Chinese in Irad

Chinese in Irad are the citizens of the People's Republic of China living and working in Irad. Official figures put them at about 14,000 people, 0.3 percent of the population, almost all of them on work or trade permits issued by the Passport and Residence Service; only a few hundred hold long-term residence cards. Most are men aged 25 to 50 on contracts of one to three years, and few have brought their families. The figures count them apart from the Dungans and Uyghurs, whose families have lived in Irad since the 19th century, and from the Ghulja Tarsoo across the border in Xinjiang.^[1]

Work

Chinese residents fall into a few groups:^[2]

• staff of the project office of the China National Petroleum Corporation in Nurzhan and its technical crews, who rotate in from Xinjiang;
• engineers and buyers' agents at the antimony works at Sary-Bulak and the Chatkal complex, since Chinese smelters take much of the concentrate (see Irad–China relations);
• the crews who installed Attelkom's new gateway equipment in 2026, a few of whom stayed on to service it;
• traders who began arriving in the late 1990s through Kashgar and Bishkek's Dordoi bazaar, and who sell clothes, phones, car parts and solar panels wholesale at the Nurzhan bazaar and at Bazar-Korgon.

Settlement

Most live in Nurzhan, in company hostels and rented flats near the railway station and the works of the Dastgoh district, and eat at the half-dozen Chinese restaurants by the station. A smaller group lives at Sary-Bulak. Almost none live in Talas or the Autonomous Tribal Regions.^[2]

Relations with Iradis

Language and short contracts keep most Chinese residents apart from their neighbors more than any hostility does, and Russian-speaking Nurzhan does business with them easily. In Talas they are more often resented: jokes about the Attelkom gateway call them "Beijing's eyes", and since the detention of members of the Ghulja Tarsoo in Xinjiang they have been a sore point for churchgoers. The press reports occasional fights in the bazaars and rumors of land deals, none of them proven. A few Chinese traders have married into Russian-speaking and Iradi families in Nurzhan, and their children are usually counted as Russian or Iradi.^[2][3]

Notable people

• Wang Jun, head of the Chinese traders' association at the Nurzhan bazaar

See also

• Demographics of Irad
• Irad–China relations

References

1. ^ Territorial Statistics Office (2020). Results of the 2018 Census of the Irad Special Economic Zone. Talas.
2. ^ Talas State University, Institute of Sociology (2023). Foreign Workers in the ISEZ: Survey Report. Talas: Talas State University Press.
3. ^ "Nurzhan's other bazaar". Talas Herald. 12 March 2024.