Some pages of this thesis may have been removed for copyright restrictions. If you have discovered material in AURA which is unlawful e.g. breaches copyright, (either yours or that of a third party) or any other law, including but not limited to those relating to patent, trademark, confidentiality, data protection, obscenity, defamation, libel, then please read our Takedown Policy and contact the service immediately A POL.I'rICAL. ECONOHY OF' THE ETHNIC CH INEE CATER ING INDUSTRY SUSAN CHIJI CHI BAXTER Doctor of Philosophy THE UNIVERSITY OF ASTON IN BIRMINGHAM March 1988 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with its author and that no quotation from the thesis and no information derived from it may be published without the author's prior, written consent. 1 The University of Aston in Birmingham A POLITICAL ECONOWI OF TI[E ETHNIC CHINESE CATERING INDUSTRY Susan Chul Chi Baxter Thesis submitted for PhD: 1988 The present political climate in which the ideals. of entrepreneurship and self-help are strongly encouraged has drawn attention to those ethnic minorities noted for their entrepreneurial activity. Since the Chinese appear to be an exemplary case in point, this thesis focusses upon the historical material conditions which have led to the formation of a Chinese 'business' community in Britain, both past and present. As such, it rejects the theories of cultural determinism which characterise most studies of the Chinese. For rather than representing the endurance of cultural norms, the existence of the contemporary Chinese 'niche' of ethnically exclusive firms in the catering industry is due to the conjunction of a number of historical processes. The first is the imperialist expansion into China of Britain's capitalist empire during the nineteenth century which established a relationship of dependency upon the interests of British capital by colonial Chinese labour. The second is the post war development of the catering industry and its demand for cheap labour as administered by the British state together with the contemporaneous development of the agricultural economy of colonial Hong Kong. Far from representing a source of material benefit to all, the ethnic Chinese 'niche' in catering is highly exploitative and merely underlines the racial oppression of Chinese in Britain. Attempts to promote business interests within the ethnic community therefore serve merely to entrench the structures of oppression. KEY WORDS: Chinese Race Culturalism Entrepreneurship Catering For Mum, Dad and Geoff, with all my love. CONTEWTS Page lJu.mbers LIST OF TKBLES 7 IKIRODUCT I Off 8 Research Methods and Data Collection 10 Problems Encountered in Research & Data Collection 10 1: APPROACHING CHINESE CO1(U1NITIES IN BUSINESS Introduction 12 Cultural Determinism & Ethnic Enterprise 13 Middleman Minorities 16 Understanding Ethnic Enterprise: The Relationship Between Ideas and Reality 24 Biological Determinism and Ethnic Enterprise 30 Ethnic Enclaves 34 Ecological Business Succession & The Chicago School 39 For an Alternative Perspective on Ethnic Chinese Entrepreneurship 42 2: THE HISTORICLL FO1JDATIONS OF ERTREPREWEITRIAL CHINESE COIOWNITIES Introduction 45 Accumulation and Expansion 46 Migration and Capitalist Development 48 China Before the British 49 The Old China Trade 53 The Opium Wars 59 Pushed Through the "Open Door" 63 The Creation of Chinese 'Business' Communities 66 4 (Cbapter 2 continued) The Early Chinese 'Business' Community in Britain 75 Conclusion 84 3: THE CATERING IIDUSTRY. XIGRAKT LABOUR & THE CHINESE COXIWNITY Introduction 86 Approaching the Historical Development of the Catering Industry 87 The Origins of Industrial Catering 88 The War Years 89 The Economics of Post War Catering Froduction 93 Catering For Change: 1945 - 1970 95 Immigration and the Boom 98 Migration Under the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 102 Industrialisation and Agriculture in Hong Kong 106 The Chinese Community and Catering 112 Conclusion 120 4,: ETHNIC FAST FOOD, COIJWJITY LND CLASS: THE CHINESE EXPERIENCE Introduction 122 The Fast Food Boom & Capital Concentration 122 Technological Development 131 The Fast Food Revolution & Chinese Catering 135 The Petite Bourgeoisie Defined 140 The Petite Bourgeoisie & Capitalist Development 143 The Petite Bourgeoisie & the Chinese Community 144 Capital, Labour and the Chinese Community 152 Conclusion 157 5 5: COHCLUSIUNS AND PROSPECTS Introduction 159 The Study 159 Community and Class 166 Managing the Crisis: Ethn.ic Minorities & Small Business Promotion 168 The Ideology of the Small Business Economy 171 The Politics of the Small Business Economy 173 The Realities of Black and White Small Business 176 NOTES 178 REFERENCES MAPS & TABLES Page ifumbers XAPS Trade Ports on the Southeastern Chinese Coastline 54 TABLES 1: Effects of the Treaty of Nanking on Chinese Tariff Rates 60 2: Declared Value of British Imports to China 63 3: Chinese Labour on Cuban Slave Planatations 65 4: Employment in the Food Sectors 1901 - 1981 88 5: Immigration for Work 1963 - 1972 103 6: China & Far Eastern Born Residents in Britain 105 7: Chinese Aliens Entering Britain from Hong Kong 111 8: Expansion in. Major Fast Food Capital 125- 126 9: Large Food Chains: World Ranking by Number of Outlets 1983/4 127 10: Weekly Number of Meals Consumed Outside the Home Per Person 1977 - 1980 128 11: Employment in. Hotel & Catering Trades 1851 - 1981 128 12: Comparison of Employment in. the Food Industries 1973 - 1981 129 13: Britain's Top Five Contract Catering Companies (1982) 130 14: Major Processes in Catering Technology 134 15: The Impact of Catering Technology on the Labour Process 134 16: Trends in Consumer Expenditure on Food Catering 136 17: Projected Sales Through Take-Away Establishments 1984 - 1990 136 18: Government Initiatives to Assist Small Firms in Britain 1979 - 1981 175 7 INTRODUCTION In the present climate of general industrial decline in the major productive centres of the Western world, local ethnic communities with a reputation for entrepreneurship have been brought increasingly under the focus of political strategies aimed at economic revival, This is underpinned by beliefs in the proclivities for 'self-help' attributed to some ethnic minorities and not others. One group which has fallen target to this 'culturalist' labelling is the Chinese, who throughout the world have been noted for an apparent orientation towards business ownership. Such ideas were encapsulated in the words of British sociologist Peter Hall (1981 p.122): "in the period when inner city innovation did flourish, it did so to a remarkable degree with the aid of newly-arrived groups of people who brought with them a stong entrepreneurial tradition. The Hugots in London in the seventeenth century, the Jews at the end of the nineteenth, the Indians in our day, all provide examples. The same might happen again, if we attracted small businessmen, with capital and expertise, to settle and establish small workshops and trading centres. Thus we might being to emulate the drive and enthusiasm of emerging centres like Singapore or Hongkong." On the American experience, Rose (1985 pp.182-183) expounded in greater detail upon the cultural virtues of the Chinese at which Hall had merely hinted: "The images of those who used to be called "Orientals" have changed dramatically... The pariahs have become paragons, lauded for their ingenuity and industry and for embodying the truest fulfillment of the "American Dream". Ronald Reagan has called them "Our exemplars of hope and inspiration... The characteristics are familiar: a deep sense of ethnic identification and group loyalty; a high level of filial respect; a heavy emphasis on proper demeanor and on the seriousness of life; a firm belief in the importance of education; a tendency toward extrinsic assimilation; and an overriding attitude that one must advance as far as possible not just for oneself, but so that parents can enjoy the Chinese ... equivalent of what in Yiddish is known as nacbas fun die Kinder, "pleasure from the [accomplishments of] children"." By studying the case of the Chinese in Britain, this thesis seeks not only to explode some of the popular myths and stereotypes which inform attitudes to Chinese communities but also to expose the explanatory inadequacy and reactionary politics of culturalist arguments. Unlike the 8 vast majority of work on Chinese communities, therefore, this study goes far beyond an etlinography of everyday life for Britain's Chinese; something which Robert Miles (1982 p.67) might have termed "a simple cataloguing of cultural difference (a dictionary of the 'exotic')", Instead, the method of analysis presented by this study is the historical materialism of political economy, a methodology that renders qualitatively different conclusions from those of the culturalists. Chapter 1 defines the parameters of the political economy approach, establishing a case developed from a critique of competing analyses used to study Chinese communities. The following chapter then proceeds to explore the historical material conditions which structured the emergence of Chinese 'business' communities under the economic and political umbrella of Western colonial expansion. Within this framework, special attention is given to the development of the entrepreneurial basis of the early Chinese community in Britain, Chapter 3 goes on to examine the foundations of the contemporary small business concentration of Chinese in