Chinese South Africans

Chinese South Africans () are Overseas Chinese who reside in South Africa, including those whose ancestors came to South Africa in the early 20th century until Chinese immigration was banned under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1904. Significant numbers of Taiwanese industrialists immigrated to South Africa between the 1970s and early 1990s, and post-apartheid immigrants to South Africa (predominantly from mainland China) now outnumber locally-born Chinese South Africans. South Africa has the largest population of ethnic Chinese people in Africa, and most of them live in Johannesburg, an economic hub in southern Africa.

History

South African Chinese Population, 1904–1936 </tr> Gender 1904 1911 1921 1936 Natal Province Male 161 161 75 46 Female 4 11 33 36 Cape Province Male 1366 804 584 782 Female 14 19 148 462 Transvaal Province Male 907 905 828 1054 Female 5 5 160 564 Total 2457 1905 1828 2944

First settlers

The first Chinese to settle in South Africa were prisoners, usually debtors, who were sent from Batavia by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to the Dutch Cape Colony. The VOC originally planned on recruiting Chinese immigrants to settle in the Cape Colony as farmers, thereby helping secure the colony's existence and create a tax base which would ensure the Cape Colony was less of a drain on Dutch coffers. However, the Dutch failed to find anyone in the Chinese community in Batavia who was prepared to volunteer to go to such a far off place. There were also some free Chinese settlers in the Cape Colony. They made a living through fishing and farming and traded their produce for other required goods. From 1660 until the late 19th century the number of Chinese people in the Cape Colony never exceeded 100.

Chinese people began arriving in large numbers in South Africa in the 1870s through to the early 20th century initially in hopes of making their fortune on the diamond and gold mines in Kimberley and the Witwatersrand respectively. Most were independent immigrants mostly coming from Canton Province. Due to anti-Chinese sentiment and racial discrimination at the time they were prevented from obtaining mining contracts and so became entrepreneurs and small business owners instead.

The Chinese community in South Africa grew steadily throughout the remainder of the 19th century, bolstered by new arrivals from China. The Second Boer War, fought between 1899 and 1902, pushed some Chinese South Africans out of the Witwatersrand and into areas such as Port Elizabeth and East London in the Eastern Cape. Areas recorded to have Chinese populations moving in to settle at the time include Pageview in Johannesburg that was declared a non-white area in the late 1800s and known as the "Malay Location" Large-scale immigration into South Africa during this time was prohibited by the Transvaal Immigration Restriction Act of 1902 and the Cape Chinese Exclusion Act of 1904. A host of discriminatory laws similar to the anti-Chinese laws that sought to restrict trade, land ownership and citizenship were also enacted during this time. These laws, similar to the earlier Chinese Exclusion Act in the United States, derived from widespread anti-Chinese sentiment across the Western world during the early 1900s and the arrival of over 60,000 indentured Chinese miners after the Second Boer War. These early immigrants arriving between the 1870s and early 1900s are the ancestors of most of South Africa's first Chinese community and number some 10,000 individuals today. In 1903, the Transvaal Chinese Association was formed to represent the interests of the 900 or so Chinese people who lived in the Transvaal province.

Contracted gold miners (1904–1910)

Following the end of the Second Boer War in 1902, production levels in Witwatersrand gold mines were generally low due to a lack of labour. Government officials and businessmen in South Africa were eager to restore pre-war production levels as part of their overall efforts to rebuild from wartime devastation. Due to the war, unskilled African laborers had returned to rural areas and were more inclined to work on rebuilding infrastructure as mining was more dangerous work. Unskilled white labour was being phased out because it was deemed too expensive; mine owners found recruiting and importing labour from China the most expedient way to solve this problem. Between 1904 and 1910, over 63,000 contracted miners were brought in to work in the Witwatersrand's mines. Most contractors were recruited from the Chinese provinces of Zhili, Shandong and Henan. From 1910 onwards they were repatriated to China due to strong opposition from white South Africans to their presence. It is a myth that the contracted miners brought into South Africa at this time are the forefathers of much of South Africa's Chinese population today.

Herbert Hoover, who would later become the 31st U.S. president, was a director of Chinese Engineering and Mining Company (CEMC) when it became a supplier of Chinese labour for South African mines.Walter Liggett, The Rise of Herbert Hoover (New York, 1932) The first shipment of 2,000 Chinese workers arrived in Durban from Qinhuangdao in July 1904. By 1906, the total number of Chinese workers increased to 50,000, almost entirely recruited and shipped by CEMC. When the living and working conditions of the laborers became known, public opposition to the scheme grew and questions were asked in the British Parliament. The scheme was abandoned in 1911. The mass importation of Chinese labourers to work on the gold mines contributed to the fall from power of the conservative government in the United Kingdom. However, it did stimulate to the economic recovery of South Africa after the Second Boer War by once again making the mines of the Witwatersrand the most productive gold mines in the world.

Passive resistance campaign (1906–1913)

In 1906, about 1,000 Chinese joined Indian protesters led by Mahatma Gandhi to march against laws barring Asians in the Transvaal Colony from purchasing land. In 1907, the government of the Transvaal Colony passed the Transvaal Asiatic Registration Act that required the Indian and Chinese populations in the Transvaal to be registered and for males to be fingerprinted and carry pass books. The Transvaal Chinese Association made a written declaration saying that the Chinese would not register for passes and would not interact with those that did. Mahatma Gandhi started a campaign of passive resistance to protest the legislation that was supported by the Indian and Chinese communities. The secretary of the Chinese Association informed Gandhi that the Chinese were prepared to be jailed alongside Indians in support of this cause. On 16 August 1908, members of the movement gathered outside Hamidia Mosque where they burnt 1,200 registration certificates.

Apartheid era (1948–1994) As with other non-White South Africans, the Chinese suffered from discrimination during apartheid, and were often classified as Coloureds, but sometimes as Asians, a category that was generally reserved for Indian South Africans. Today this segment of the South African Chinese population numbers some 10,000 individuals.

Under the apartheid-era Population Registration Act, 1950, Chinese South Africans were deemed "Asiatic", then "Coloured", and finally:

Chinese South Africans, along with Black, Coloured and Indian South Africans, were forcefully removed from areas declared "Whites only" areas by the government under the Group Areas Act in 1950. Suburbs in Johannesburg with Chinese South African populations that were subject to forced removals include Sophiatown starting in 1955, Marabastad in 1969 and the adjacent suburbs of Pageview and Vrededorp, known colloquially as 'Fietas', in 1968. Chinese South Africans were also among those removed from the South End district of Port Elizabeth beginning in 1965. These removals resulted in the formation of a Chinese township in Port Elizabeth.

In 1966 the South African Institute of Race Relations described the negative effects of apartheid legislation on the Chinese community and the resulting brain drain:

In 1928, the liquor legislation was amended to allow Indian South Africans to purchase liquor. Following an amendment in 1962, other non-white South Africans could purchase alcohol, but not drink in white areas. In 1976, the law was amended to allow Chinese South Africans to drink alcohol in white areas.

In 1984, the Tricameral Parliament was established by the government to give Coloured and Indian South Africans a limited influence on South African politics. The Tricameral Parliament was criticised by anti-apartheid groups including the United Democratic Front, who promoted a boycott of the Tricameral Parliament elections, as it still excluded Black people and had very little political power in South Africa. The Chinese South African community refused to participate in this parliament. Previously, the Chinese Association had expelled a member who had been appointed to the President's Council, a body established to advise on constitutional reform.

Immigration from Taiwan Number of Chinese granted permanent residence in South Africa 1985–1995 </tr> Date Number 1985 1 1986 7 1987 133 1988 301 1989 483 1990 1422 1991 1981 1992 275 1993 1971 1994 869 1995 350 Total 7793

By citizenship 1994–95 </tr> Citizenship 1994 1995 Taiwan (ROC) 596 232 People's Republic of China 252 102 Hong Kong 21 16 Total 869 350

With the establishment of ties between apartheid South Africa and Taiwan (officially the Republic of China), KMT-affiliated Taiwanese Chinese (as well as some Hong Kongers from British Hong Kong) started migrating to South Africa from the late 1970s onward. Due to apartheid South Africa's desire to attract their investment in South Africa and the many poorer Bantustans within the country, they were exempt from many apartheid laws and regulations. This created a situation where South Africans of Chinese descent continued to be classified as Coloureds or Asians, whereas the Taiwanese Chinese and other East Asian expatriates (South Koreans and Japanese) were considered "honorary whites" and enjoyed most of the rights accorded to White South Africans.

The South African government also offered a number of economic incentives to investors from Taiwan seeking to set up factories and businesses in the country. These generous incentives ranged from "paying for relocation costs, subsidised wages for seven years, subsidised commercial rent for ten years, housing loans, cheap transport of goods to urban areas, and favourable exchange rates".

In 1984, South African Chinese, now increased to about 10,000, finally obtained the same official rights as the Japanese in South Africa, that is, to be treated as whites in terms of the Group Areas Act. The arrival of the Taiwanese resulted in a surge of the ethnic Chinese population of South Africa, which climbed from around 10,000 in the early 1980s to at least 20,000 in the early 1990s. Many Taiwanese were entrepreneurs who set up small companies, particularly in the textile sector, across South Africa. It is estimated that by the end of the early 1990s Taiwanese industrialists had invested $2 billion (or $2.94 billion in 2011 dollars)Measuring Worth, Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount - Consumer Price Index, retrieved on 26 January 2011 in South Africa and employed roughly 50,000 people.

In the late 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century many of the Taiwanese left South Africa, in part due to official recognition of the People's Republic of China and a post-apartheid crime wave that swept the country. Numbers dropped from a high of around 30,000 Taiwanese citizens in the mid-1990s to the current population of approximately 6,000 today.

Post-Apartheid