Chinese people in the Netherlands

Chinese people in the Netherlands
Overzeese Chinezen in Nederland
荷蘭華僑華人/荷兰华侨华人

Total population
67,772 (2008) 0.42% of the population[1] Statistics for people born in the People's Republic of China or the Republic of China and their children only
Regions with significant populations
Rotterdam, Amsterdam[2] The Hague[citation needed]
Languages
Indonesian languages, Dutch, Chinese (largely Cantonese among older migrants and their descendants; recent expatriates typically speak Mandarin)[3]
Related ethnic groups
Overseas Chinese

Chinese people in the Netherlands form one of the largest overseas Chinese populations in continental Europe.^[2] As of 2008^[update], official statistics showed 67,772 people originating from the People's Republic of China (PRC) or the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROC), or people with at least one such parent.^[4] However, since its earliest days, the community of Chinese in the Netherlands has included not just migrants from China, but people of Chinese ethnicity drawn from among overseas Chinese communities as well.^[5]

Migration history

Early Chinese labour migration to the Netherlands was drawn primarily from two sources: peddlers from Qingtian, Zhejiang who began arriving in the country after World War I, and seamen of Guangdong origin drawn from among the British Chinese community; the latter had initially been brought in as strikebreakers in 1911. During the Great Depression, many of the seamen were laid off and also took to street peddling, especially of pindakoekjes (peanut cakes); the Dutch referred to them as "pindaman" ("peanut man"). Their numbers dropped as a result of voluntary outmigration and deportations; by World War II, fewer than 1,000 remained.^[2]

Another group of early ethnic Chinese in the Netherlands were students; they were largely not from China, however, but were instead drawn from among Chinese communities in the Dutch East Indies. From a group of 20 in 1911, their numbers continued to increase, interrupted only by World War II; in 1957, out of the roughly 1,400 ethnic Chinese from Indonesia in the Netherlands, 1,000 were students. However, with increasing tensions in Netherlands-Indonesia relations in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the number of students dropped off sharply.^[5] Largely of Peranakan origin, they tended to speak Indonesian local languages as their mother tongues, and had already done their early education at Dutch-medium schools.^[2]

Though the number of Chinese students from Indonesia dropped off, tens of thousands of ethnic Chinese were forced to leave the country due to the violent political situation in Indonesia in 1965. Most went to China, the United States, or Australia, but those who had been educated in Dutch preferentially chose the Netherlands as their destination; there are no exact statistics, but the migrants themselves estimate that about 5,000 arrived during this period. As with the students, these migrants tended to speak no Chinese, with Indonesian languages as their mother tongues and Dutch as their academic language.^[6] In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hong Kong also became a significant source of Chinese migrants to the Netherlands, with about 600 to 800 per year, falling off to around 300 to 400 per year by the late 1980s.^[7]

Also in the 1980s, the Netherlands began to become a popular choice for students from mainland China. Factors which influenced this popularity included the tuition fees, which were relatively lower than those in the United Kingdom, and the ease of obtaining a student visa as compared to the United States. In the beginning, these were PRC government-financed students, consisting of top students selected by examination, and gained admission at prestigious Dutch universities such as Leiden University.^[8] However, in the 1990s, more privately-financed students, students on Dutch scholarships, and short-term exchange students began to arrive.^[9] By 2002, embassy figures showed roughly 4,000 PRC students in the Netherlands.^[10]

Demographic characteristics

As of 2008^[update], figures from the Netherlands' Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek showed:

• Persons born outside of the Netherlands:
  • 32,405 China-born persons (14,734 men, 17,671 women)
  • 9,971 Hong Kong-born persons (4,963 men, 5,008 women)
  • 86 Macau-born persons (42 men, 44 women)
  • 1,991 Taiwan-born persons (746 men, 1,245 women)
• Persons born in the Netherlands:
  • 14,703 persons with at least one parent born in China (7,560 men, 7,143 women)
  • 8,194 persons with at least one parent born in Hong Kong (4,184 men, 4,010 women)
  • 32 persons with at least one parent born in Macau (16 men, 16 women)
  • 390 persons with at least one parent born in Taiwan (203 men, 187 women)

Totalling 67,772 persons.^[1]

The Chinese in the Netherlands are not particularly geographically concentrated; more than half work in the restaurant trade, and because they prefer to open Chinese restaurants where they have less competition, they tend to spread out to towns all over the country. Amsterdam has a Chinatown, but they are purely a commercial district, rather than a mixed-use residential/commercial district as in Chinatowns in other countries.^[7] Rotterdam and The Hague also have similar districts.^{[citation needed]}

Integration and community

Chinese students themselves, comparing the Netherlands to the United States, state that the Netherlands offers a peaceful and not-particularly-challenging life, but fewer opportunities; one popular saying among them is that excellent students find the Netherlands too small to fulfill their ambitions, and leave of their own volition, while average and below-average students are forced out of the country entirely.^[11]

Chinese in the Netherlands are often perceived to be "snakeheads", participating in smuggling Chinese migrants from Eastern Europe to the United Kingdom.^[12] In the 1980s, the Dutch government, considering the poor Dutch language abilities and lack of integration by many members of the Chinese community, began to consider officially recognising them as a disadvantaged minority, similar to Moroccan or Turkish migrants. This proved to be extremely controversial among the Chinese community; the widespread discussions in Dutch media of the problems in the community led to public perception of the Chinese as illegal migrants working for low pay and incapable of solving their own community problems, strongly embarrassing members of older generations who had stressed "invisibility and self-reliance". In the end, the government declined to grant the Chinese official minority status.^[13] However, stereotypical mainstream views only strengthened, especially as a result of several heavily-publicised tragedies such as the June 2000 "Dover case" in which 58 Chinese migrants suffocated in a refrigerated container on their way from the Netherlands to Dover, England.^[12]

There are also some intra-community tensions between recent expatriates, especially students, and the older overseas Chinese. The latter are largely Cantonese-speaking, while the former use Mandarin as their lingua franca. The divide shows up most clearly in the education of children; few international students send their children to the schools established by the old overseas Chinese, deriding them as low-quality schools "for the children of the restaurant families" and employing low-quality teachers. In contrast, the old overseas Chinese describe the students as arrogant, and view themselves as the "real representatives of the Chinese community in the Netherlands".^[14]

The descendents of Indonesian-speaking Chinese tend to stay out of such conflict; having largely entered the liberal professions they also look down on the "restaurant Chinese", but in return other Chinese often view them as not "really Chinese".^[15] They rarely join any of the associations set up by other Chinese migrants or their descendants, instead preferring their own associations.^[16]

References

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} CBS 2008
2. ^ ^{a b c d} Pieke 1999, p. 322
3. ^ Li 2002, p. 182
4. ^ CBS 2008; see detailed breakdown
5. ^ ^{a b} Li 2002, p. 174
6. ^ Li 1998, p. 170
7. ^ ^{a b} Pieke 1999, p. 324
8. ^ Li 2002, p. 175
9. ^ Li 2002, p. 177
10. ^ Li 2002, p. 173
11. ^ Li 2002, p. 180
12. ^ ^{a b} Staring 2008, p. 165
13. ^ Pieke 1999, p. 327
14. ^ Li 2002, p. 183
15. ^ Li 1998, p. 179
16. ^ Li 1998, p. 180

Sources

• Li, Minghuan (1998), "Living Among Three Walls? The Peranakan Chinese in the Netherlands", in Sinn, Elizabeth, The Last Half Century of Chinese Overseas, Hong Kong University Press, pp. 167–184, ISBN 978-9-62209446-8 
• Pieke, F. N. (1999), "The Netherlands", in Pan, Lynn, The encyclopedia of the Chinese overseas, Harvard University Press, pp. 322–327, ISBN 978-0-67425210-3 
• Li, Minghuan (2002), "A Group in Transition: Chinese Students and Scholars in the Netherlands", in Nyíri, Pál; Savelʹev, Igorʹ Rostislavovich, Globalizing Chinese Migration: trends in Europe and Asia, Ashgate Publishing, pp. 173–188, ISBN 978-0-75461793-8 
• Staring, Richard (2008), "Controlling Human Smuggling in the Netherlands: How the Smuggling of Human Beings Was Transformed into a Serious Criminal Offence", in Siegel, Dina; Nelen, Hans, Organized Crime: Culture, Markets, and Policies, Studies of Organized Crime, New York: Springer, pp. 165–181, ISBN 978-0-387-74733-0 
• Population by origin and generation, 1 January, The Hague: Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, 2008, http://statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/publication/?DM=SLEN&PA=37325eng&D1=a&D2=a&D3=0&D4=0&D5=50,99,215&D6=12&LA=EN&HDR=T,G1&STB=G5,G2,G3,G4&VW=T, retrieved 2009-02-25 

Further reading

• Pieke, F. N.; Guillon, Michelle; Ma Mung, Emmanuel (1992), "Immigration et entreprenariat: les Chinois aux Pays-Bas", Revue européenne des migrations internationales 8 (2): 33–50, doi:10.3406/remi.1992.1336, ISSN 0765-0752 
• Benton, G.; Pieke, F. N., eds. (1998), "The Chinese in the Netherlands", The Chinese in Europe, Macmillan Press, pp. 125–167, ISBN 978-0-31217526-9 

External links

• The Chinese of Amsterdam, a webpage from the International Institute of Social History