African Traders in Yiwu: Expanding Transnational Trade Networks and Navigating China’s Complex Multicultural Environment

Abstract

China sends and receives big numbers of migrants. As China has become a major destination of global and African migrants in recent years, the country’s immigration policies and related practices deserve particular attention. The growing presence of Africans gives rise to many important issues. China is a country with ethnic and religious tensions as well as socioeconomic disparities between different provinces, and this factor seems to work against stability and cohesion for Chinese people. While ethnic diversity and differences among the Chinese population could potentially be a driver of multiculturalism, they have rather created tensions between ethnic and religious groups given the dominance of the Han Chinese that extols Chineseness. This chapter analyses how Africans and African traders with different backgrounds navigate in complex multicultural environments in China.