Go east: African immigrants in China Written by Kaiyu Shao
In the recent year, the attention of major media organisations was spontaneously drawn to a new phenomenon - an increasing number of African emigration is now aiming for China as their new destination, and most of these immigrants concentrate on Guangzhou, a relative economically prosperous city in south China.
Since China has always been an emigration country and has not developed a mature immigration administrative system, there is no official data on immigrants in China. However, according to Chinese media, there are now between 20,000 to 200,000 African immigrants living in Guangzhou. The Guangzhou Academy of Social Science, a research institution with governmental background, declared that the number should be around 100,000.(2)
The following paper will firstly discuss the causes for this new trend, outline the lives of African immigrants in China and, finally, describe the Chinese attitude towards the phenomenon...
Kaiyu Shao is on the staff of Consultancy Africa Intelligence's Asia Dimension Unit