Includes bibliographical references (pages 149-166) and index.
History -- Early contacts -- Chinese farmers, hunters, workers, and merchants in Russia, 1858-1914 -- Chinese as labourers and soldiers in Russia's wars, 1914-22 -- Chinese in the Soviet Union, 1922-89 -- The present -- Chinese migration to Russia and Eastern Europe since 1989: sources, numbers, and migration strategies -- Employment and the ethnic economy -- Transnational practices and politics -- Finding a place in Eastern Europe? -- Conclusion: a transnational middleman minority.
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"This book provides a comprehensive overview of the Chinese in Eastern Europe and Russia from the nineteenth century to the present day. Particularly important is the movement of entrepreneurs in the early 1990s, who took advantage of unmet demand, inadequate retail networks and largely unregulated markets to become suppliers of cheap consumer goods to low-income Eastern Europeans. In some villages, Chinese merchants now occupy a position not unlike that of Jewish shopkeepers before the Second World War. Although their interactions with local society are numerous, the degree of social integration and acceptance is often low. At the same time, they maintain close economic, social and political ties to China." "Empirical in focus, and full of rich ethnographic data, Nyiri Pal has produced a book that will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese studies, international migration, diaspora and transnationalism."--BOOK JACKET.