African Immigrants in China

Interesting little article in The Guardian dealing with the plight of African immigrants in China, focussing on their experience in the city of Guangzhou. As a former resident of Guangdong's capital city, the article brought back memories of my own period wandering around Shamian Island and Tianhe, and in particular it reminded me of just how large the African and Middle Eastern communities in the city are.

When I first moved to Guangzhou, I had expected the locals to react to foreigners in a similar vein to the citizens of other Chinese cities I had lived in or visited. As any foreigner who has been to China, from two-week tourists to long-time residents, will tell you, being stared at in the street is not uncommon, even in places as cosmopolitan as Beijing. Similarly, even in Shanghai I did, on occasion, hear mutters of "laowai" (literally "old foreigner") as I walked down the street. But in Guangzhou, the local populace is basically indifferent to foreigners - at least to those from the West.

So close to Hong Kong, and with so many foreign owned factories and enterprises in Guangdong, the presence of "da bizi" ("big noses") is now very common. But what is quite unique to Guangzhou is the large number of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East- sadly, they are not greeted with the same acceptance shown to, well, white people.

Even the best educated and worldly of my Chinese colleagues could be quite spectacular in their casual racism, towards Africans in particular, and I was solemnly informed that while Europeans and Americans who visited China tended to be decent and hard-working, most Africans were not to be trusted. Inevitably, such distrust leads to reinforcing patterns of behaviour, with the locals reluctant to lease apartments to Africans, consequently resulting in these immigrants concentrating in less salubrious areas with landlords who are not too picky, effectively creating ghettoes. Similarly, the fact that immigrants from Africa find it so hard to get visas to work in China means that some, by necessity, have to turn to less legitimate forms of work - around the Garden Hotel, for example, the drug dealers catering for Western visitors were predominantly African.

True, the immigrants themselves sometimes engage in behaviour that does not endear them to the locals. As someone who, with typical Irish Catholic guilt, cannot miss mass even when living in a state with atheism as its official faith, I regulalry attended mass in the Sacred Heart Cathedral near the banks of the Pearl River. The English language service was organised and mainly attended by African immigrants, with the ushers being entirely drawn from the immigrant community. These ushers could take quite a dictatorial line when ordering people to their seats, or when kicking people out for being improperly clad (i.e. wearing shorts) or committing similarly abominable acts. But they seemed to take a particular delight in ordering Chinese massgoers about (some of whom were merely curious locals, eager to see what actually took place in the cavernous building, but many were genuine Chinese Catholics, trying to practice their faith). At times, the racial tension between African and Chinese Catholics was palbable.

What is clear, though, is that China cannot afford to treat African immigrants as a problem - the influx of migrants from the continent is a by-product of China's investment there, and a beneficial one to boot. Almost all of the immigrants are of a commercial bent, and offer economic bonuses not only to friends and family at home, but also to the local Chinese with whom they trade. As China grows to play a more dominant role in Africa, such migration, and the bonuses associated, will only increase. China needs to learn to smooth out any problems or tensions that result. Furthermore, in days to come when China's interest in Africa extends beyond the merely commercial, and develops further along diplomatic lines, the PRC's own African community will be able to serve as an invaluable intermediary.

The Tides Shift...

As many of you may (or may not) know, I began my career after college in China, as a lightbulb man. Yes indeed, lightbulb men, those carefree, heroic individuals who spend their lives wrangling lightbulbs on the open grasslands of Inner Mongolia, herding great flocks of 40 watts into pens, where they are sheared and shipped out to provide light for the Western world. Yaagh! Lightbulbs, ho! ... Yes indeed, noble work.

Before I get carried away by my own nonsensical ramblings, I think I should point out that I actually worked in Guangzhou, in Guangdong province (the original Canton, and sadly at the opposite end of China to the plains of Inner Mongolia). My working life in the Big GZ consisted not of cowboy inspired antics, but of managing a dull and dingy office on the 18th floor of a rickety sky rise. All computer controlled and very simple: lightbulbs get ordered, lightbulbs get packed, lightbulbs get shipped to Ireland, lightbulbs breakdown, customers get angry. There was a set process.

Only rarely did I get to actually see lightbulbs, on supplier visits where we would venture over the Pearl River and out to the factories, located in small hamlets of only a few million people. There, regimented, dehumanised, regulated row after row of young women performed with robotic precision the same movement for 12 hours a day. At the end of their shift, they collapsed into their bunks in the hastily thrown up dormitories around the factory, while their nocturnal bretheren shuffled down, pale and with bloodshot eyes, to take on the night shift.

It was Dickensian, and simultaneously a perfect example of all that is wrong and all that is right with capitalism. These girls were exhausted, with scant opportunities for human contact or emotion. They were, for the few years they were in Foshan or Dongguan or Cixi, mere components in an industrial machine.

And yet, they were immeasurably better off than their grandparents. They would never know hunger, and tough though their lives were, they had far better access to medical care in Guangdong than back in home in Hunan or wherever they happened to be from.

Arrogantly, perhaps, I thought that these sorts of jobs offered fantastic opportunities - if you were from the developing world. After all, had not Europe and the US gone through the exact same process during the Industrial Revolution? Would the hard work and sacrifice of these young women not simply lead to a better, fairer China in the future?

Well, recent news from Ballymote in Sligo suggest that the worm has turned, and I may come to regret that condescending hubris. G-LED, a Taiwanese LED lighting manufacturer (you can't keep a light-bulb man down!) have just announced plans to develop a factory in the town. What does this mean for the locals? What kind of jobs can they expect this development to produce? And are we in Ireland (and the West generally) prepared to accept the argument that this isn't exploitation, merely progress, when we are the ones on the wrong end of the value chain?

If the 21st Century belongs to Asia, then Ballymote or Limerick may soon take the place of Guangzhou or Shenzhen - will we be prepared to accept the rule that economic might makes right then?