The China dream in Fiji: Migrant perspectives of the Belt and Road Initiative
It’s a rainy Saturday afternoon in Suva, Fiji, and it’s time for the movie to start. At best, there are ten of us sitting on fold-up chairs in front of a projection screen. The spaciousness of the room adds to the awkward atmosphere. Among our number are three bored looking Fiji Chinese kids, dropped off by their parents. The rest of us are walk-ins. A CGTN documentary comes on about tourism in China’s rust belt, then it’s the main show; a different movie is showing to the one advertised. Still, no one seems to care, and Detective Chinatown, a comedy, crime, buddy film gets a lot of laughs. When it’s over, everyone leaves in silence. The Fiji Chinese kids look even more bored. I later tell some Fijian friends I went to the downtown China Cultural Centre to learn a little more about China’s people-to-people outreach. They tell me, “Why go there? All they do is show movies.”
The China Cultural Centre in Suva, which opened in 2016, is a Chinese state-run venue for exhibitions, performances, and official visits, some of them stamped with the Belt and Road brand, others not. The criterion for inclusion is not clear. Beside the Saturday movies, events mostly attract Fiji’s elites. On occasion, the Center takes its activities into the community bringing along local journalists for a puff piece. In addition to the Confucius Institute on the Suva campus of the regionally administered University of the South Pacific, the Center is part of China’s people-to-people outreach in Oceania. However, as a gauge of Chinese perspectives in Fiji on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the officious picture on show is incomplete.
This article presents migrant perspectives of the Belt and Road in Fiji based on interviews I conducted for my doctoral project on Chinese entrepreneurs in the islands. These conversations happened between 2017 and 2021 over four visits. I wanted to understand the extent to which migrants were living in their China Dream and the role of the Belt and Road Initiative played in opening new opportunities overseas. Since the 1999 Go Out policy, a precursor to the BRI, the movement of people from China has been loosely tied to the movement of Chinese state capital. That is, with the encouragement and enticements of the Chinese state, companies and people have gained a foothold in new spaces overseas. These transnational relocations, now under the Belt and Road brand, have become enlisted in Xi Jinping’s China Dream concept, a “master narrative” to manage “coherence” of the Chinese peoples’ aspirations (Ferdinand 2016). Xi’s vision does not just end at harnessing individual and collective material ambitions towards rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Given the transnationality of the BRI, building a Sinocentric World Dream opens new frontiers of opportunity (Callahan 2016).
There are approximately 10,000 Fiji Chinese out of a nationwide population of just over 900 thousand Fijians. The history of Chinese people in the islands spans more than 200 years. In my conversations with Fiji Chinese, there was a tendency to categorize the community into “old” and “new” Chinese. “Old Chinese” were people, of any age, with multigenerational ties to Fiji, most likely originating from Guangdong province, while “new Chinese” came to the islands after 1999 and from across China. In 2018, China and Fiji signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on Belt and Road cooperation. Although the precise details of the agreement remain undisclosed, Chinese state media revealed the document included BRI buzzwords of exchange, networks, and infrastructure. The MOU was a formality, codifying over a decade’s worth of increasing migration, aid, trade, and investment. Chinese companies, such as China Railway First Group, China Railway No5 Engineering Group, China Railway 14th Bureau Group, and Yanjian Group, have been active in constructing roads, bridges, and buildings, often getting a foothold in the local market through BRI funding in the form of grants or loans. Also, as noted in the above anecdote, there have been efforts to build “people-to-people” relations. These go beyond cultural events and encompass training and scholarship opportunities in China for Fijians, as well as funding for community projects, such as sports facilities.
Nevertheless, the way in which “new Fiji Chinese,” the China Dreamers, act as BRI amplifiers is often overlooked in state-generated narratives. Soft power is a critical component of China’s global engagement, but in Fiji, it cannot compete with Australia, Britain, and the United States, as these countries share political values, religious beliefs, languages, and popular culture established during and after colonization. As a non-colonizing nation in the Pacific, China’s soft power lies in its grounded actors, such as traders, investors, and laborers. When the U.S. has Peace Corps volunteers, China has entrepreneurs as its goodwill emissaries. China’s version of soft power is one based in the materiality of business, investment, and trade.
Qiao Ru, a tenacious business owner with multiple commercial interests in Suva, is one of these emissaries. In 2021, sitting in her sparkling coffee shop, she told me, “After the BRI got started, I did a decent business in bringing over government officials and investors. We helped them get connected and on their feet. There are no natural resources the Chinese government is really interested in, so we must find other ways to take advantage of the BRI. We look at construction work, we look at getting people to come here to invest in tourism.” Tian Xun, a sanguine man in his sixties, also offered an upbeat assessment of the openings offered by the Belt and Road. After describing his work as a fixer for Chinese companies looking to start up in Fiji, he explained, “I work with Chinese company managers, and the BRI brings them here. We work with the government to bring in loans and grant money for construction projects. When a local politician or Chinese diplomat calls an investment project BRI, it’s all about branding, that’s it. It gives everyone some confidence.” Tian Xun added a pinch of pragmatism too, “Fijians don’t need to be told about the Belt and Road. What they know is their economic bottom line, and it is China that offers the best value whether it is lollipops for 50 cents sold in the market, or a multimillion-dollar investment. There’s no need to do all the people-to-people work because it is we who are doing the influencing through price.”
Mao Lingyun, a tour company operator, described a modest income hosting BRI trade delegations from China before Fiji closed its borders in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. When I interviewed him at his home in 2021, Fiji was still closed to the outside world, and he expressed frustration at the loss of his business, “What the BRI agreement did was promote Fiji to people in China. They said, ‘What is Fiji? We don’t know about it. We’re doing work there. There are Chinese people? It looks beautiful, we want to go there, how can we get there?’ Then they come here, they stay in five-star hotels, buy air tickets, tours, souvenirs, and eat a lot of seafood. Think about all the jobs that came here because of the BRI. The pandemic messed things up for us. No one is traveling. There’s no BRI for me anymore.”
Lingyun’s pessimism was a product of the lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic more than any issue with BRI as a policy. However, among many other new Fiji Chinese I encountered, there was a great deal of ambivalence towards the Belt and Road Initiative. Many migrants, particularly owners of small and microenterprises, felt the policy was nothing new and that the lofty goals on paper had little impact on their daily lives. As Yang Kai, a restaurant owner, explained, “It’s for the big companies. I don’t really understand why the BRI is here because I thought it was about building roads and railways. We don’t really have a great need for that here.” Sun Wenyan, who operated a shipping business, echoed the sentiment of indifference and added, “There’s no real advantage for Chinese small business owners. The benefits are all for the Fijians. The Chinese government gives some donations, and they hope to get something in return. Friendship perhaps. I build friendship with Fijians everyday by employing them!” Wenyuan also voiced concern over how the BRI has brought increased visibility to new Fiji Chinese migrants, “When one of the big construction companies mess up, we also get the blame just because we are Chinese. It took us a lot of time and effort to build our business, only for it to suffer because of our supposed association with anything that has to do with China.”
Wenyuan’s remarks express resentment towards large Chinese enterprises, as well as Fijians as BRI beneficiaries. Nevertheless, other people I spoke to reiterated Chinese state developmentalist narratives as positives. Yao Sujie, who ran a chain of convenience stores, told me, “My understanding of the Belt and Road in Fiji is that it improves livelihoods, infrastructure, education, healthcare and so on. It has created jobs and incomes for locals.” As Mao Lingyun, the tour company owner, added, “Hopefully the benefits of the BRI do trickle down to ordinary Fijians.”
As the varied attitudes towards the Belt and Road demonstrate, Fiji Chinese are far from state disciplined migrants. There is evidence of Chinese state attempts to influence domestic discourse through CCP-tied organizations comprising Fiji Chinese; however, the efficacy of these entities is highly questionable. Indeed, institutions built by Fiji Chinese themselves, such as the Chinese Association of Fiji, have been the most impactful in influencing Fijian government officials and Chinese diplomats. If Fiji Chinese are living out Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” through the Belt and Road, it is only through the opportunities afforded through a freer movement of capital and people. As the accounts of new Fiji Chinese relate, affiliation with the goals of the Belt and Road range from indifference to enthusiasm. The calculations of Fiji Chinese do not come from promoting state interests, they come from an assessment of their own positions within the Belt and Road. In any case, Fiji Chinese entrepreneurs do act as soft power emissaries whether it is in assisting big construction companies, employing locals in their businesses, or sharing the benefits of Chinese economic engagement.
The encounters described here form a wholly different interpretation of people-to-people interactions between Chinese and Fijians that the Chinese state promotes through formal events, such as those at the China Cultural Centre. Entrepreneurial encounters are the frontlines of the Belt and Road brand. So much so that the Chinese Embassy in Suva claims the successes of Fiji Chinese private entrepreneurs as evidence of China’s benevolent globalism. Further, the nature of Chinese migration is changing. The Belt and Road Initiative and the China Dream views spaces in terms of capital. New migrants do not always see it the same way and express space in value terms, such as the value of breathing the cleaner air in Fiji, pure adventure, freedom from political repression, or escape from the rat race. These processes are creating globalized individuals, rather than amplifiers of Chinese state policies. The migrants I spoke to had dreams. Those dreams were personal and unconnected to any Chinese state master narrative of coherence.
References
Callahan, William A. 2016. “China 2035: From the China Dream to the World Dream.” Global Affairs 2 (3): 247–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/23340460.2016.1210240.
Ferdinand, Peter. 2016. “Westward Ho—the China Dream and ‘One Belt, One Road’: Chinese Foreign Policy under Xi Jinping.” International Affairs 92 (4): 941–57. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12660.