Protest Against Chinese Migrants in Kyrgyzstan: Sinophobia or Demands for Social Justice?
By Nurlan Aliyev
April 16, 2019, the CACI Analyst
An anti-Chinese protest took place in Bishkek on January 17, 2019, the third in recent months. The protesters demanded a moratorium on issuing Kyrgyz passports to Chinese citizens, except for ethnic Kyrgyz, to scrutinize all Chinese-funded enterprises and also to test the appropriateness of loans taken from China. They demanded that Chinese citizens who reside illegally in Kyrgyzstan should be deported and a halt to labor quotas for Chinese. Other topics raised were high-level corruption and demands for transparency in the government’s financial activities, especially regarding its expenditure of Chinese grants and loans. Protesters also expressed disapproval of marriages between Kyrgyz women and Chinese men, demanding prohibited registration of mixed marriages and fines for newlyweds. The anti-Chinese protests in Kyrgyzstan take place in a broader context of rising sinophobic sentiments in Central Asia in recent years.
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