IN JAMAICA: Conflicts with the Chinese revisited.....There have been reports of increasing criminal insurgency against Chinese immigrants in Jamaica.....Just recently, four appropriately dressed 'deadlocks' went into a Chinese restaurant. The operator, suspicious of the four men, called his private security to stand by until they finished their dinner.

 by Louis MOYSTON  Tuesday, April 01, 2014    
This article aims to respond to recent matters concerning the new Chinese immigrants and black Jamaicans. Some of these incidents occurred on construction sites and at the business establishments of these newly arrived migrants.

THE story of the Chinese and issue with those children in Black River, St Elizabeth, late last year, could have provoked ugly atrocities of the past. There have been reports of increasing criminal insurgency against Chinese immigrants in Jamaica. The newspaper reports, 'St James police urge Chinese businessmen to report crimes' (Jamaica Observer, November 28, 2013). However, the problem goes beyond crimes. Both groups have mutual suspicion of the other, and this attitude has to be carefully treated. Just recently, four appropriately dressed 'deadlocks' went into a Chinese restaurant. The operator, suspicious of the four men, called his private security to stand by until they finished their dinner. How could this action affect this business if the story went out? Black people must ensure to minimise or completely stop unnecessary provocation of the Chinese immigrants. Ominous signs are on the horizons. Let history be our guide to prevent the return to an ugly past.

There are some frameworks that have been used to explain the anti-Chinese sentiments that have erupted in Jamaica over the years. There is a thought that black people are jealous of their accumulation of wealth; there is the idea of the wave of anti-foreigner sentiments at times of harsh economic setting; and lastly the school of thinking that these attacks took place at the heights of black conscious agitation. The racist nature of the plantation system made the integration of the Chinese migrants a major challenge for both majority blacks and minority whites. According to a newspaper report (31 March 1934) on "pernicious drugs" in Jamaica, the issue concerning opium became one of the early roots of xenophobic attitudes against the new Chinese immigrants of the early 1900s. The white elites became intolerable of this new wave of Chinese migrants coming in large numbers as shopkeepers. The newspaper editorial (10 June 1913) made the distinction between the earlier Chinese migrants and their present "poverty stricken, ignorant fellow countrymen", who were blamed for the 'opium scare' in Jamaica now that the "natives are succumbing to the vile and deadly habit". This first anti-Chinese thrust was rooted in the opium drug trade. The foundation was set for the first and a massive anti-Chinese riot in 1918. more