With a population of 1.4 billion, the continent of Africa has a similar number of people to China, although it is approximately three times greater in size. Moreover, the continent has fifty-four countries and boasts the most heterogeneous collection of languages in the world. Such diversity is reflected among the Africans travelling to and residing in Guangzhou, a trading port in southern China. In 2018, we surveyed some 120 Africans in Guangzhou, from thirty countries.[1] Most were traders buying cheap manufactured goods and shipping them to their home countries. Several trading centres clustered in Yuexiu and Baiyun districts attract a large number of Africans, thanks to the convenient concentration there of factory outlets, affordable hotels and informal housing in their vicinity (see figure 1). The factory outlets selling products from the Pearl River Delta and other provinces, including electronics, clothing and footwear, cosmetics and building materials, are significant hubs for the flow of manufactured goods from China to Africa. The booming trade driven by African demand even saved some Chinese-owned shopping centres from demolition in the early 2000s.[2]
Figure 1: Trading centres frequented by Guineans in Guangzhou
The lives of Africans in Guangzhou have been negatively affected by China’s tight visa and residency restrictions as well as police control – whether it is through direct visa checking, which can lead to deportation, or indirect surveillance through shopping malls where Africans do business, the hotels they stay at, and neighbourhood committees where Africans reside. Most African importers are on a thirty-day tourist visa or a visitor visa lasting one to two months, which is too short for them to place orders, wait for factory deliveries and oversee shipping. Only a minor fraction of them have obtained longer residency permits (maximum one year) to stay in China to run cargo businesses or stores. Some are there illegally, either on fraudulent visas (sometimes provided by fraudulent visa agencies) or overstaying due to lack of funds for buying a ticket home.
Illegal immigration or overstaying, plus concerns over criminal activities such as drug trafficking,[3] have brought Africans to the attention of police, especially since the implementation of the 2013 immigration law to combat the ‘three illegals’: illegal entry, illegal residence and illegal work.[4] The commercial zones of Xiaobei 小北and Guangyuanxi 广园西, where there are high concentrations of Africans, are heavily policed (see figure 2). Africans are frequently stopped by police to check visas and residential permits, often as an exercise in shaking them down, which has allegedly become a lucrative business for underpaid local police.[5] In 2009 and 2012, there were two rallies against police raids and racial profiling of African-owned businesses. The most recent clash between the police and the African population occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, as discussed below.
Figure 2: Police check certificates of Africans on a business street
Not all African communities have been affected equally by the efforts of police control and monitor. A veteran Chinese NGO worker mediating between the Immigration Department, Foreigner Management Police Stations 外管所and various African communities told us that Chinese authorities are more vigilant in dealing with allegedly troublesome Nigerians than with other Africans such as Malians and Guineans, who are perceived to be more peaceful and low key. Similarly, Gordon Matthews and the other authors of The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace have noted that some members of other African communities even cooperated with police raids against Nigerians.[6] The Igbo Nigerians are the most conspicuous communities in Guangzhou, thanks to their religious presence (such as in the Sacred Heart Cathedral), business success, inter-racial marriage with Chinese women,[7] and a history of open protests against police raids and the zero COVID policy. They also have a unique political identity and diaspora strategies that differ from other African nationals.
‘Troublesome’ Nigerians versus ‘peaceful’ Guineans
We first encountered the Igbo identity when our informant, Achebe (pseudonym), a young Igbo Nigerian, told us that his beret carries the unyielding spirit of Biafra, the secessionist movement in Nigeria that began in the 1960s. He was introduced to us by a Nigerian scholar in 2021, and in turn introduced us to a small Igbo community of some fifteen men working in a warehouse that was hidden behind a row of stores selling leatherware and luggage. Inside the warehouse, cartons were piled up to head height inside office cubicles (see figure 3). The piercing sound of duct tape being ripped was combined with greetings in Igbo. While we were there, Guangzhou police frequently patrolled this store, passing Africans in the narrow lane between the cubicles in an air of mutual neglect.
Figure 3: Sealed cargo boxes shipping to West Africa in a storehouse
Daddy Obi came to China three years ago to take over a shop of a friend. His previous role as an elder of a village council has naturally translated to a consultant on communal affairs among his compatriots in Guangzhou. He explained some of the unique Igbo world view to us and spoke of how British colonialists slaughtered many of their people and that the Islamic Hausa ‘took their resources’. During the Biafra war (1960–70), the Igbos sought independence from Hausa–Fulani rule. Their effort to establish a new country called Biafra failed, and millions died as a result of the war and the ensuing mass starvation. Following their political downfall and the high rate of unemployment in Nigeria, the Igbo people attempted to increase their material wealth, viewing it as a ‘weapon to fight back’.[8] Among their initiatives are the creation of the Igba Boi community-run apprenticeship program and the resuscitation of village square meetings.[9]
Despite being one of the most dispersed ethnic groups in Africa and the world, Igbo people have a strong sense of community and developed the unrelenting ‘Igbo capitalism’ on a global scale.[10] Igbo people in Guangzhou are renowned for their economic acumen and diligence, and African Americans from other ethnic groups look to them as a gauge of market trends. According to Achebe, the young Igbo trader – every Igbo man – wants to be a self-sufficient leader within a cooperative community. They would sit at a table as ‘real bosses’ to share the profit among themselves equitably and reasonably. Achebe’s narrative depicts a strong individualism associated with the Igbos’ belief in their personal god – chi (a concept that is concerned more with success or failure than with righteousness and wickedness),[11] as well as a republican ethos when it comes to community matters.[12]
The Biafra sentiment lingers and is even projected onto the governing of Africans by Guangzhou authorities. Daddy Obi argued (wishfully) that the Chinese government should treat Igbos nicely, claiming that China would be granted access to rich resources in Igbo, including gold, zinc and petroleum, once the Igbos gained independence and established diplomatic relations with China. Unhappy that in disputes between Chinese and Igbos, the Chinese just turned to the police, he criticised China for having neither ‘human rights nor freedom’.
When we met Cibuike, a chubby Igbo in his forties, he was in a sorry plight with his Chinese girlfriend. Many Africans, Igbo Nigerians in particular, have ‘transactional marriages’ with Chinese women. It is easier for their Chinese girlfriend or wife to obtain business licences, and a relationship would grant them longer visas. However, such transactions are not one-sided. In return, Cibuike is expected to remain with his girlfriend in the long term, even bringing her home to Nigeria. His would-be brother-in-law also demanded that he buy an apartment under his sister’s name in Guangzhou as bride price. This romantic crisis happened when Cibuike’s visa was about to expire in October 2021. He was still in Guangzhou when we visited in November 2021, but he only smiled and did not explain his situation further.
Compared to Igbo Nigerians, other African nationals, such as the Guineans and Malians, attract less police attention in Guangzhou. Among the reasons for this are good diplomatic relations between their home country and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and other support networks that help to buffer potential conflicts. Guinea is among the first five African countries (the other four being Algeria, Egypt, South Africa led by Mandela’s ANC, and Sudan) that entered diplomatic or trade relations with the PRC in the late 1950s. The Malian chamber of commerce in Guangdong has been active in importing necessities to Mali, which is endorsed by the Malian government and its consulate in Guangzhou.
There are other business tactics that are low-key and help circumvent certain financial constraints, such as the alliance established between Guinean businessmen and students. The population of Guineans in China is estimated at 700, including 400 students in Chinese universities and 300 businessmen in Guangzhou and Yiwu. The Guinean government has been sending students to China since good diplomatic relations were established in 1959. Students on Chinese government scholarships have been surpassed by self-financed ones since the mid-1990s. Some Guinean students start working for their compatriot businessmen in Guangzhou even before they finish their studies. Students translate for Guinean bosses and Chinese businessmen, and Guinean businessmen can use students’ names to acquire additional foreign exchange quotas (US$100,000 a year per person) to order from Chinese suppliers. This is a legal grey area that is rarely prosecuted. Furthermore, their student visas allow them stay longer in China, making them ideal brokers between sojourning Guinean buyers and Chinese suppliers. With commission as start-up capital, they can even buy their own goods and ship them home.
Such arrangements do not exist with the Igbos. Some Igbo attend short-term Chinese classes in Guangzhou, which allows them to stay longer for business, but they cannot increase their foreign exchange limit with the student visa. There are a couple Guangzhou local colleges or vocational schools that capitalise on the needs of Africans by offering short-term Chinese or other business courses. A substantial percentage of students skip school, especially in the afternoons when they may contact business partners in Africa where the local time is morning.
Mobile churches
Religion is another cause of tension between African populations and Guangzhou authorities. African Christians in Guangzhou attend church habitually, as they do at home.[13] The state-sanctioned Sacred Heart Cathedral, which was built by the Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris in the heart of Guangzhou in 1888 (see figure 4), now has more Africans than Chinese attending Sunday mass. When trying to enter, Liang Chen (one of the authors) was shocked to be stopped by two tall Igbo Nigerians at the entrance and had to pretend to be Christian to enter. (Other masses normally accept non-Christians. Chen never hides his non-Christian identity from the pastors to whom he spoke.) The mass was presided over by African priests and had strong African elements. African parishioners raised their hands in the air to receive the Holy Spirit, and the carolling of hundreds of Africans (mixed with a minority of Chinese) echoed under the high, vaulted ceiling. Afterwards, the parishioners left their pews to offer donations in kind – quilts, food staples, sheets. Chen approached one of the Nigerian priests after the mass, and he promptly referred Chen to a Chinese priest. The priest turned down Chen’s request for an interview regarding the reason why the mass was conducted by African expatriates.
Figure 4: Christmas parade outside Sacred Heart Cathedral, Guangzhou
Most of our informants preferred to attend Pentecostal services at non-state-sanctioned ‘mobile churches’. As the name suggests, the sites of these church services constantly change. However, they manage to continue operating because they generate revenue for Chinese hotel owners who rent meeting rooms for Sunday congregations and night services.
These congregations granted us freer access but, owing to their unofficial nature as well as the loud preaching and music that accompany such gatherings, these churches have become targets of police raids and surveillance. Pastor Daniel Enyeribe Michael Mbawike, a Nigerian who founded Royal Victory International Church in Guangzhou in 1997, which had Chinese congregants as well, was not granted a visa for seven years because he refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the Chinese government over God.[14] Not surprisingly, other Nigerian and Kenyan pastors associated with Royal Victory International refused our request for an interview, stating fears that it could be used against them.
Pentecostalism is one of the fastest-growing denominations of Christianity in Africa. Its popularity is also reflected in churchgoers in Guangzhou. Between 2018 and 2021, we joined several Pentecostal congregations on Sundays, including one led by a Nigerian couple, another by a Kenyan and two others by Congolese pastors. The congregations were attended by people from different African nations, not limited to the compatriots of the pastor, meaning that the churches afford cross-national connections to frequent participants. Our African informants told us that they can choose freely among the churches and are not obliged to develop loyalty to any one of them. Some Ethiopians, for example, attend Tewahedo churches at home, but in Guangzhou they join an Egyptian Coptic church, thanks the traditional links between the two denominations.
Our informants tell us that the pastors provide comfort for congregants facing existential issues such as business challenges and visa troubles. Indeed, much of the preaching aimed to lift the spirits of parishioners, recharge them with faith and energy to cope with everyday life, and issue moral injunctions against engaging in fraudulent or deceptive practices while in China. We witnessed many penances in which a congregant comes to the stage and kneels to receive blessings from the pastor and the other parishioners, who lay hands on him or her to heal their suffering soul. Pastors in turn ask for material contributions, including for their own homes. This is typical among Pentecostal churches: the more wealth a pastor amasses, the more he is seen as worthy of following.
Interestingly, some African Christians in Guangzhou believe the churches are declining in morality as a result of the local government’s intolerance of independent preachers. A Nigerian businessman told us that after good pastors were evicted by Guangzhou authorities, new ones coming in have proven less trustworthy and professional. Some even use witchcraft, such as juju. He believed the moral decline of pastors reinforced a trend towards immorality among congregations. He added that Chinese police contribute to moral decay by colluding with visa agents and shadowy intermediaries to charge exorbitant visa renewal fees (around US$8,000 in 2018) for those wanting to enter Guangzhou from Vietnam, where most expelled or overstaying Nigerians go. In his opinion, corrupt police and pastors made Africans more desperate for money, not God, in Guangzhou.
Pandemic governance and backlash
In April 2020, amid worldwide appalling death tolls from COVID-19, treatment of Africans in Guangzhou made international headlines. On 11 April, CNN reported on the large-scale eviction of Africans from their places of residence by Guangzhou police. Africans were asked to quarantine at home for fourteen days, yet many had been evicted by individual landlords acting on their own initiative, and the Africans were then denied access to hotels.[15] According to a Chinese social worker we spoke to, who took part in mass screening, there were also Africans who refused to quarantine at home, protesting that it would ‘damage their freedom’. Some with visa problems hid out in friends’ places, as we learned from a few close African friends. The results of the mass screenings and mandatory hotel quarantine left many Africans short of money, food and medicine. Some could barely afford one hotel meal a day, much less an international flight back to their home country.
Just a day later, the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau (police) reported the exact number of African residents: 4,553, down from 13,652 in December 2019.[16] History was repeating itself in an unsettling way. The last time Guangzhou’s Africans were officially counted was during the Ebola outbreak of 2014. The Guangzhou police appeared to be trying to use one stone to kill two birds: immigration control and epidemiological monitoring. In 2018, the responsibility for policing the community moved from the 6th Bureau of the Public Security Bureau (its exit and entry branch) to the newly founded National Immigration Administration, although the Public Security and its Foreign Management stations still oversaw mass screening of expatriates for COVID-19. Door-to-door screening involved police and residential committees who report to them.
In the same month, eleven African ambassadors to China protested against the discrimination and eviction of African nationals in Guangzhou, demanding ‘the cessation of forceful testing, quarantine and other inhuman treatments’.[17] This diplomatic backlash was largely caused by the Public Security’s limited capacity to communicate with Africans who do not speak Chinese, English or French,[18] while enforcing stricter pandemic control measures on African communities in Guangzhou, including compulsory quarantine of asymptomatic cases.
It should be noted that different African governments responded to the plight of their citizens differently. Uganda’s Foreign Affairs Minister, the Hon. Sam Kutesa, conveyed ‘serious concern’ about the ‘harassment and mistreatment of its nationals’ to the Chinese ambassador and called on the Chinese government to ‘address the plight of Ugandans in China’. Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs briefed its nationals on pandemic control measures in China and urged all ‘underground’ Kenyans to be properly documented. The most vehement response was from Nigeria, whose Congress passed a motion ‘to check the validity of all immigration documents of every Chinese person in Nigeria and the expatriate quota of all the Chinese businesses in Nigeria to ascertain the number of illegal and undocumented Chinese immigrants in Nigeria and to repatriate them to China’.[19]
When evictions began, a group of Chinese volunteers and some of the wives and girlfriends of Nigerians delivered packaged food and water to homeless Africans, as did some African Americans. However, the police called the Chinese volunteers in for investigation, and their WeChat group was shut down. Then one of the volunteers contacted a lockdown neighbourhood committee enforcing the lockdown and organised consultation to the Africans discharged from hotel quarantine facilitated by some thirty Chinese volunteers who spoke English or French. Liang Chen and three anthropologists researching Africans in Guangzhou additionally provided consultation to the Guangzhou municipal government. African students soon took over the communication between grassroots government and their compatriots discharged from hotel quarantine in late April. They also helped to connect their compatriots with African consulates regarding visa issues and return flights. These informal links were allowed to function as the Guangzhou police lessened their control over the community following the diplomatic backlash. We even learned that Guangzhou police were admonished by higher authorities and ordered to take training on multiculturalism in Beijing.
In 2020, the visas of all Africans subject to quarantine were extended by two months by PRC immigration authorities. Hotel-quarantined Africans were given financial aid, and Guangzhou authorities even apologised to them, according to a Malian business leader. Guangzhou Foreign Affairs Bureau contacted African chambers of commerce to sponsor the repatriation of African nationals. However, these measures were short-term and remedial in nature. The crisis seems to have left no significant legacy in terms of how the Guangzhou authorities have governed African expatriates after the travel ban was lifted.
Digitisation of trade and post-pandemic rebound
In 2021, to limit the number of African traders in Guangzhou and to control the flow of money and currency, the Department of Commerce of Guangdong Province and its subordinate agencies pressured Chinese owners of trading centres to set up cross-border e-commerce platforms 跨境电商平台 among their tenant factory outlets. Individual companies registered with the platform are expected to declare exports jointly and to receive foreign currency via a joint platform account. By so doing the platforms would domesticise foreign trade and subject it to government regulation without having so many African buyers coming to China. The platforms would be responsible for the financial burden and management costs for bringing together myriad African buyers whose individual purchasing capacity might be less than a standard container. Nonetheless, it is challenging for Africans to use a Chinese platform as opposed to dealing with Chinese suppliers directly. As a result, the total volume of trade with Africa declined.
Another way to limit the number of African traders was through controlling Chinese trading centre owners and shopowners. In September 2021, the trading areas in Xiaobei were still heavily policed, and many Chinese shops were closed down by the police or the fire department because they sold expired beverage or had blocked fire exits (see figure 5). However, according to the owner of a trading centre whom we interviewed, the real reason was to stop African traders from trading in the Xiaobei district.
Figure 5: Police barricade in front of a trading centre in Xiaobei, Guangzhou, 2021
The attempt to limit the inflow of African traders did not work. In part owing to the worsening fiscal situation, however, local governments are more dependent on tax revenue from trading centres and shops. Even when shops were closed in Xiaobei district, in the nearby Yuexiu district, the local government reserved a zone for trading with Africans only because trading centres serve as important revenue sources for the district government.
By 2024, the African population in Guangzhou had bounced back almost to pre-pandemic levels.[20] Africans cram shopping centres and, carrying overweight baggage, form long queues at Baiyun International Airport for their journey home. While the removal of travel bans between China and Africa is behind the recovery, the devaluation of African currencies to US dollars negatively affects the purchasing power of African traders and numbers. To save an international trade in decline, in August 2024 the Guangzhou Municipal Commerce Bureau invited Chinese shopping mall managers to a conference on how to boost trade with Africans. Notably, a few shopping centres have actively promoted e-commerce to African and Middle Eastern countries.[21] Online traders include African students, buyers and cargo businessmen. SHEIN, the e-commerce platform that allows for small orders from Chinese factories and fast delivery to Africa, often in two to three weeks, arrived in Kenya and South Africa in 2024. Time will tell whether the digitalisation of the local supply chain as advocated by the provincial government will reduce the physical presence of Africans in Guangzhou.
Notes
[1] The results of this survey have not yet been published.
[2] Zhigang Li, Michel Lyons and Alison Brown, ‘China’s “Chocolate City”: An ethnic enclave in a changing landscape’, African Diaspora, no. 5 (2012): 51–72.
[3] Victoria Ojeme, ‘Nigerians’ notoriety in China is unprecedented – Ambassador Onadipe’, Vanguard, 16 Feburary 2014, online at: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/02/nigerians-notoriety-china-unprecedented-ambassador-onadipe/
[4] Gordon Matthews with Linessa Dan Lin and Yang Yang, The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2017, p. 118.
[5] Guangzhi Huang, ‘Policing blacks in Guangzhou: How public security constructs Africans as sanfei’, Modern China, no. 45 (2019): 171–200.
[6] Matthews, Lin and Yang, The World in Guangzhou, p. 125.
[7] Yu Qiu, ‘Cleanliness and danger: Destigmatisation and identity politics in Nigerian–Chinese intimate relationships in south China’, Open Times, no. 4 (2016): 88–108.
[8] Paul Igwe, Robert Newbery, Nihar Amoncar, Gareth White and Nnamdi Madichie, ‘Keeping it in the family: Exploring Igbo ethnic entrepreneurial behaviour in Nigeria’, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research (2018) 10.1108/IJEBR-12-2017-0492.
[9] Paul Agu Igwe, Chinedu Ochinanwata and Rebecca C. Emeordi, ‘Religion and spiritual influence on Igbo entrepreneurial behavior and persistence’, Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (2023) 10.1080/08276331.2023.2253683.
[10] Amusi Odi, ‘The Igbo in diaspora: The binding force of information’, Libraries and Culture, vol. 34, no. 2 (1999), 158–67.
[11] Chinua Achebe, ‘Chi in Igbo cosmology’, NollyCulture, 17 March 2015, online at: https://nollyculture.blogspot.com/2015/03/chi-in-igbo-cosmology-by-chinua-achebe.html
[12] On the association between chi (personal god) and Igbo entrepreneurship, see I. Chukwukere, ‘Chi in Igbo religion and thought: The god in every man’, Anthropos, no. 3 (1983): 519–34; Igwe et al., ‘Keeping it in the family’, p. 43.
[13] On Congolese churches, see Katrine Pype, The Making of the Pentecostal Melodrama: Religion, Media, and Gender in Kinshasa, New York: Berghahn Books, 2013.
[14] Matthews, Lin and Yang, The World in Guangzhou, p. 179.
[15] Jenni Marsh, Shawn Deng and Nectar Gan, ‘Africans in Guangzhou are on edge, after many are left homeless amid rising xenophobia as China fights a second wave of coronavirus’, CNN World, 12 April 2020, online at: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/10/china/africans-guangzhou-china-coronavirus-hnk-intl/index.html
[16] People’s Government of Guangzhou Municipality, ‘Guangzhou Municipal Government Information Office Press Conference on Pandemic Prevention and Control (73rd Session)’, 12 April 2020, online at: https://www.gz.gov.cn/zt/gzsrmzfxwfbh/fbt/content/post_5815413.html
[17] Accessed through the WeChat group of research network forum CAAC (China in Africa and Africa in China) on 11 April. It was provided by a South African scholar.
[18] I participated an aid program organised by grassroots government to communicate with Africans in quarantine hotels in late April. Many volunteers who speak English or French were recruited online. We were allocated 239 expatriates in 8 hotels, including 164 Nigerians and nationals from other 17 African countries as well as 1 Indian and 2 Pakistanis. In the beginning, only 30 percent of them could be reached by telephone, and communication was difficult. Such a language barrier probably reflects that outgoing Africans are largely ‘bush-fallers’, who are from rural areas and have a strong desire to change their destiny through adventure.
[19] Benjamin Kalu (@OfficialBenKalu), ‘The motion passed on the maltreatment and institutional racial discrimination against Nigerians living in China by the Government of China seeks to ensure that’, Twitter, 29 April 2020, https://x.com/OfficialBenKalu/status/1255471879533592576
[20] Interview with a Chinese social worker involved in management of foreigners and Africans in particular in Guangzhou as well as a Chinese shopping mall manager.
[21] For instance, Liuhua Fashion Wholesale Market is running a Facebook page; see https://www.facebook.com/gzliuhuafashion
