter Kilby, "The heffalump revisited," Journal ofInternational Entrepreneurship, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2003), pp. 13-29.
13. For an overview on the discussion, see Howard E. Waldrich and Roger Waldinger, "Ethnicity and entre-preneurship," Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 16 (1990), pp. 111-35;
14. Gamal Ibrahim and Vaughan Galt, "Ethnic business development: toward a theoretical synthesis and policy framework," Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 37, No. 4 (2003), pp. 1107-19.
15. The concept of "protected ethnic markets" was developed by Ivan Light, Ethnic Enterprises in America: Business and Welfare Among Chinese, Japanese and Blacks (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972);
16. Alejandro Portes and Robert Bach, Latin Journey: Cuban and Mexican Immigrants in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) use the term "ethnic enclaves."
17. See also Roger Waldinger, Howard Aldrich and Robin Ward, "Opportunities, group characteristics and strategies" in Waldinger, Aldrich and Ward (eds.), Ethnic Entrepreneurs. Immigrant Business in Industrial Societies (Newbury Park, London, Delhi: Sage, 2006), pp. 13-48.
18. See, among many others: Pnina Werbner, The Migration Process: Capital, Gifts and Offerings among British Pakistanis (New York: Berg, 1990);
19. Mohammed Rafiq, "Ethnicity and enterprise: a comparison of Muslim and non-Muslim owned Asian businesses in Britain," New Community, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1992), pp. 43-60.
20. See Edna Bonacich, "The other side of ethnic entrepreneurship: a dialogue with Waldinger, Aldrich, Ward and Associates," International Migration Review, Vol. 27, No. 3 (1993), pp. 685-92 for a critical perspective on this tendency.
21. Angola is one of the richest countries in Africa. Crude oil production reached 2 millions barrels a day in 2008, and the country has now surpassed Nigeria, a country of ten times the number of inhabitants, as Africa's biggest oil producer.
22. For more details on Oshikango and the importance of the border situation for trade see Gregor Dobler, "Oshikango: the dynamics of growth and regulation in a northern Namibian boom town," Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 35, No. 1 (2009), pp. 115-31;
23. Gregor Dobler, "On the border to chaos: identity formation on the Angolan-Namibian border, 1927-2008," in David Coplan (ed.), African Borderlands. Special Issue of the Journal of Borderland Studies (2009).
24. I cannot go into the details of other trade networks here. For a comparative perspective, see Dobler, "From Scotch whisky to Chinese sneakers."
25. For an overview of Chinese emigration policy, see Biao Xiang, "Emigration from China: a sending country perspective," International Migration, Vol. 41, No. 3 (2003), pp. 21-48.
26. Here is a typical example of a 40-foot container received by a Chinese trader in Oshikango in 2004: 17,088 bottles of perfume, 20,640 umbrellas, 9,600 pairs of shoes and 48,000 belts were shipped by a company in Yiwu on 18 October 2004. The container was sealed by the Chinese customs and shipped by P&O Nedlloyd from Ningbo to Walvis Bay via Singapore and Cape Town. It arrived in Singapore on the vessel London Tower on 27 October and reached Walvis Bay on 15 November. In Walvis Bay, it was loaded on to a truck that drove to Oshikango in about eleven hours.
27. See Dobler, "From Scotch whisky to Chinese sneakers" for a comparative perspective with other migrant groups in Oshikango.
28. See Gregor Dobler, "Tra prezzi bassi e risentimento. Commercianti cinesi e società locale ad Oshikango -Namibia," Afriche e Orienti, No. 2 (2008), pp. 118-26.
29. For a similar image of cheapness increasingly linked to Chinese goods and people, see Ndjio, "Shanghai beauties."
30. See New Era, 16 November 2007. The widespread practice of under-invoicing also seriously questions import and export statistics between African countries and China. For Namibia, I would suspect that the real value of the goods imported from China is at least two times higher than the book value. The same is probably true for many other countries.
31. The level of business rents in Oshikango is as high as the turnover. A normal-sized shop in one of the new complexes costs between N$5,000 and 8,000 a month; some rents are significantly higher.
32. Deborah Bräutigam, "Close encounters: Chinese business networks as industrial catalysts in sub-Saharan Africa," African Affairs, No. 102 (2003), pp. 447-67.