Deterred by immigration controls in the West,
African families and traders are moving
to major Chinese cities,
adding a new dimension to China-Africa relations.It’s raining again in Guangzhou. The downpours are sudden and violent, but do little to cool the city or relieve the cloying humidity. It is an ugly place and the uniformity of its sprawl is disorienting. Under the grey skies, the traffic flows relentlessly through webs of flyovers and underpasses, around towering apartment blocks and multi-storey shopping complexes. Here you can buy anything: leather, shoes, wigs, handbags, jeans, luggage, electronics, jewellery, plumbing, picture frames, reflective strips, motorbikes and even African crafts; original or copy, you can find it or get it made.
Africans are flocking here – the wealthy, the hopeful, the ambitious and the desperate. In the heartland of the southern Chinese economy, where commerce and industry are king, Guangzhou is both a city and a dream for sale. Many find what they seek, but for others, imagination is painfully disappointed as myth
collides with reality.
In a borrowed apartment on the outskirts of Guangzhou, Mari* sits holding baby Crystal as her four-year-old son Favour excitedly runs laps around the dining-room table. It is early evening and Mari is exhausted with worry about the precarious circumstances of her family. A journalist from Cameroon, she and her husband Emmanuel, an engineer, left Africa six years ago in search of opportunity. They hoped to find work in the UK but could not because of increasingly stringent immigration controls.
On a friend’s advice they left instead for China, from where they still hoped to find a way to Europe. But business in China proved to be good: Mari taught English in a Chinese school while Emmanuel set himself up as an exporter, shipping cheap Chinese goods to Africa.
Eastern promise
The dream of riches has fuelled a boom in the number of African migrants to Guangzhou. Immigration has increased by one-third each year since 2003, as word spreads that there is money to be made. There are now an estimated 20,000 Africans legally resident in the city – predominantly West African, young and male – and an unknown number of illegal residents and short-term visitors could swell the figure toward 100,000. The rise of Chinese interests in Africa, matched by the flood of imported Chinese goods into African markets, has fuelled the trend.
Chinese officials speak a language of equality with Africans, emphasising “mutual benefits” and “win-win relationships”. Mo Jun, director of the Guangzhou municipal government foreign affairs office, said that the growing presence of African traders and business-people reflects closer ties between the city and Africa. In the eyes of many Africans, a new land of opportunity has opened its gates in the East, just as those of Europe are closing.
Kevin is in his mid-20s. “I have suffered the world to get here,” he said. From Ghana, he tried first to secure a visa for Europe, but like many others, Kevin had heard of new jobs and businesses in China. The dream is easily sold: another young African migrant, 24-year-old Raymond, describes paying fees to ‘agents’ who offer jobs or even football contracts – false promises which fill young men with often unattainable hopes.
The Chinese have dubbed the 10km² area where Africans do business as “Chocolate City”. Thousands of containers of clothes, hair extensions, textiles, phones and household goods are shipped from Guangzhou to markets in Africa. Mr Oyemi, a Nigerian freight agent, estimates that the volume of his cargo has increased by a third in the past three years. Profits have thinned as markets become saturated and the global recession takes its toll, but immigrants are not deterred. “People will keep coming here until they find an alternative,” says Oyemi.
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