Infrastructural Revolts: Novice Indian Traders in a Chinese Textile Market

• In Event: Mapping Migration Scapes: The Infrastructure of Migration to and from China

Abstract

This paper explores the structural difficulties that novice Indian traders face in a Chinese textile market and examines how they seek to overcome these difficulties by making creative interventions into the existing business infrastructure. The research is based on long-term fieldwork in Keqiao District of Zhejiang Province (2010-2012 and 2015), where Asia’s largest fabric wholesale centre is located. Lacking start-up capitals and experience at the beginning, these Indian newcomers can only start with the low-end fabric trade in China - a grassroots type of business that is extremely sensitive to the changing economic conditions at large. In particular, the global economic crisis in 2008, and the recent stagnation of Chinese economy, has deepened the cut-throat competitions in the low-end fabric market, rendering the Indians even more vulnerable than before. While being increasingly marginalized by the market, novice Indian traders have formed many survival strategies in sustaining their business. Some strategies are especially successful. Intriguingly, this is mainly because these strategies effectively disrupt several institutional infrastructure, such as the visa and tax policies in China, that would otherwise undermine one’s entrepreneurial prospect. Through an examination of these strategies, the paper illustrates that the novice Indian traders can be active agents in realizing hope in a highly precarious business sector.

Author

• Ka Kin Cheuk, Leiden University