Etnisch ondernemerschap : de Chinese horecasector in Nederland en in de Verenigde Staten van Amerika

Chinese cuisine has become very familiar to Dutch society in the past few decades. Although there already existed a handful of Chinese restaurants in the Netherlands shortly after the Second World War, it was not until the 1970s that the Chinese restaurant and catering sector began to bloom. In 1960, the Netherlands still had only about 225 Chinese restaurants. Thirty-five years later, in 1995, this figure grew to around 2,000 – an increase of almost 800%. This rapid rate of growth has thus far been unparalleled in the overall restaurant and catering sector in the Netherlands. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Chinese restaurant and catering sector greatly encouraged the phenomenon of Dutch people dining out. By 1995, the total number of restaurants in the Netherlands had grown to approximately 10,000. Almost 25% of those restaurants offered Asian cuisine, most of which was Chinese. What factors have enabled Chinese cuisine to reach such an important position in the Netherlands’ restaurant and catering sector? The present study aims to answer this question. Towards that end, the entrepreneurship of Chinese restaurant owners will be examined in the context of the Chinese migration to the Netherlands and their adaptation to Dutch society. The conceptual model is based on a theoretical framework that proceeds from the following set of assumptions: the development of the Chinese restaurant and catering sector has been influenced by a number of social processes that have taken place in Dutch society in the past decades. Furthermore, it is supposed that several socio-cultural characteristics of the Chinese population in the Netherlands have played an important role in the development of the Chinese restaurant and catering sector. In turn, Chinese entrepreneurship has had consequences for the general position of the Chinese migrant population in the Netherlands, as well as for Dutch society itself. In addition, the present study analyses the extent to which the several sociocultural characteristics of the Chinese population in the Netherlands can also be observed in a different context. For that purpose, we shall compare the development of the Chinese restaurant and catering sector in the Netherlands to the one in the United States of America.