Abstract
China sends and receives big numbers of migrants. As China has become a major destination of global and African migrants in recent years, the country’s immigration policies and related practices deserve particular attention. The growing presence of Africans gives rise to many important issues. China is a country with ethnic and religious tensions as well as socioeconomic disparities between different provinces, and this factor seems to work against stability and cohesion for Chinese people. While ethnic diversity and differences among the Chinese population could potentially be a driver of multiculturalism, they have rather created tensions between ethnic and religious groups given the dominance of the Han Chinese that extols Chineseness. This chapter analyses how Africans and African traders with different backgrounds navigate in complex multicultural environments in China.
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Notes
- 1.
I am grateful to African acquaintances in Yiwu (from my years of study in China), as well as graduate students at Zhejiang Normal University in Jinhua, whose research interests overlap with mine, for their assistance in contacting and arranging interviews with the participants.
- 2.
Restaurants that serve halal food and are owned by Arabs from the Middle East and other parts of Asia, and Uyghur or Hui Chinese from Xinjiang, the autonomous Hui region in Northwest China, or Shanxi in North China, attract Muslim traders from North Africa and the Middle East.
- 3.
Friday prayer is a congregational prayer that occurs only on Fridays, just afternoon, as distinct from communal or ritual prayers, which usually happen five times a day.
- 4.
Personal interview, June 2012.
- 5.
During my fieldwork in Yiwu, I did not explore whether the same phenomenon applies to churches, which may also be spaces where African traders converge, particularly during Sunday masses.
- 6.
Personal interview, June 2012.
- 7.
Personal interview, June 2012.
- 8.
In terms of the most recent Public Security Bureau Entry and Exit Administration regulations (2013), applications for a visa extension must be submitted at least seven days before the expiry date of the visa. Late applications or overstaying one’s visa are subject to fines and possible expulsion. For more information, see http://www.travelchinaguide.com/embassy/visa/extension.htm.
- 9.
Personal interview, June 2012.
- 10.
June 2012.
- 11.
June 2012.
- 12.
‘China’s mainland population grows to 1.3397 billion in 2010: Census data’. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-04/28/c_13849795.htm (accessed on 4 December 2015).
- 13.
While I did not encounter instances of overt discrimination during my fieldwork in Yiwu, I did hear many stories about discrimination against African traders in Guangzhou and other African communities in various parts of China. For instance, I was told that taxi drivers often deliberately do not stop to pick up a black or white person—something which I did experience myself, along with fellow foreign students, on several occasions and in different Chinese cities, during my years of study in China (2006–2011).
- 14.
This challenges the notion, often relayed in the media and academic circles, that African Americans are treated more warmly in China than black Africans. For an in-depth discussion of this issue, listen to ‘Being black in China versus being African in China’, an interview with Winslow Robertson and Dr Nkemjika Kalu. http://cowriesrice.blogspot.ca/2013/12/being-black-in-china-versus-being.html.
- 15.
See Bodomo (2012), Chap. 1.
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Cissé, D. (2018). African Traders in Yiwu: Expanding Transnational Trade Networks and Navigating China’s Complex Multicultural Environment. In: Cornelissen, S., Mine, Y. (eds) Migration and Agency in a Globalizing World. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60205-3_9
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