Chasing the Dragon

For more than three years, Khaled Rasheed and his family spent the nights huddled in fear as bombs exploded near their home in Baghdad.

For more than three years, Khaled Rasheed and his family spent the nights huddled in fear as bombs exploded near their home in Baghdad. Like generations of would-be emigrants before him, he dreamed of a better life elsewhere. But where? Finding a place that was safe was Rasheed8217;s top priority, but openness to Islam and bright business prospects were also important. It wasn8217;t long before he settled on a place that had everything he was looking for: China.

For a growing number of the world8217;s emigrants, China 8212;not the United States 8212; is the land where opportunities are endless, individual enterprise is rewarded and tolerance is universal. 8220;In China, life is good for us. For the first time in a long time, my whole family is very happy,8221; said Rasheed, 50, who in February moved with his wife and five children to Yiwu, a trading city about four hours south of Shanghai.

While China doesn8217;t officially encourage immigration, it has made it increasingly easy 8212; especially for businesspeople or those with entrepreneurial dreams and the cash to back them up 8212; to get long-term visas. Usually, all it takes is getting an invitation letter from a local company or paying a broker 500 to write one for you.

There are now more than 4,50,000 people in China with one- to five-year renewable residence permits, almost double the 2,30,000 who had such permits in 2003. An additional 700 foreigners carry the highly coveted green cards introduced under a system that went into effect in 2004.

China8217;s openness to foreigners is evident in the reemergence of ethnic enclaves. Larger and more permanent than those frequented by expatriate businessmen on temporary assignment, the new enclaves evoke pre-revolutionary China, where cities such as Shanghai bustled with concessions dominated by French, British and Japanese.

The Wangjing area of northern Beijing is a massive Koreatown, complete with groceries, schools, churches, karaoke bars and its own daily newspapers. A few miles away, in the city8217;s Ritan Park, signs in Cyrillic script and vendors speaking Russian welcome people from the former Soviet republics. In Yiwu, a city in the eastern province of Zhejiang that is the home of the world8217;s largest wholesale market, 8220;Exotic Street8221; lights up at night with stands filled with smoking kebabs, colorful hookahs and strong sugared tea for the almost exclusively Arab clientele.

China8217;s efforts to woo developing countries are driven by more calculated, strategic goals, most notably its need to secure long-term contracts for oil, gas and minerals to fuel its booming economy.

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Over the past 20 years, the government has gradually allowed its own Muslim minority to rebuild institutions that were devastated by state-sponsored attacks on Islam during the Cultural Revolution. 8220;In America, for people with my religion there can be a lot of problems,8221; said Adamou Salissou, 25, from Niger. 8220;The image they have of Muslims is that they are terrorists. Chinese don8217;t have a problem with religion. They think, 8216;It8217;s your religion and it8217;s okay.8217; 8220;

Mosques in areas such as Yiwu, where foreigners are concentrated, have been given more freedom than some others, which are under strict state control. Officials at the mosque here estimate that more than 20,000 Muslim immigrants, about 1,000 of them from Iraq, have settled in the area over the past five years.

But there are limits to China8217;s welcome.

It8217;s nearly impossible for foreigners who don8217;t have Chinese ancestry to obtain citizenship, and like anywhere else, China has had its share of racial misunderstandings and clashes with foreigners.

Moatasem Anwar, who grew up in Iraq8217;s Kurdish-populated north during Saddam Hussein8217;s rule, says that despite the tensions he8217;s happier to be in China than elsewhere in the world. 8220;My brother lived in the Netherlands for nine years,8221; he said. 8220;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.8221;