Africans in Guangzhou
Author：Lin Quan
Source：Deutsche Welle Chinese web
Source Date：2011-6-14
Publish Date：2011-07-08 22:07:47
Times Read：561 reads
Germany’s “Die Zeit” reports that there are nearly 100,000 Africans living in Guangzhou. They like China because they can make fast money there, but in they also face discrimination; real friendships are not very common.
According to this report:
Guangzhou is the hub for Africans in China. In some neighborhoods, it seems that almost everyone is African; there are African clubs and restaurants, shops and salons. The first Africans came in the 1980s, and from 1998 onward began to increase. Then, the Asian Financial Crisis had just rocked Thailand, and African businesspeople developed an early preference for buying there. They lived in an area that very quickly became a center for African life, a building called Tianxiu. Now there are some 20,000 Africans living legally in this city of 10 million; if you add those who have illegally overstayed their visas or who are on short-term visits, the total number approaches 100,000. Near Guangzhou, African businesspeople have found factories where you can order anything you can imagine. South China really is the world’s workshop.
One aspect of the government’s discourse on “Sino-African friendship” is the African population in Guangzhou. From the beginning of the century, China’s state-owned giants have invested heavily in raw materials abroad. Following this have been telecommunications, agricultural conglomerates, and privately-owned textile companies. Most recently are small-scale businesspeople. China-Africa trade has already exceeded USD 100 billion, and Chinese in Africa are building large basic infrastructure projects and offering development assistance, without political strings attached. The African elite benefits, but the West has already begun to criticize. For example, Beijing’s “complicity with rogue governments” like Sudan.”
The report continues:
In Africa, people’s opinions of China’s work there are contradictory. Some are happy because of the economic development and new goods and services. Others complain about “yellow colonialism,” saying that they are plundering the continent’s raw materials without creating employment opportunities. A Kenyan newspaper puts it this way: “China has an Africa policy, but Africa does not have a China policy.”
Regardless, the Africans in Guangzhou have arrived on their own, without the benefit of help from a government program. They had no special treatment, and in comparison with the Europeans and Americans had more difficulty obtaining business visas. They also experience more serious scrutiny, because many stay illegally in China without valid visas.
A Malian businessperson interviewed for this report, Thierno Abdoul Aziz Ly, was refused a visa by the French government four times before going to Guangzhou. He says he would never consider going back to Europe. He only saw his wife on holidays, and felt that Europe had a bad impact on his health. “I worked as hard as an ox, ruined my body, and for what? No matter what, Europe will not respect you.” He also said his brothers worked for 12 years in Paris without saying what they did; it’s very likely that they worked in construction. Now they want to come to China too. But he notes that nothing should be idealized; there is also discrimination in China. Sometimes in cafes or on the subway, no one will sit next to him because of how Chinese think Africans smell.
Not everyone supports China-African friendship. In China, Africans run into racial discrimination. African traders explain that they are stared at when they go to rural areas for no apparent reason. In Guangzhou, they live together relatively well, but friendship, intermarriage, and real relationsships are fairly rare
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