Conclusion

Modern China is globally connected and has a rapidly developing economy that has attracted numerous migrants from all over the world, including Africa. Some Africans come to do business and enjoy Chinese commercial and investment opportunities; others come to work as high-level professionals and managers; or they choose China as a place to study and earn a degree. Despite the increasing flow of migrants into China, the emergence of an African community in China has received little scholarly attention. This is surprising given the booming development of Sino-African bilateral economic and political relationships.

Although the African presence in China can be traced back to the early fifteenth century when Admiral Zheng He’s ships first appeared near the African coast, the current African community in China is a rather recent phenomenon and is closely related to the PRC’s policy—launched near the end of 1970s by Deng Xiaoping—of reform and opening to the outside world. The core of the expatriate African community in China is composed of students, recipients of Chinese government scholarships who stayed in China after obtaining their degrees; and transnational African traders who set up businesses in Southern China’s major manufacturing and wholesale centers—especially in the cities of Guangzhou and Yiwu.

Over time, this first wave of African migrants has been joined by other migrants, mostly merchants and import-export entrepreneurs, who came to China for only a short period of time to purchase manufactured goods they could sell back in Africa—items such as textiles, shoes, computers, home appliances, mobile phones, and furniture. Some of them became middlemen between African clients and Chinese factories, helping fellow Africans find the required products and ship them back to Africa. Others acted as intermediaries between Chinese businesses and African local communities and authorities searching for investors in domains such as construction, agriculture, mineral resource exploitation, and energy supply, thus playing an important role in the development of their home regions. Africans in China constitute a diverse community; they come from various geographical origins and educational levels but represent an unbalanced gender ratio. The process of their emergence as a community has been rather complex and tension-filled.

Despite their growing presence in China, African migrants are still far from being well integrated into the host society. Due to negative stereotypes sometimes spread by the Chinese media, African migrants in China face various problems in their interactions with the local population and administration, ranging from cultural misunderstandings to openly racist attitudes and discriminatory practices. In the absence of clearly defined immigration laws and regulations, Africans have a dubious legal status in China; they live and work in precarious conditions and are frequent targets of police checks.

Navigating between their countries of origin and China, these African migrants, whose numbers have been rapidly increasing within the past ten years, have created strong economic, political, and cultural ties between the two regions, thus becoming an important dimension of the China-Africa strategic partnership and exchange.