Africans In China Research Articles

Africans in China, Western/White Supremacy and the Ambivalence of Chinese Racial Identity

Abstract This article seeks to provide further insights into understanding the construction of Chinese identity by bringing the West/white into the picture of Afro-Sino racial relationships. It contends that the Chinese have internalized Western/white superiority through a long historical process, starting with the Western invasion in the 19th century and continuing with the construction of the contemporary historical narrative of the “century of humiliation.” This internalization and its ramifications can be observed in Chinese public discourses as well as diplomatic practices. Together with Western/white superiority, the Chinese also adopted a social Darwinist, competitive world view, using Western modernity as the yardstick by which to rank different peoples and societies in a racial hierarchy. Chinese racism against Africans is thus a projection of a harsh self-judgement. Unlike white supremacy in Western racial thinking, “Chinese supremacy” is often coupled with an inferiority complex.

Black Ghosts: A Journey into the Lives of Africans in China by Noo Saro-Wiwa (review)

Black Ghosts: A Journey into the Lives of Africans in China by Noo Saro-Wiwa (review)

Africans’ response to the January 2023 Omicron variant wave in China: the impact of COVID-19 vaccination status

IntroductionThe January 2023 COVID-19 omicron wave in China garnered wide publicity partly because it evaded most vaccines at that time and resulted in “breakthrough infections” in previously vaccinated individuals. This study focused on the COVID-19 vaccination status and the response of foreigners of African descent who were in China during the January 2023 Omicron-driven COVID-19 wave.Materials and methodsA cross-sectional online survey of Africans in China was conducted in January 2023. Self-report electronic questionnaires were sent to eligible participants across the country, with no restriction on age, gender, or country of origin. Two hundred sixty-six participants were eventually enrolled. Collected data was cleaned and analyzed using SPSS. Descriptive analysis was used to summarize the data in terms of numbers and percentages, while the Chi-square test was used to determine relationships among variables.ResultsA total of 266 participants were enrolled, 68.8% males and 31.2% females. The majority (97%) were 45 years and below and mostly students (75.2%). 87.2% were vaccinated, with 53.1% having taken at least 2 shots. Sinovac (53.9%) was the most used vaccine brand. 21.4% reported infection with COVID-19 during the January 2023 omicron wave, with 14.0% reporting “breakthrough” infections. No significant difference was seen in the risk of getting infected with COVID-19 between unvaccinated and vaccinated participants; OR 1.2 (95% CI 0.396–3.634, p = 0.747). 35.1% reported mild asymptomatic infections, while 64.9% reported symptoms. The majority of the cases (89.5%) were managed from home.ConclusionIn summary, most Africans in China were vaccinated during the January 2023 COVID-19 omicron wave, although “breakthrough” infections were reported. The infection rate among Africans in China was relatively higher than for African Americans and those living in Africa, but the majority were managed from home. Future studies are needed to capture vital COVID-19 information on Africans in China for more trailered responses to future outbreaks.

COVID-19 AND SOUTH AFRICA–CHINA ASYMMETRIC RELATIONS

While South Africa–China relations were only formalized in 1998, relations between these states date back to the 1800s. South Africa's quest for sustainable development through partnerships with global powers motivated its close ties with China. The 2015 Cape Town Declaration committed the two countries to improve health facilities and disease control. The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic presents an opportunity to rethink this partnership. Drawing on desktop research, this article engages the reality of COVID-19 and explores South Africa–China relations in the context of the pandemic. The emergence of the virus in China, its rapid spread, and the high fatality rate have had devastating repercussions across the world. This article argues that Beijing's response to COVID-19 raises more questions than it answers. The outbreak of the virus in China, its response, and emerging cases of racism and xenophobia against Africans in China also raise concerns about the future of South Africa–China relations.

Pandemics and Management of “Dangerous Communities”: Ebola, COVID-19, and Africans in China

How do we unpack and make sense of anti-African/Black sentiments in the pandemic control and mitigation practices in China? This article responds to the question by drawing a parallel between the experiences of Africans in China during the Ebola virus disease and COVID-19 outbreaks. Focusing specifically on Nigerians as a subsection of the African community in Guangzhou City, China, it explores how the COVID-19-inspired discrimination against Africans reflects much of the experiences of Africans in China during the Ebola crisis of 2014. The article combines sixteen “Ebola experience” data points, obtained from Nigerians in Guangzhou in 2017, with four COVID-19 experience virtual interviews, media reports, and social media archive and netnographic analysis covering April to June 2020. The experiences of Africans in Guangzhou in the early months of the COVID-19 outbreak reflect a patterned response to Africans and Blackness in the context of pandemic in China. The article contributes to the literature by examining the question of racial discrimination and the construction of African immigrant community in China as dangerous within the new geography of Afro-mobilities in East Asia.

Pandemic politics and Africa: Examining discourses of Afrophobia in the news media

In addition to the devastating loss of lives, the harm caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to individuals and communities around the world has caused seismic disruptions in economic, social and interpersonal relationships. The pandemic has affected international diplomatic relations as well by amplifying existing geopolitical tensions. By situating discourses of Africa and Africans within global ferments of pandemic politics, this study interrogates how Africa and its peoples were invoked in global media. Drawing from postcolonial theory and conceptual propositions of Afrophobia, the study uses multimodal discourse analysis to critically examine news stories that engaged with two phenomena: controversies regarding the African director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) and xenophobic treatment of Africans in China. Findings indicate elements of Afrophobia were evident in the Trump Administration’s and US conservative media outlets’ engagement with WHO. Additionally, the study showed the mainstreaming of non-western Afrophobia through the example of the xenophobic treatment of Africans in China. It concludes by proposing a contextual, intersectional and critical geopolitical analytical optics for a more robust understanding of the global Black experience.

1 - Academic (Im)mobility: Ecology of Ethnographic Research and Knowledge Production on Africans in China

Since the emergence of China in the geopolitical and economic spaces of Africa, academics have followed Chinese and African people moving in both directions and conducted on-the-ground, cross-border ethnographies. However, academics are not equally mobile. This autoethnography analyses the intersections of ethnography, mobility and knowledge production on ‘Africans in China’ through a critical exploration of the contextual issues shaping the unequal participation of Africa-based researchers in the study of Africa(ns) in a non- African setting. Based on my experiences before, during and after migration to Guangzhou city, I demonstrate that ‘being there,’ fetishised as ideal-type anthropology, conceals privilege and racial and power dynamics that constrain the practice of cross-border ethnography in the global South.

Visualizing Africa in Chinese Propaganda Posters 1950–1980

This paper examines depictions of Africans in China during the period when China moved to establish diplomatic relations across the African continent – the foundation of what would become Africa–China relations today. Chinese posters were early forms of mass visual interaction with (the image of) foreign nationals. They reflect how Chinese society viewed itself in relation to others as it developed a global awareness through domestic mobilization. This study investigates how Africa and Africans are depicted in Chinese posters and how they shaped and/or reflected discourses of the period. It also examines motivations behind the inclusion of Africans in Chinese posters, arguing that this largely had a domestic rationale. By historicizing the meaning-making process of the image of Africa in 20th-century Chinese posters, this paper demonstrates that Chinese posters informed public opinion by defining friend and foe, focused more on China and her Cold War entanglements than on Africa, and simultaneously challenged and reinforced some widely held stereotypes about the continent.

Africans in China: The Lifestyle of Malian Muslims Businessmen in Guangzhou

Africans in China: The Lifestyle of Malian Muslims Businessmen in Guangzhou

Stigma, Discrimination, and Hate Crimes in Chinese-Speaking World amid Covid-19 Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic has given rise to stigma, discrimination, and even hate crimes against various populations in the Chinese language–speaking world. Using interview data with victims, online observation, and the data mining of media reports, this paper investigated the changing targets of stigma from the outbreak of Covid-19 to early April 2020 when China had largely contained the first wave of Covid-19 within its border. We found that at the early stage of the pandemic, stigma was inflicted by some non-Hubei Chinese population onto Wuhan and Hubei residents, by some Hong Kong and Taiwan residents onto mainland Chinese, and by some Westerners towards overseas Chinese. With the number of cases outside China surpassing that in China, stigmatization was imposed by some Chinese onto Africans in China. We further explore how various factors, such as the fear of infection, food and mask culture, political ideology, and racism, affected the stigmatization of different victim groups. This study not only improved our understanding of how stigmatization happened in the Chinese-speaking world amid Covid-19 but also contributes to the literature of how sociopolitical factors may affect the production of hate crimes.

Post-migration well-being of Sub-Saharan Africans in China: a nationwide cross-sectional survey.

This study aims to understand the quality of life (QOL) among Sub-Saharan African (SSA) migrants and explore the factors that contribute to and shape SSA migrants' QOL and shed light on how post-migration factors affect their QOL in China. We conducted a nationwide cross-sectional survey on QOL of SSA migrants in China from August, 2019 to November, 2019. We recruited SSA migrants using a combination of peer-referred online and offline surveys. The WHOQOL-BREF scale assessed the QOL of participants, and depressive symptoms were measured using Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression scale. Correlates of well-being including depressive symptoms, migration-related factors, and socio-demographic characteristics were included in hierarchical linear regression models to explore the contributions of these factors on QOL of SSA migrants. This study included 928 eligible SSA migrants. The total score of the WHOQOL-BREF scale was 66.8 ± 14.0. Attitudes of local people toward SSA migrants (β = 3.1, 95% CI 2.4, 3.0) and satisfaction with their living conditions (β = 3.6, 95% CI 2.5, 4.7) were positively associated with QOL and explained 12.2% of the variance. Contracting an infectious disease in the past year (β = -5.3, 95% CI -7.6, -2.9) and depression werenegatively associated with QOL (β = -0.7, 95% CI -0.7, -0.6) and explained 24.4% of the variance. Our study underscores the importance of several key factors that may aid in the improvement of QOL among SSA migrants. Post-migration environmental factors emerged as key correlates of QOL, which builds on previous evidence that the post-migration context should be improved to safeguard the well-being of SSA migrants in China.

Calculator communication in the markets of Guangzhou and beyond

ABSTRACT The presence of Africans in China has been phenomenal since the late 1990s. In recent years, there has been a dramatic uptick in people from Africa coming to the major cities of China such as Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau, Yiwu, Shanghai, and Beijing. They are in the process of building linguistic, cultural, and economic bridges between their source communities and their host communities. In this process, communication problems are inevitable, since Africans and Chinese do not share a common lingua franca in most cases. However, these communities have succeeded in devising some interactive strategies that turn out to be quite effective, especially in market situations, one of them being calculator communication (CM). This paper looks at these strategies in the context of contact linguistics and the emergence of some hybrid language that has elements of African languages, Chinese, and English.

Africans in China and Chinese in Africa: inequalities, social identities, and wellbeing

ABSTRACT Relations between China and African nations have intensified following the ratification of several multilateral and bilateral developmental agreements, especially after the third Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit in 2006. In the past decade, the relations have transcended to the micro-level, with important implications for households and individuals. Of note are the varying forms of population migration between the two places for reasons ranging from business ventures, education, asylum-seeking and family making and reunification. Using various primary and secondary data sources, the seven articles in this special issue delve into the wellbeing, social identities and different kinds of socio-cultural and economic inequalities of Africans in China and Chinese in Africa. Altogether, the articles affirm that policies and mechanisms to ensure decent living conditions, enhanced sense of belonging and social equity among Africans in China and Chinese in Africa are critical to the future of China-Africa relations.

Historical and contemporary perspectives on inequalities and well-being of Africans in China

ABSTRACT This paper first outlines a brief history of the African presence in China since the Tang era, indicating that Africans have mostly lived on the margins of the Chinese society. It then highlights the contemporary presence of Africans in China since the turn of the Millennium, showing that while African traders and students have demonstrated a lot of resilience, the story of Africans living at the margins of the Chinese society has not changed much. As a case study, insights are drawn from research conducted in Guangzhou showing the marked inequalities Africans living there face in regards to access to health care. Some of the many barriers creating inequality of access to health care include affordability, legal issues, and language barriers. Finally, the paper proposes a theory of resilience to explain the attempt by Africans in China to cope with this situation of inequality and well-being.

'I don't want to have a separated home': Reckoning family and return migration among married Nigerians in China.

The growing 'Africans in China' literature has documented the extent and extensiveness of flows from Africa to Chinese cities. However, return migration has not received much attention, and even less is known about the role of the family in return consideration. The article focuses on how married Nigerians reckon return and family in Guangzhou city using data from ethnographic observations and interviews with 25 participants. While the family is central to how married migrants think about return, the dynamics vary among the participants. Migrants whose spouses/children reside in Nigeria complain about being distant from their families and the challenge of unification and 'absentee fatherhood'. Nigerian couples that live in Guangzhou as a family consider the high cost of raising children and the future competitiveness of their children as 'China-educated' as factors in return calculations. Moreover, despite living with their husbands in China, some Nigerian women desire to return to Nigeria to improve their lives, but they did not embark on a return journey to avoid family separation. Among Nigerians in an interracial relationship with Chinese women, the feeling of (un)belongingness resonates in their return consideration owing to poor experiences with access to residence permit and social welfare. While integration issues impact on return migration of married Nigerians in Guangzhou, the transnational practices of the men suggest that a return behaviour would probably accompany return consideration.

Africans in China and its influence for China-Africa relations

Recent years, steadily growing China’s influence on Africa. Africa is often called “China’s second continent”, which is associated with an enhanced Chinese presence on the African continent. However, the question of the presence of Africans in China and the influence on the development of Chinese-African relations, which will be the subject of this article, remains little studied. This topic is of particular interest because of the initiative of the PRC President Xi Jinping to create the Center for Innovative Cooperation between China and Africa to promote innovation among youth and entrepreneurship, voiced during the China-Africa Cooperation Forum (FOCAC) held in Beijing in early September 2018. In this article, the author will highlight the important historical events of the development of the Chinese-African dialogue, consider the main cities with a high percentage of the African population, identify the reasons for the presence of Africans in China and the impact on the development of cooperation between the parties.

“THIS COUNTRY OF CHINA IS TOUGH”: NIGERIAN IMMIGRANT MUSIC MAKING IN GUANGZHOU, CHINA

This article concerns Nigerian music making in Guangzhou, one of China’s leading manufacturing and trading centres, and where the largest groups of Africans in China, more generally, are concentrated. Nigerians are the largest community of Africans in Guangzhou and, like other Africans traders, practice what has been referred to as “low-end globalisation” (Mathews and Yang 2012). Beyond entertainment, music making among Nigerians, and Africans in China more generally, has a significant role in not only maintaining a sense of belonging but also in communicating key social concerns, aspirations and sentiments that stem from the experience of living and working in Guangzhou. This article describes how these experiences unfold in specific songs composed by two Igbo Nigerian immigrants whose aspirations and efforts to live and work in the city resulted in different outcomes.

Reconstructing Blackness in Grassroots Interactions Between Chinese and Africans in Guangzhou

This article examines the racial implications of daily life interactions between African traders and rural-to-urban Chinese migrants in China's southern metropolis Guangzhou, due to a recent wave of African migration to China. Differing from previous generation of Africans in China who were mainly students from elite backgrounds, these new migrants consist of individual traders and small entrepreneurs who purchase cheap consumer goods in China and ship them back to Africa for sale. Despite language barrier and cultural differences, the two migrant groups share similar structural marginalization in urban China due to their non-resident or non-citizenship status. By focusing on these two underprivileged groups in urban China, this research foregrounds a grassroots interpretation of Sino/African trade relations, which is largely absent from official propaganda. I argue that racial learning between non-elite Chinese and Africans is a bi-directional and interactive process, which may involve mutual stereotypes and racialization on both sides. However, Chinese migrants’ shared structural marginalization with black Africans may also give rise to alternative constructions of blackness that move beyond the hegemonic black/white binary. Due to the relative absence of whiteness and white privilege in grassroots Chinese/African interactions, the notion of white supremacy can be de-centered and replaced by multiple parameters for evaluating blackness, such as nationality, English proficiency, class and economic status, indigenous aesthetic values, religion and cultural differences.

Journey to the East: a study of Ghanaian migrants in Guangzhou, China

ABSTRACTIn the late 1990s and early 2000s, nationals of sub-Saharan Africa who had initially settled in the Middle East and other parts of Southeast Asia moved in unprecedented numbers to Guangzhou, China in response to the 1997/8 Asian financial crisis. They were later joined by many more as the Chinese economy improved and the economic relationship between China and Africa strengthened. This paper discusses the experiences of identifiable sets of Ghanaian actors in Guangzhou, China in the last two decades. It outlines their respective characteristics, main activities, migratory trajectories and their motivations for traveling to China. The paper also analyzes their coping mechanisms in this relatively new destination and concludes that despite the current turbulence that characterizes the stay of Africans in China, the future of the Ghanaian community, and largely, Africans in China is bright.

The Dragon’s Deal: Educational Development and Knowledge Sharing in China-Africa Cooperation

For decades, China has been unceasingly making headway on the modality and quality of educational collaboration. This educational collaboration comes through student exchange, joint initiatives (research) and special training programs for African educational officials, as well as other long- and short-term training of Africans in China. On the other hand, in the discourse about China-Africa relations, technology transfer is one of the less investigated subjects; however, technology transfers have existed in China-Africa cooperation in the form of knowledge sharing. The paper explores the following: (i) ‘what’ are transferred through knowledge sharing; (ii) the potential for cooperation in knowledge sharing between China and African countries that are core to economic development in the areas of agriculture, medical and knowledge sharing from China’s development experience. Chinese methods of teaching ‘how to develop’ based on its own experience may help fortify the independence of African nations and build win-win cooperation for long-term development.