History of the Chinese in Italy
Chinese migrants in Italy have a unique and relatively brief history. According to Urban Studies, Italy has had one of the fastest-growing immigrant populations in Europe in the past two decades, receiving around 700,000 immigrants in 2006. Within this influx, Chinese people make up a significant population. At the beginning of the 1980s, economic reforms and the relaxation of emigration rules in China led to rapid Chinese immigration in Italy.
The strongest growth in immigrant numbers occurred throughout the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s. The growth of the Chinese community followed the overall growth of racial minority residents in the country. Today, the Chinese number an estimated 310,000 residents, accounting for 8.3% of the country’s non-EU citizens, the third-largest community of foreign nationals living in Italy. Of particular interest is the town of Prato, north of Florence, where there is a well-established Chinese community. Prato’s story reveals the ethnic lines drawn between the older majority inhabitants and the newer Chinese minority. It demonstrates the economic and racial tensions that weave sinophobia into Italy’s social fabric.
Prato and the Roots of Sinophobia
Anti-Chinese sentiment has historical roots in Italy. Prato serves as a microcosm of larger-scale racial frictions. The small town’s history with Chinese migrants hints at a critical source of racial discord: loss of economic security. After WWII, Prato became home to several small but thriving textile factories, however, competition from China signaled an end to the town’s prosperity. According to the New York Times, in 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization which provided greater access to global markets, thus cutting exports by Italian shoe manufacturers by more than 40 percent in subsequent years. Small, artisanal operations like those in Prato proved unable to keep up with lowered prices from China’s industrial powerhouse.
Goodman of the New York Times writes, “From 2001 to 2011, Prato’s 6,000 textile companies became 3,000, as those employed in the industry dropped to 19,000 from 40,000." This sense of economic devastation at the hands of a foreign power contributed to the rise of the political right. Suddenly, Chinese immigrants were arriving in Prato and leasing the shuttered textile mills once owned by Prato’s Italian inhabitants. Feeling left behind, many Italians turned to the anti-immigrant rhetoric gaining momentum in the country. These tensions, among others, simmered beneath the surface, ready to surge into full-blown sinophobia with the right justification.
Why do people associate China with diseases?
The stereotype of Chinese people as disease carriers is deeply embedded. While this perception is highly generalized, many still associate China with past outbreaks. The view that China is an incubator for disease due to its lack of cleanliness or development is rooted in prejudice. However, over the past century, China has experienced some of the most widely reported epidemics.
According to Gladstone of the New York Times, the Asian flu of 1957, the Hong Kong flu of 1968, the bird flu outbreak of 1997, and the SARS outbreak of 2003 can all be sourced to China. While there are a plethora of epidemics that did not originate from China, the COVID-19 outbreak has given these epidemics undue notoriety which leads to harmful stereotypes. The coronavirus pandemic has only reawakened pre-existing biases. This backlash can be traced throughout history. Gladstone writes, “In the 19th century, a wave of immigration from Asia prompted warnings of a “yellow peril” and a supposed threat to public health." Caution for public welfare is valid, however, generalizing an entire people based on fear and misinformation is not. While China is prone to certain zoonotic diseases due to its large population and confined spaces with livestock, the country is also a leader in the study of contagious diseases. This single story of Chinese people as disease carriers is woefully outdated and intolerant. However, associating foreigners with disease is far from new. Monica Schoch-Spana, a medical anthropologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security states, “What you have over history and throughout modern-day outbreaks is people fixing blame on a contagious disease on outsiders." The coronavirus crisis, like so many other past epidemics, has resurrected these long-held beliefs.
