To the Issue of the Historical and Contemporary Size of the Chinese Diaspora in Africa and the Methodology of its Quantitative Research

Author:

Olga Fituni

Abstract:

For the first time in the domestic scientific literature, the article provides a detailed quantitative assessment of the Chinese diasporas of 58 African countries, non-sovereign territories and jurisdictions. The article analyzes the methodology of their quantitative assessments and provides a critical comparison of various types of sources of information on the Chinese diasporal communities on the continent. The novelty of the work is that the author does not consider the subject of research “from the Chinese perspective”, which is characteristic of most academic papers on the subject of “huaqiao,” but from the view-point of Africa. The host-country perspective premises the analysis of influences upon its rather than China’s development and requires the understanding not only of in the issues relation to the diaspora per se, but also For the first time in domestic African and Sinological studies, the objective was to bring together, critically process and analyze the available statistics on the Chinese diaspora on the continent. The results of the research published in the article finally allow us to solve the problem of determining the quantitative and spatial parameters of the diasporal Chinese communities on the continent. The solution to this problem opens up the possibility of obtaining scientific knowledge of the social, political, civilizational, economic and other characteristics of the Chinese diasporas in interaction with the surrounding society and in the context of socio-economic processes taking place in specific African countries on an objective, rather than speculative, basis.

Keywords:

Diaspora, Huaqiao, Africa, China, migration

DOI:

10.31132/2412-5717-2020-50-1-14-24

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