Chinatown in Russia: The Fate of the Symbol of “Chinese Expansion”

The massive Chinese labor migration to post-Soviet Russia has posed a difficult task in understanding this new phenomenon and assessing its consequences. A popular response to this request was the idea that the immediate and obligatory consequence is the formation of Chinatowns - places of cohabitation, concentration of economic activity and social life of migrants. Chinatown was seen as an immanent characteristic of Chinese migration, its way of life, a mechanism of social organization and control. In many geopolitical constructions and in the mass media, Chinatowns were considered as already existing numerous and uncontrolled enclaves in cities - the main tool of “Chinese expansion”. The empirical basis for the formation of such constructions was provided by vague fragments of historical memory of pre-revolutionary Chinatowns and images of American Chinatowns drawn from Western popular culture. However, this syndrome, which was powerful at the beginning of the process, began to quickly lose energy and influence. Nobody could find Chinatowns in Russian cities due to their absence. The horror of “Chinese expansion” gradually changed to the already familiar migrant phobia. People became used to decreasing quantitative Chinese migration and became accustomed to benefiting from it. As a result, Chinatown gradually transformed from a very concrete, material phenomenon into a metaphor, a designation of Chineseness as such. Therefore, this syndrome loses its mobilizing power. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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