The Chinese people in Pakistan ( ur, چینی) comprise one of the country's significant expatriate communities. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has raised the expatriate population, which has grown from 20,000 in 2013 to 60,000 in 2018.

Distribution

Karachi

During the 1940s many

Chinese Muslims Islam has been practiced in China since the 7th century CE.. Muslims are a minority group in China, representing 1.6-2 percent of the total population (21,667,000- 28,210,795) according to various estimates. Though Hui Muslims are the most nume ...

fled unrest in China and settled in

Karachi Karachi (; ur, ; ; ) is the most populous city in Pakistan and 12th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 20 million. It is situated at the southern tip of the country along the Arabian Sea coast. It is the former c ...

. However the Chinese community there is primarily of non- Muslim origins; their ancestors were

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

s, but subsequent generations follow other religions or none at all. About 30% are estimated to have converted to Islam. Most Chinese in Karachi are second generation children of immigrants—the oldest generation have mostly died off, while the third generation have emigrated to other countries. Common destinations for emigrants are the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, or to their ancestral country China. They rarely wear Chinese clothing, but still retain the Chinese language, though in recent years they have shown increasing

language shift Language shift, also known as language transfer or language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are percei ...

towards

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Previously, the community was segregated by provincial origin, but with the establishment of a Chinese Committee to represent the community, they have become more integrated. They are concentrated in a few neighbourhoods, including near the

PECHS Pakistan Employees Cooperative Housing Society (PECHS), Block 2 is a neighborhood in Karachi East district of Karachi, Pakistan. It was founded Mehmood Ahmad Nizami in the year 1950, three years after Pakistan was founded by Quaid-e-Azam Mohamma ...

and Tariq Road, as well as

Saddar Saddar ( ur, ), also known as Saddar Bazaar, is a neighbourhood in Karachi, Pakistan. The locality was developed as the primary commercial district during the period of British-era rule in Karachi. As a result, Saddar contains the large concentr ...

and more recently Clifton and Defence neighbourhoods in

Saddar Town Saddar Town ( sd, صدر ٽائون; ur, ), lies in the central part of the city that formed much of the historic colonial core of Karachi. Saddar Town was formed in 2001 as part of The Local Government Ordinance 2001, and was subdivided into ...

. The Clifton and Defense Society areas has about 15

Chinese restaurant A Chinese restaurant is an establishment that serves a Chinese cuisine. Most of them are in the Cantonese style, due to the history of the Chinese diaspora and adapted to local taste preferences, as in the American Chinese cuisine and Canad ...

s; the area is sometimes unofficially referred to as " Chinatown". One of the more well-known of these, the ABC Chinese Restaurant, founded by Li Dianxian (李殿贤) in the 1930s, was once patronised by

Zhou Enlai Zhou Enlai (; 5 March 1898 – 8 January 1976) was a Chinese statesman and military officer who served as the first premier of the People's Republic of China from 1 October 1949 until his death on 8 January 1976. Zhou served under Chairman Ma ...

, and continued operating until 1988. Common professions include beauticians, shoemakers, dentists, and the restaurant trade; most members of the second generation tend to follow the same trade as their parents did. Chinese dentists, in particular, have a reputation for providing quality service to the low-income residents of the city. Yet many of them are unlicensed and lack any formal training in dentistry. Instead, many of their parents had previously lived among the Chinese community in British Malaya (present-day

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

) and worked as dental assistants; when they came to Pakistan in the 1940s, they began practicing as full dentists themselves. There was a shortage of dentists in Karachi at that time, as there was only one dental school in the entire province of Sindh, at

Hyderabad Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern India ...

. They primarily provided simple procedures such as manufacture and fitting of

dentures Dentures (also known as false teeth) are prosthetic devices constructed to replace missing teeth, and are supported by the surrounding soft and hard tissues of the oral cavity. Conventional dentures are removable ( removable partial denture o ...

as well as extraction of teeth; however, in later years, some prospered enough that they were able to hire formally trained dentists to provide more complex procedures.

Other areas

Lahore Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is the capital of the province of Punjab where it is the largest city ...

established a mosque called the ''Chini Masjid'' (Chinese Mosque). They typically intermarried with local people and assimilated. The two Chinese shoemakers there, Hopson and Kingson, had a reputation for high quality.

Migrant workers

Despite the emigration of members of older communities, the Chinese population in Pakistan has been bolstered by new expatriate residents. However, the growth in their population was somewhat interrupted by the September 11, 2001, attacks; fearful that war could break out in Pakistan, most Chinese residents sent their wives and children back home. , there were roughly 3,500 Chinese engineers temporarily residing in Pakistan for work on various state-run projects in various locations, especially in the construction of the Gwadar Port. Their total number might have been as high as 5,000. About 1,200 were estimated to reside in

Islamabad Islamabad (; ur, , ) is the capital city of Pakistan. It is the country's ninth-most populous city, with a population of over 1.2 million people, and is federally administered by the Pakistani government as part of the Islamabad Capital ...

. Then, between 2008 and 2009, the number of Chinese working in Pakistan grew sharply, to an estimated 10,000, even as expatriate workers of other nationalities left the country. Year to date numbers of migrant Chinese approximate half a million due to the string of pearls policy for China oil consumption.

Ethnic minorities

Some members of

ethnic minorities of China Ethnic minorities in China are the non- Han population in the People's Republic of China (PRC). The PRC officially recognizes 55 ethnic minority groups within China in addition to the Han majority. As of 2010, the combined population of of ...

, primarily Muslim

Uyghurs The Uyghurs; ; ; ; zh, s=, t=, p=Wéiwú'ěr, IPA: ( ), alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central and East Asia. The Uyghur ...

and

Tajiks Tajiks ( fa, تاجيک، تاجک, ''Tājīk, Tājek''; tg, Тоҷик) are a Persian-speaking Iranian ethnic group native to Central Asia, living primarily in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Tajiks are the largest ethnicity in Taj ...

from

Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...

, have also settled in the northern parts of Pakistan. The earliest migrants, numbering in the thousands, came in the 1940s in fear of communist persecution. A few hundred more fled to Pakistan in the aftermath of a failed uprising in

Khotan Hotan (also known as Gosthana, Gaustana, Godana, Godaniya, Khotan, Hetian, Hotien) is a major oasis town in southwestern Xinjiang, an autonomous region in Western China. The city proper of Hotan broke off from the larger Hotan County to become ...

in 1954. Later waves of migration came in 1963 and again in 1974. Beginning in the 1980s, more Uyghurs who had left China to go on the '' hajj'' began settling in Pakistan instead of returning to China.

Organisations

There are Chinese community organisations in a number of Pakistani cities: * Gilgit: Chinese Association of Gilgit (吉尔吉特华人华侨协会) *

: Chinese Association of Islamabad (伊斯兰堡华人华侨协会) *

: Chinese Association of Lahore (拉合尔华人华侨协会) * Rawalpindi: Chinese Association of Rawalpindi (拉瓦尔品第华人华侨协会) *

: Chinese Association of Karachi (卡拉奇华人华侨协会) Because of the various threats to Chinese workers in Pakistan, the Chinese embassy have also formed a liaison committee with the Pakistani government to look into safety issues.

References

Sources

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