Arab Traders Pursuing Chinese Dream in East China

Abstract

The rise of Arab traders from the Middle East and North Africa in Yiwu, a county-level city in Zhejiang Province, the People's Republic of China, has received unprecedented media attention in the context of the Belt and Road initiative. The resident population of Arab traders was over 4,000 in 2016, attracted to the world largest petty commodities wholesale marketplace in the city and were mainly engaged in exporting commodities back to their home countries. Little academic attention has been given to the Arab traders' life and business in China. This is an ethnographic study of Arab traders' engagement in producing power and building cross-cultural trust in their host society. It examines what attracts Arab entrepreneurs to Yiwu, their role in building multinational trading networks, and their increasingly diverse modes of interaction with the majority Chinese community. Drawing on twelve months' fieldwork from November 2015 to December 2016 and follow-up research in November 2017 and February 2019, this project highlights foreign migrant entrepreneurial communities in China, the informal economy and low-end globalization. It shows how Arab traders establish cross-cultural trust with their Chinese partners to maintain a transnational trading system, and outline what their social and business interactions tell us about migrant entrepreneurship and interracial dynamics in China. The ethnographic findings reveal that Arab traders operate and facilitate their transnational business using various kinds of social capital. Many were expatriated by their families and were based in China; this being considered the most stable group of Arab traders by potential Chinese partners. A few were students who had become intermediaries, having studied in Chinese universities and subsequently worked for Arab buyers. The third group were fortune seekers, who presence in the marketplace as shuttle-travelers were considered the most unstable partners for Chinese business people. Arab traders redefined the power relationships in the market. They bought products on credit and forced Chinese suppliers to accept their trading patterns. When married to Chinese women, Arab husbands also required their wives to convert to Islam and subordinate their own culture to their husbands to maintain to maintain their affective relationship. By producing power over other groups, Arab traders transforms their marginal and powerless status in the host society. The presence of Arab traders also influenced the labor market. They integrated Hui migrant Muslims, who can speak Arabic, into export industries to work as interpreters. These Hui people held a dominant role in export industries reversing the general characterization of Chinese minorities being at a disadvantage in the job market. Arab traders regulated the Hui migrant Muslims by spiritual means (e.g. how to be good Muslim, as the traders saw it) rather than control their laborers by more the typical means seen in China. This study aims to deepen our knowledge of small-scale foreign traders in China. Through discussing the process of building trust among different groups, it provides an opportunity to observe cross-cultural communication in detail and in practice.