Chasing the Chinese Dream

Moatasem Anwar, 29, moved to Yiwu, a trading city about four hours south of Shanghai, after he and his family built up a thriving business in his native Iraq importing Chinese goods. (Photos By Ariana Eunjung Cha -- The Washington Post)

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But doing business with China turned out to be better than anyone had imagined. With their first batch of profits, the family traded their stand at the market in Irbil for a store. Soon they expanded to 10 stores. Then they built a factory and five warehouses. "Now we have a building -- six floors. We rent to other people," Anwar said. The family not only had a business but a company, al-Sabeel General Trading.

Anwar, 29, had enough money to move himself and his wife, Bala Barzam, 27, formerly a junior high school teacher, to China. He's planning to send his two children, 2-year-old Sava and 8-month-old Ahmad, to a Chinese school. His older brother, two cousins and their families have also joined him in Yiwu.

Rasheed, the former Baghdad resident, has had similar good fortune in China.

When he told his children they were moving to China, he said, everyone cried. They didn't want to leave their home. But in the past eight months, he said, life has become comfortable.

"I like the peace," Rasheed said. "I don't want to hear the bombs and the hatred."

But there are limits to China's welcome.

It's nearly impossible for foreigners who don't have Chinese ancestry to obtain citizenship, and like anywhere else, China has had its share of racial misunderstandings and clashes with foreigners.

The most infamous took place in the city of Nanjing in 1988, when a dispute between a campus security guard and two African students degenerated into a fistfight and ended with African students seeking refuge at their embassies after fleeing a mob that was shouting "Kill the black devils!"

Tensions within China's black community rose again recently after police arrested about 30 African and Caribbean men in an anti-drug operation in Beijing on Sept. 22. Some witnesses accused China of racial profiling and claimed that some men were beaten. Beijing's Public Security Bureau has denied race was a factor in the operation.

In Yiwu, there was anger in the Iraqi community after an Iraqi man, Mostafa Ahmed Alazawi, was found dead in his rented home on March 30. His family wanted him to be buried in China and applied to the city for a piece of land. The city ruled that foreigners could not be buried in China, forcing the family to ship the body back to Iraq. The decision fueled outrage among the Iraqis. Through a friend, the family declined to be interviewed.

Anwar said that despite the tensions he's happier to be in China than elsewhere in the world.

"My brother lived in the Netherlands for nine years," he said. "There, if you are a foreigner, you are below them. When he came to China, everything was different. Here, if you are a foreigner, you are treated better than Chinese."

Researcher Yang Weina contributed to this report.