Transient entrepreneurs? Chinese migrant small commercial businesses in South Africa

The influx and establishment of Chinese businesses across Africa have attracted considerable research attention in the last decade, focusing primarily on the larger (state-owned) businesses. By contrast, much less is known about small commercial businesses in terms of their investment motivations, operational conditions, and aspirations of the Chinese business owner-managers in the shopping malls that have emerged to serve such enterprises. This study fills this gap by drawing on interviews with 25 owner-managers of small Chinese shops operating in twelve shopping malls in South Africa. We found that most of them are lightly embedded in the country, due to the competitive nature of their business, language barriers, regulatory uncertainty and crime. At the same time, an inability to extricate themselves and find viable outlets for business elsewhere means that they remain negatively committed. However, a minority of enterprises were much more embedded; we explore the reasons behind this. The study contributes to extending the understanding of small-scale migrant entrepreneurs and embeddedness literature with policy implications.