From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 13, no. 4, December 1998.

Concern over shop ownership is unfounded, says Labour Ministry.

This year only 8 percent of all small retail shops registered in Tonga are owned and operated by Chinese immigrants, and they are all new Tongan nationals or married to a Tongan the Labour Ministry has confirmed

They were responding to concern expressed by Tongan fale koloa (small retail shop) owners that immigrants were being allowed to take over an area of business that could easily be filled by Tongans.

Tevita Niulata, who issues the Tongan business licences, said that there should be no reason for concern, because it is a government policy that business licences for shops be reserved only for local people.

He said that the Chinese who had business interests in the fale koloas in Tonga included those who were married to Tongans, where the licence was issued to the Tongan partner. There were also the Chinese who had become naturalised Tongans.

Tevita said that the transfer of a licence from the person to whom the licence was awarded to another person was illegal, and people had been warned not to do this.

During 1997 in Tongatapu, 155 licences for retail stores were issued, and only ten were Chinese-owned. In 1998 the figure went up to 173 fale koloas, but Chinese owned only 14.

A Chinese man who owns a store in Nuku‘alofa said that most of the new Chinese immigrants came to Tonga hoping to find work.  A Chinese-Tongan was promoting Tonga in the rural areas of Mainland China, as a paradise in the South Pacific where they could find jobs and enjoy life, and he said that these poor Chinese were paying this man a lot of money to come to Tonga. “But they find that they can’t get a job and their only hope of making a living is to try and run a fale koloa.”

Meanwhile, the Tongan owner of a fale koloa on Tongatapu, said he preferred to employ Chinese assistants to run his small shop because it made it easier to refuse the endless credit sought by his neighbours who were his main customers.