Profile of Small Businesses Among Chinese in Vancouver

Abstract

Historically, both market conditions and ethnic resources explain why the Chinese in Canada thrived in retailing and food services. More recent theories stress how changes in opportunities and relations under globalization shape immigrant business formation and practices. Canada revamped its immigration policy in response to the need for capital and skilled labour in the global age. Increased Chinese immigration in the 1980s from Hong Kong, and in the 1990s and after from PRC, substantially expanded the Vancouver Chinese population and the Chinese consumer market. By the 1980s, Chinese small businesses in Vancouver had proliferated beyond Chinatown-based retailing and food services to include professional firms and upscale restaurants. Using advertisements in The Sing Tao Daily, this study found that a new niche of small Chinese businesses in trades and construction has emerged, accounting for 85 percent of advertising in the Small Business Advertisement Section, and 15 percent of all advertisements in the Daily. The analysis suggests that the development of this new niche has been prompted by economic opportunities that are best seen as driven by demographic and market forces in the age of global migration.