Chinese people in Portugal

Chinese people in Portugal

Total population
(9,689 (2007) 0.09% of the Portuguese population Includes only legal residents with People's Republic of China nationality 15,000 - 17,000 (2008) Unofficial estimates including non-PRC nationals)
Regions with significant populations
Lisbon
Languages
Chinese (primarily Wenzhounese and Mandarin; migrants from Mozambique and Macau speak Cantonese), Portuguese
Related ethnic groups
Ethnic Chinese in Mozambique, other overseas Chinese groups

Chinese people in Portugal
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	葡萄牙華人
Simplified Chinese	葡萄牙华人
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Pútáoyá Huárén Wu Romanization Phu-toh-ngaa-gho-nin Yue: Cantonese Jyutping pou4 tou4 ngaa4 waa4 jan4 Yale Romanization pòuh tòuh ngàh wàh yàhn
Portuguese name
Portuguese	Chineses em Portugal

Chinese people in Portugal form the country's largest Asian community, but only the twelfth-largest foreign community overall.

Migration history

Early history

See also: Chinese people in Spain

Some Chinese slaves in Spain ended up there after being brought to Lisbon in Portugal and sold when they were boys. Tristán de la China was a Chinese who was taken as a slave by the Portuguese, while he was still a boy and in the 1520s was obtained by Cristobál de Haro in Lisbon, and taken to live in Seville and Valladolid. He was paid for his service as a translator on the 1525 Loaísa expedition, during which he was still an adolescent. The survivors, including Tristan, were shipwrecked for a decade until 1537 when they were brought back by a Portuguese ship to Lisbon.

There are records of Chinese slaves in Lisbon in 1540. A Chinese scholar, apparently enslaved by Portuguese raiders somewhere on the southern China coast, was brought to Portugal around 1549. Purchased by João de Barros, he worked with the Portuguese historian on translating Chinese texts into Portuguese.

In sixteenth century southern Portugal, the number of Chinese slaves was described as "negligible", being outnumbered by East Indians, Mouriscos, and African slaves. A testament from 23 October 1562 recorded a Chinese man named António who was enslaved and owned by a Portuguese woman, Dona Maria de Vilhena, a wealthy noblewoman in Évora. António was among the three most common male names given to male slaves in Evora. D. Maria specifically selected and used him from among the slaves she owned to perform demanding tasks for her because he was Chinese. D. Maria's owning a Chinese among her fifteen slaves reflected on her high social status, since Chinese, Mouriscos, and Indians were among the ethnicities of prized slaves and were very expensive compared to blacks. When she died, D. Maria freed this Chinese man in her testament along with several other slaves, leaving him with 10,000 réis in money. D. Maria de Vilhena was the daughter of the nobleman and explorer Sancho de Tovar, the capitão of Sofala, and she was married twice, the first marriage to the explorer Cristóvão de Mendonça, and her second marriage was to Simão da Silveira, capitão of Diu.

A legal case was brought before the Spanish Council of the Indies in the 1570s, involving two Chinese men in Seville, one of them a freeman, Esteban Cabrera, and the other a slave, Diego Indio, against Juan de Morales, Diego's owner. Diego called on Esteban to give evidence as a witness on his behalf. Diego recalled that he was taken as a slave by Francisco de Casteñeda from Mexico, to Nicaragua, then to Lima in Peru, then to Panama, and eventually to Spain via Lisbon, while he was still a boy.

After the Portuguese first made contact with Japan in 1543, a large scale slave trade developed in which Portuguese purchased Japanese as slaves in Japan and sold them to various locations overseas, including Portugal itself, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many documents mention the large slave trade along with protests against the enslavement of Japanese. Japanese slaves are believed to be the first of their nation to end up in Europe, and the Portuguese purchased large amounts of Japanese slave girls to bring to Portugal for sexual purposes, as noted by the Church in 1555. King Sebastian feared that it was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization since the slave trade in Japanese was growing to massive proportions, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571 Some Korean slaves were bought by the Portuguese and brought back to Portugal from Japan, where they had been among the tens of thousands of Korean prisoners of war transported to Japan during the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–98). Historians pointed out that at the same time Hideyoshi expressed his indignation and outrage at the Portuguese trade in Japanese slaves, he himself was engaging in a mass slave trade of Korean prisoners of war in Japan.

Chinese boys were kidnapped from Macau and sold as slaves in Lisbon while they were still children. Fillippo Sassetti saw some Chinese and Japanese slaves in Lisbon among the large slave community in 1578, although most of the slaves were blacks.

The Portuguese "highly regarded" Asian slaves like Chinese and Japanese, much more "than slaves from sub-Saharan Africa". The Portuguese attributed qualities like intelligence and industriousness to Chinese and Japanese slaves which is why they favored them more.

In 1595 a law was passed banning the selling and buying of Chinese and Japanese slaves.

20th century to present day

Small communities of Chinese people formed in Portugal in the mid-20th century. Some members of the Chinese community in Mozambique also moved to Portugal as the process of decolonisation in Mozambique began in the 1970s and its independence drew near. However, mass Chinese migration to Portugal did not begin until the 1980s; the new migrants came primarily from Zhejiang, with some from Macau as well. There were expectations that the 1999 transfer of sovereignty of Macau back to the People's Republic of China would result in as many as 100,000 Chinese migrants from Macau settling in Portugal. Between 1985 and 1996, 5,853 Chinese acquired Portuguese nationality; however, most of these were residents of Macau and did not reside in Portugal or migrate there later.

Demographic characteristics

According to surveys undertaken by Chinese associations, Chinese residents of Portugal have a very young average age, with 29.6% younger than 30, and 38.5% between 31 and 40 years old. Over three-quarters live in Lisbon, Porto, or Faro.

Employment

82.6% of the Chinese workforce in Portugal are employees. However, the number of entrepreneurs has shown an upward trend, nearly doubling from 9.4% in 1990 to 17.4% in 2000. Four-fifths of the self-employed are drawn from the population of recent migrants from Zhejiang; rates of entrepreneurship in the other groups are much lower. Chinese migrants from Mozambique and the other ex-Portuguese colonies, due to their fluency in Portuguese and familiarity with local business practices, are able to enter the mainstream economy and find professional employment, especially as bank employees, engineers, and doctors.

Most Chinese-owned firms are small family enterprises, in the services, retail, and import-export sectors. Their suppliers are Chinese-owned firms in other parts of Europe; Portuguese firms are among their clients but rarely among their suppliers. There is a tendency for Chinese business owners to seek out areas with few other Chinese, to avoid competition and find new markets.