The Africa-China narrative

While the roots of the African presence in Guangzhou extend back long before the last two decades and involve major conjunctural processes (e.g. China’s economic liberalisation, the impact of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and even the spirit of Bandung and internationalism), this presence can be located within two interrelated processes which structure the ‘Africa-China’ narrative. These are: the Chinese economic presence in African countries at both the state and individual migrant levels (see Alden, 2007; Bräutigam, 2009; and French, 2014); and recent developments in African economic landscapes (such as the awakening of Africa’s middle classes and the expansion of African commercial migration). Any analysis of the presence of

Africans in China needs to take into consideration the influence that these processes have had on African imaginations about China. Indeed, most Africans I have spoken to in Guangzhou locate their presence in the country as an outcome of China’s rise as a key player in the global economy and, perhaps more importantly, as a consequence of the political and economic rapprochement between the two regions.

In short, most Africans I have spoken to in China (including those based in the country and those on short sojourns), see their presence in the country as a consequence of political and macroeconomic developments in both Africa and China. The political and economic rapprochement between the two regions is perhaps best exemplified by the creation of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). In the decade following its first summit (held in Beijing in 2000), for instance, trade between the two regions increased twentyfold — reaching USD 200 billion in 2012 from USD 10 billion in 2002. Over a slightly longer period, direct exports from Guangzhou to African countries (mostly manufactured products) increased more than tenfold — up from around USD 165 million in 1996 to USD 2.1 billion in 2010 (Li et al., 2012). As a consequence of these structural macroeconomic pushes, and of individual microeconomic efforts, only a decade after the intensification of Africa-China economic relations, China became Africa’s largest trading partner, surpassing the United States in 2011.

Over the last two decades, Chinese migration to Africa also had an unparalleled increase. Diverse estimates put the number of Chinese living on the continent around 1.5 million, up from less than 40,000 in the early 2000s (Brautigam, 2009; French, 2014). Commercial activities related to this massive flow of people into Africa have resulted in what has been described as a ‘tsunami’ of Chinese goods; and ‘made-in-China’ products are now ubiquitous in the markets of almost every big African city. The increased presence of Chinese people and products across the continent spurred scores of African traders to develop their own transnational trading strategies to outdo Chinese competitors, and a first step in these strategies is often travelling to Guangzhou (Bertoncello & Bredeloup, 2007).

Not all Africans in Guangzhou, or China for that matter, see their presence in the country as a direct counteraction to the waves of Chinese migrants and goods in Africa. However, many do. Many Africans I met in China state that they have the ‘right to be in China’. Time and again, I have been told that as there are many Chinese in Africa now, Africans should also be able to reside in China. This feeling has been compounded by longstanding media narratives about the ‘rise of China’ and by imaginations of the country becoming a ‘new land of opportunities’, full of ‘green pastures’. These new ways of imagining China are also increasingly influenced by several ‘soft power’ initiatives that China has been so invested in supporting across the African continent — particularly, Chinese investment in African media.