“Socio-Demographic Profile of Africans in China” in “African Community in China”
Socio-Demographic Profile of Africans in China
There are very few statistics available on the African community in the PRC. The study of African migrants from the time of their arrival through their integration into Chinese society is crucial, but it is also difficult because of the scarcity and unreliability of data. The subject of African migrants is also politically sensitive and plagued by social tension, which affects the quality of official information available as well as the researcher’s ability to collect it.
To our knowledge, there have been only two major statistical surveys conducted among Africans in China so far. The first was done by Adams Bodomo, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hong Kong. He distributed a hundred questionnaires among African migrants in Guangzhou in 2008; of these, 77 questionnaires were returned. He also interviewed eight community members including some community leaders (Bodomo, 2010). The second survey also took place in Guangzhou, where in 2006–07 a group of researchers led by Li Zhigang and Xue Desheng of Sun Yat-sen University carried out a series of surveys that included questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Through random sampling they gathered 78 questionnaires (43 in English and 35 in French) and interviewed 46 African migrants, mainly businessmen and traders ((Li Zhigang et. al, 2008, 13; Li Zhigang, Laurence, and Xue, 2009). In addition to these two quantitative surveys, there is also some qualitative information provided by French researchers Sylvie Bredeloup, Brigitte Bertoncello, and Hélène Le Bail, who conducted a number of in-depth interviews with African migrants in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Yiwu between 2006 and 2008 (Bertoncello and Bredeloup, 2007; Le Bail, 2009). The participants were mostly African traders and entrepreneurs living in the south of China.
Although Africans coming to China have different socio-demographic profiles, we can establish some basic categories of migrants:
- diplomats and other official representatives from various African countries;
- students and trainees studying on a short- or long-term basis in the PRC;
- professionals from the African continent and from the African diaspora living and working in China as employees of multinational companies and international organizations;
- traders and small businessmen on long- or short-term stays in China.
The last category is by far the largest, though the boundaries between categories are not clear-cut. For instance, many African students are working as interpreters, tourist guides, and language teachers; some have started their own businesses or begun small-scale trading in tandem with their studies. The same situation can be observed with African professionals and official representatives, who sometimes have their own small import-export companies or offer certain back-office or logistic services.
The exact number of Africans in China today is unknown. The Chinese and Western press give various estimates, which are always high, ranging from one- to two-hundred thousand (Branigan, 2010; Wang, Shanjuan, and Jie, 2010). The figures published by the press are not always reliable, however, because the methodology of calculation is unknown, and the figures are often estimates made by people with no experience in statistical calculation. Furthermore, these figures are not confirmed by an analysis of the official data, i.e. the statistics of the Chinese state institutions that issue visas and residence permits.
According to the Public Security Bureau of Guangzhou, the city where the majority of African traders and businessmen settle upon their arrival in China, there were approximately 1,080 Africans living in the city in 2005.26 Nonetheless, many African traders have dubious legal status and do not figure in official statistical records. They come to China with all the necessary legal papers—valid passports and Chinese visas—but once the period of the permitted visit has expired, they remain illegally in China. According to estimates made by experts who based their calculations on the data collected from hotels and restaurants in Guangzhou, there were around 32 thousand African migrants in 2005 (Li Zhigang et. al, 2008).
As for African students and trainees, another important group of migrants, their number in 2008 was estimated to be in the 12 to 15 thousand range (LIU, 2009). Most of these African students go to the PRC on Chinese government scholarships. This is an important part of South-South assistance programs and of China’s development strategy in Africa. The collaboration has expanded from an initial simple exchange of students to the current multi-level educational cooperation, covering various fields and taking many different forms. Since the 1950s, China has provided more than 30 thousand scholarships for students from almost all African countries (Xinhua 2010), with the exception of just three states: Swaziland, Burkina Faso, and Sao Tome and Principe (Sautman and Yan, 2007; Li, 2006).
There are also many African trainees—those who came to participate in educational training programs—in China. For instance, in 1967, Beijing agreed to sponsor the construction of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway (TAZARA), known as the “Freedom Railway,” and to train hundreds of Africans in different rail-building skills (Monson, 2009, 209). This railway, which links Zambia with the port city of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, was China’s largest international development project at the time. Between 30 and 50 thousand Chinese railway experts were dispatched for the project (Monson, 2009, 8). They trained hundreds of African workers, who learned new skills and techniques. The work of the Chinese was supported by Africans, who were sent to China to complete their training. This group of experienced African railway specialists continued to work for TAZARA until their retirements.
This does not mean that things always went smoothly. As Philip Snow (1988) noted:
In the years that the Tan-Zam line was being built, the Chinese ran technical and managerial courses for 1,200 Tanzanians and Zambians, who were intended to take up positions in the newly established Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA). But TAZARA was a semi-official body funded out of the slender resources of the Tanzanian and Zambian governments, and the freshly qualified Africans soon found that they could earn higher salaries working for private companies. They abandoned the railway and took their skills elsewhere.
Also, in the immediate period after the first generation of Chinese leadership passed away (Mao Zedong and Zhu Enlai, the architects of China’s then foreign policy), China’s new leaders under the command of Deng Xiaoping drastically reduced China’s willingness ‘‘to distribute charity to backward countries half-way around the world’’ because China itself “was desperately short of professional skills” after the ravages of the cultural revolution (Snow, 1988, 169).
However, after China had adopted reform and opened its doors to the world, the number of African students coming to the PRC increased greatly (see Figure 1). The graph shows a constant annual increase in numbers. Statistically, this means that there are no factors slowing down the number of African students coming to the PRC. In the past ten years, China has significantly increased the number of government scholarships to African students “in a bid to step up youth exchanges and lay a solid foundation for friendly future China-Africa ties.”27
In the five-year period beginning in 2001, the number of Chinese government scholarships tripled. While in 2001 there were 1,224 scholarships granted to African students, by 2006 that number had increased to 3,737 (see Figures 2 and 3).28 With respect to field of study, among 2,757 African students enrolled at various Chinese universities in 2005, 29 percent were studying technology and engineering, 21 percent Chinese language, 13 percent medical and pharmaceutical sciences, 9 percent management, and 28 percent another major discipline (agriculture, public administration, economy, etc.). In 2010, China promised to continue to raise the number of Chinese government scholarships, with a goal of 5,500 to be offered to Africans by 2012.29
Figure 1. African students studying in the PRC on
Chinese Government Scholarships (1950–2000)
Source: China’s Ministry of Education (Li, 2008)
Figure 2. African students who received
Chinese Government Scholarships (2001–2006)
Year | Number of |
2001 | 1224 |
2002 | 1646 |
2003 | 1793 |
2004 | 2214 |
2005 | 2757 |
2006 | 3737 |
Total | 13371 |
Source: China’s Ministry of Education (Li, 2008)
Although most African students migrate on the basis of having been awarded a Chinese government scholarship, there are also some self-funded students and some who are funded by African governments and international organizations. Their numbers have grown considerably in recent years; whereas in 1989 there were only two self-financed sub-Saharan students in the PRC, in the 1990s over nineteen hundred African students were enrolled in Chinese universities at their own expense.
Aside from the enrollment of African students in both undergraduate and graduate university programs, China has also held seminars, training courses, and conferences for African professionals, public workers, and officials, mainly concentrating on fields such as management capabilities, engineering skills, and school administration.
Another good example of China’s involvement in education on the African continent is the Chinese government’s extensive program of agricultural training for Africans.30 Since 2000, when the First Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation was held in Beijing, China has intensified its agricultural cooperation with African countries. The Chinese government has sponsored the building of specialized laboratories and agricultural testing fields in a number of African countries and has also launched faculty and student exchange programs. Thus, in the past several years, about 15 thousand Africans have taken part in China-supported training programs and seminars. Most seminars last about a month and are topic-oriented. The list of seminar topics includes economic management of agricultural production chains, eco-agriculture, grain storage technology, agricultural irrigation technology, agricultural machinery, and modern agricultural education. In addition to lectures, the trainees also visit experimental Chinese fields (Yu, 2011).
The China Agricultural University in Beijing managed ten seminars between 2001 and 2006, training 206 experts, scholars, and officials from Africa (Li Anshan, 2008). In 2005, the Tianjin University of Technology and Education set up the Center for African Vocational Education Studies to train midrange engineering professionals from Africa.31 At the 2009 Forum on China-Africa cooperation in Egypt, China promised to send fifty agricultural technology teams to Africa and to help train two thousand agricultural technicians for African countries between 2009 and 2012. China also promised to increase the total number of agricultural technology demonstration centers built for African countries to twenty and announced an impressive list of other new initiatives in various domains. For example, in the education sector, China promised to “help African countries build fifty China-Africa friendship schools, admit two hundred middle and high-level African administrative personnel to MPA programs in China, increase the number of scholarships offered to Africa to 5,500, [and] help African countries train 1,500 school headmasters.” 32 All of these goals were to be accomplished over a three-year period from 2009 to 2012.
The profile of the average African migrant in China is that of a single man, between the ages of twenty and thirty-five, with a relatively high level of education (some respondents had been in higher education, and many had finished high school) (Li Zhigang et. al, 2008). Although there are more men than women in the African community in China (among the respondents, approximately 70 percent were male and 30 percent were female), the proportion of women in the overall migration flow is quite high and is steadily growing.33 Women’s motivations for migrating are rather diverse and cannot always be neatly arranged in gender-related categories. Though most women come with male partners or follow their partners after they have established a stable livelihood in the host country, others develop migration projects on their own. 34 For many, leaving the home country is an escape from family constraints and pressures such as complicated intergenerational relations and bad marriages. In other cases, a woman may migrate as part of a family migration strategy, for example when there is no suitable male candidate available or when the woman’s migration is more profitable or less risky to the family’s future than that of her male counterpart (Pina-Guerassimoff, 2006, 17–32).
Most Africans in China seem to have emigrated from West African countries (see Figure 3) such as Nigeria, Mali, Ghana, or Guinea (Bodomo, 2010, 699). According to statistics, Nigerians dominate the total flow (Le Bail, 2009, 6). This is in part because Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, with a total population in 2010 estimated to be over 155 million.35
As for a migrant’s level of education, some of the respondents come from a middle-class family background and have attended universities in their home countries or hold Chinese university degrees. Most of the Africans interviewed have had some basic education, with at least a primary or junior high school diploma.36
Figure 3. Geographic Origins of African Migrants in China
Source: Bodomo, 2010, 700.
Surveys show that most migrants came to China after 1998, but few of them were living there on a permanent basis: only 2 percent had lived in China for more than five years, while 5 percent had been there for between three and five years, and 34 percent between one and three years. The overwhelming majority—59 percent—had stayed in China less than one year (Li Zhigang et. al, 2008, 15–16). English and French are the main languages within the African community in China, along with Arabic and Chinese. The latter is used not only in communication with locals but also when there is no other language in common.
Although there is a certain African presence in the cities of Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong, African traders and entrepreneurs have gathered mainly in two Chinese cities: Guangzhou and Yiwu. These are strategic points in the Southern China manufacturing area, where goods are sent directly from neighboring factories. These cities are internationally known for their wholesale markets and fairs, where a wide range of goods can be found and purchased—especially light industry products.37 Within and around Guangzhou, there are two major areas of African settlement: Sanyuanli and Huanshidong (Xiaobei).38 Sanyuanli (三元里) is mostly populated by traders from Nigeria and Ghana, while Xiaobei (小北) is home to migrants originating from the Middle East (Yemen and Jordan), from Islamic African countries, and from areas such as Mali, Senegal, Guinea, and Northern Nigeria.
These two districts have several large trade buildings where a wide range of small shops is located. Owned by African migrants, these shops are especially popular among short-term traders from Africa who are unable to purchase the necessary goods on the Chinese wholesale markets due to lack of time and connections as well as to poor Chinese language proficiency. These stores are stuffed to capacity—often piled to the ceiling—with clothing and other products. The goods come from one of several Chinese wholesale markets in Guangzhou or sometimes directly from the factory. The shops are often so full that the owners have no place to stand, so they occupy nearby public rest areas or corridors. Samples of goods for sale are displayed at the front of the store. These include many kinds of clothing, hand bags, shoes, electronics, cosmetics, and perfumes. Aside from the shops, there are also some small African restaurants and cafés, hairdressing salons, trading agencies, and illegal money-exchange stores.
Most African migrants interviewed identified themselves as businessmen or traders, though some labeled themselves also artists, housewives, and persons of liberal professions (Bodomo, 2010, 699; Li Zhigang et. al, 2008, 15). Indeed, the majority of Africans in China work in trade, the import-export business, and wholesale. Some have their own small or medium sized companies; others are employees or trade agents of larger trade structures or middlemen between African clients and Chinese factories.
Previous studies describe multiple professional trajectories and economic profiles of Africans in China that can be grouped into five major categories:
- older-generation pioneer entrepreneurs who went to China in the early 1980s–90s and whose businesses have evolved from simple import-export activities to transnational companies with commercial networks in Asia and Africa;
- former students who have decided to stay in China after receiving their degrees and who have since launched their own businesses;
- Africans who have settled in China on a more or less permanent basis and who act as middlemen or trade agents between Africa-based entrepreneurs and Chinese factories;
- recently landed traders who travel between China and their home countries on a regular basis, purchasing wholesale goods in Guangzhou and Yiwu and selling them in Africa;
- migrants who are not involved in trade but are engaged in intercommunity services such as catering, accommodation, hairdressing, etc. (Bertoncello and Bredeloup, 2007, 9).
This categorization is rather formal; in reality most African migrants in China combine many diverse occupations. Almost all Africans in China are engaged to some degree in one or more commercial activities such as purchasing and selling goods, warehousing, container loading, or shipping. In addition, most are involved in providing various kinds of services such as market guiding, product sourcing, networking, customs brokerage, accommodation arrangements, translation, or airport pickup.
African migrants’ itineraries in China can be quite varied. For example, those who started out as shuttle traders between Guangzhou and Bamako or Abuja may have later decided to settle down in China to supervise purchase and shipment of goods. Some have gradually developed their businesses by investing in other activities, while others have converted themselves into intermediaries or market guides.
26. There were 18 thousand long-term residents in Guangzhou in 2005; 55 percent were from Europe and America, 34 percent came from Asia, 6 percent from the Middle East and 6 percent from Africa (Li Zhigang et. al, 2008).
27. “China vows to increase government scholarships for African students.” Xinhua, 21 April 2011, accessed on 2 August 2011, available at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/201104/21/_138.htm.
28. More African students coming to Chinese universities, Xinhua, 17 December 2007, accessed on 2 August 2011, available at: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/200712/17/content_6325471.htm.
29. For the past half-century, China has provided multiple exchanges and scholarships to African students with the dual purpose of training personnel for African countries and promoting educational cooperation and communication between China and Africa. According to incomplete statistics, among returning African students in recent years there have been eight individuals who have served their countries in leadership positions such as Minister or above, eight who served as ambassadors or counselors to China, six who served as Secretary, President, or Prime Minister, and three who served as the Secretary-General of Associations to promote their country’s friendly relations with China (LI Wei, 2011).
30. To learn more about China-Africa agricultural cooperation and student exchange, see Brautigam, 2009.
31. In recent years, this center has trained more than two hundred students from Africa (Wang, 2005, 20).
32. Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Sharm El Sheikh Action Plan (2010-2012), accessed on 22 Feb. 2012, available at http://www../eng/ltda/dsjbzjhy/hywj/t626387.htm
33. The feminization of migration waves is a recent worldwide phenomenon. For more information, see Zlotnik, 2003.
34. According to some migration scholars, this is a classical chain-migration scenario that is helping households to minimize risk. Until a reliable livelihood is created in the host country, the woman stays at home to maintain a basic business or state job with benefits to fall back on in case her partner’s migration project fails (Nyiri, 2007).
35. Country Comparison: Population (2010). CIA The World Factbook, accessed on 15 August 2011, available at https://www..gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ni.html.
36. According to a study conducted by a group of Chinese researchers, 16 percent of African migrants in China have had less than six years of schooling, 43 percent have had six to nine years, 23 percent ten to twelve years, and 18 percent thirteen to sixteen years (Li Zhigang et. al, 2008, 15).
37. The province of Guangdong alone represents more than 30 percent of China’s annual exports. One-third of these exports are made during the Chinese Import and Export Commodities Fair (CIECF), held in Guangzhou twice a year. Yiwu, which is located in an industrial cluster approximately 380 km from Shanghai and 250 km from Ningbo port (main Chinese ports in terms of goods’ traffic), offers African traders even lower prices that those in Guangzhou. There are eight large sectors that have developed in Yiwu: wool, shirts, socks, accessories, zippers, toys, key sticks, and printing (Le Bail, 2009, 7).
38. For a more detailed description of Guangzhou districts inhabited by African migrants, see LI Zhigang et. al, 2008, 8–10).
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