Renegotiating locality and morality in a Chinese religious diaspora: Wenzhou Protestants in Paris

Abstract

Research on Chinese immigrant Christianity has mainly focused on Chinese conversion to Christianity--the majority religion in the West. Little scholarly attention has been paid to a growing number of Chinese migrants who brought their Christian faith to the new land from China and created their religious diaspora. This study seeks to fill a gap in our knowledge and to address Chinese transnationalism in the context of the dramatic resurgence of Protestant Christianity in the post-Mao era. In this paper I present findings of my ethnographic research on a group of Chinese migrant merchants who have formed large Christian communities at home, along with migrant enclaves in Paris, France. According to a French government’s estimate, about 100,000 Chinese migrants live in Paris, mostly from the coastal Chinese city of Wenzhou. There are dozens of costly Wenzhou Chinese migrant churches in Paris. These merchants have channeled their newfound wealth from transnational business to the expansion of this diasporic religious community. Though a small number of Wenzhou pastors have been invited to minister the migrant churches there, few Chinese have migrated to Western Europe for purely religious reasons and most are focused on production and commerce. I explore their transnational business practices, religious connections, and how they (re)construct moral and native-place identities through the idiom of global Christianity.