China Media Research, 11(1), 2015 http://www.chinamediaresearch.net http://www.chinamediaresearch.net 99 editor@chinamediaresearch.net “It’s Not Copyrighted,” Looking West for Authenticity: Historical Chinatowns and China Town Malls in South Africa T. Tu Huynh Jinan University, China Abstract: This paper provides an alternative reading of the Chinese mall phenomenon that has mushroomed in post- apartheid South Africa, mainly after 2010. Through an analysis of the “China Town” malls, it argues that the Chinese and ethnic-Chinese investors are not simply tapping into a “China brand” that has become salient with China’s emergence as a global economic power, but are also participating in a global construction of Chinese identity that resists the Chinese state’s dominance over representations of “Chineseness.” This paper bui lds on secondary literature on Chinatowns (mostly in the U.S.) and fieldwork in the Western and Eastern Cape Provinces in South Africa. It shows that China Town is not just a commercial entity that has a concentration of Chinese people and shops, but signals a deliberate turn to historical Chinatowns that are diasporic social formations and globally recognized as “Chinese.” The China Town malls interconnect two phenomena that differ in culture and value, one being a response to Western exploitation and the other to China’s rise. As such, the paper asks: What is to be made of this interconnection? [T. Tu Huynh. “It’s Not Copyrighted,” Looking West for Authenticity: Historical Chinatowns and China Town Malls in South Africa. China Media Research 2015; 11(1): 99-111]. 10 Keywords: Chineseness, Chinatown, Shopping Malls, South Africa, China-Africa, diaspora Introduction: Chinatown, China Towns, and Chineseness In this paper I explore how “Chinatown,” a diasporic social formation that is globally recognized as “Chinese,” is a symbolic capital that now forms a powerful and attractive strategy for a group of transnational Chinese capitalists or investors in South Africa, and demarcates difference in their shopping centers or malls. However, they are not simply using the “China brand” (Harrison, Moyo, & Yang, 2012). This group of capitalists’ turn to the idea of Chinatown is, on the one hand, a way to give their malls an appearance of authenticity as a Chinese place by linking them to a culture and history that is interwoven with Western capitalist development. On the other hand, it is a way to shape terms of engagement with the Chinese state asthese capitalists seek to maximize geopolitical opportunities and economic benefits from its rise. The borrowing of “Chinatown” confronts the predominance of the state by tapping into different histories and routes of migration. Investment in this symbol of Chineseness inspires thinking about the meaning of place and identity. “China Town” shopping centers opened in Ottery, Milnerton, and Parow in Cape Town (all properties of the China Town Trust) and in Beacon Bay in East London provide the lens for this. Furthermore, a focus on South Africa shifts the global field of contestation over Chineseness away from Western societies. In Johannesburg, South Africa’s most populous city and economic hub, there are no China Town-named malls (from hereon, “China Town” spelt with two words indicates the mall), but there are two Chinatowns that are clearly “neighborhoods of Chinese settlement” (Anderson, 1987, p. 580). Though they are located in the same city, both reflect different migration histories in South Africa. Now referred to as “First” and “Second” Chinatowns in downtown Johannesburg and Cyrildene, respectively, both are places where some Chinese people reside, work, shop, trade, and have their annual Lunar New Year celebration. Dating back to the gold rush days of the nineteenth century (Yap & Man, 1996),First Chinatown emerged from “free” or independent Chinese people (as opposed to the Chinese who were recruited as indentured laborers) seeking out fortunes in the gold mining industry like other Chinese had in Australia, Canada, and the United States. Not having digging licenses that were reserved for “white” people only, this group of Chinese started up businesses that serviced the miners in the area, which was nearby the former Malay Camp. Yap and Man describe the presence of opium dens, gambling, and prostitution along with police raids and other “vices” that were concentrated in this area, resonating with the reputation of Chinatowns elsewhere (p. 84). In present days, First Chinatown consists of two street blocks. A majority of the Chinese in South African residences has moved out of the area and the number of shops has declined due to migrations to Western countries or rising crime rates. Second Chinatown emerged much later, at the end of apartheid (1994), in a previously white (Jewish) suburb. It replaced First Chinatown as a place of residence or gateway for some recent Chinese immigrants (Harrison, Moyo, & Yang, 2012) and Chinese capital investment. It is the place to go to “for anything Chinese,” ranging “from restaurants to hair