Chinese community struggles to ride out the strain in Spain

In the early hours of October 16, police in Madrid raided the home of Chinese businessman and philanthropist Gao Ping, arresting him and about 100 of his employees and partners, most of them Chinese immigrants.

The money laundering and tax avoidance charges against Gao, combined with sensationalist media coverage and questionable police tactics, have stirred up suspicion of the 170,000-strong Chinese community in a nation suffering crippling unemployment and debt.

It was another blow to Chinese immigrants and locals who have spent years trying to build bridges between the two countries. It came as the dire economic situation has left 27 per cent of Spaniards unemployed and as distrust of the Chinese is growing.

While Chinese immigrants have been recorded in Spain since the 16th century, the biggest wave arrived in the 1980s, many from Qingtian county in Zhejiang province, northwest of Wenzhou , which has also sent huge numbers of migrants to Europe. The biggest communities are in Madrid, Barcelona and the Canary Islands.

Zhou Minkang, 52, has spent his adult life trying to bring China and Spain closer together. He laments not the police operation against Gao, but his countrymen's ignorance of Spanish laws and language, and the irresponsibility of some media.

Zhou arrived in Spain in 1985 and became a tenured professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 1988, just six years after he graduated in Hispanic studies at the Shanghai International Study University.