How many African migrants are in China?
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African emigration to China started in the 1950s but intensified after the 1990s. In recent years, the tension between Chinese and African migrants has been escalating. Understanding the actual scale of African migration in China is instrumental, yet no agreement on definition or estimation exists. Estimates of number of African migrants in China range from 20,000 to 500,000. Mass media and some scholar papers tend to quote numbers without double-checking or challenging them.
So how many African migrants are in China? This is not a simple and trivial question at all.
We will start from a brief background of African migration to China.
African presence in China first appeared in the 16th century in Macao, but contemporary migration to China started after the 1955 Bandung conference, most of them were students thanks to exchange and scholarship programs provided by Chinese government. The pattern quickly shifted in the 1990s with China’s rapid economic development. The Africa migration was more and more characterised by traders engaged in export and import businesses as well as entrepreneurs. Guangzhou is considered the gateway city for African migration as China’s major trading post and manufacturing hub, as well as thanks to its geographical proximity to Hong Kong (Xu & Yeh, 2005). Due to the influx of African businessmen and traders, the city is someimtes dubbed as the “chocolate city” (Z. Li & Du, 2012; Lyons et al., 2012). However, it should be noticed that the nickname “chocolate city” is now associated negatively or even considered borderline racist. Therefore, official media and papers have ceased to use this name. African communities can be found in the Xiaobei area(小北区), Sanyuanli (三元里) as well as several adjacent neighbourhoods on the north western edge of Guangzhou. In the recent years, Yiwu, a rising international trade city, is also emerging a new destination for African migrants.
Nevertheless, African migration to China receives little attention before 2000s. The African migrants in Asia, although on the rise, still constitutes a relatively small portion. International studies focus primarily on the migration between Africa and Europe driven by the political interest. In global database such as Global Bilateral Migration Database (GBMD), information on immigration in China is also extremely outdated and far from accurate. For example, the latest data for Nigerian migrants in China on GBMD was for year 2000, showing only 101 Nigerians in China, even though at least 1,330 legal Nigerian migrants were in China according to China’s Population Census in 2010.
The past 10 years has seen an escalation of tension and conflicts between Chinese and African immigrants, which brought this issue to African migration in China the forefront and led to a surge of studies on this topic. In 2009, an undocumented African migrant died from jumping out of a building to avoid local police. More than 100 Africans surrounded a police station in Guangzhou to protest against racism. Last year, a series of new COVID-19 cases linked to the Nigerian community in Guangzhou led to increasing mistrust, xenophobia and discrimination against African migrants. The public rhetoric around African migration in China becomes increasingly racist and nationalistic. For example, a study conducted by a Chinese NGO “China-House”, which aims at bridging Chinese and African community in Guangzhou and reducing discrimination, received a huge backlash and the commentary area was drowned by hatred comments.
At the centre of the public discussion is the question of “How many Africans are in China”. Media report number from 200,000 to 500,000 while scholar estimates also range from 20,000 to 100,000. However, the numbers tend to be quoted from one paper to another casually without double-checking and challenging them, or without even a clear definition. The exaggerated numbers were used to incite discrimination and xenophobia towards Africans, to the point that in 2017, a Chinese politician Pan Qinglin openly suggested restrictive policies against African migrants. In his proposal, he claimed “at least 500,000 undocumented African are in China, causing severe social problems and may lead to major crisis.”
But taking a step back, what is the definition of migration?
Internationally, there is no universally agreed definition on migration or migrants. In the context of African migrants in China, definition is extremely blurry.
For example, media and scholar studies often uses the ambiguous term of “Africans in China”, thus potentially including African tourists and businessmen with short-term stay less than 3 months.
Secondly, some articles use the number of annual entries from African countries without mentioning exit number or making any distinguishment between flow and stock. In addition, many Chinese people impression of Africans is only limited to sub-Saharan African countries and they are not even aware that Africans can also be white. Sometimes, people from the Maghreb countries also did not consider themselves Africans in interviews or surveys (Bodomo, 2012).
There is also no standard categorisation of migrant status or types. Among scholar research, one paper suggested categorising African migrants into four types, based on their principal occupation or activities: diplomats and other official representatives; students and trainees; professionals working as employees of multinational companies or international organisations; traders and small businessmen (Gazibo & Alexeeva, 2012).
However, these boundaries are not clear-cut in reality. Most African migrants, including students and trainees, may take on several different jobs at the same time, for example, as translator, tourist guide, logistics, restaurants, grocery shops, airport pick-up etc. This categorisation also neglected African women migrants, although a minority, some of whom work alongside their husbands or as housewives (Bodomo, 2010).
In terms of legal status, the term used by Chinese authority is the “triple illegal” (三非) : illegal entry, overstaying and illegal employment (非法入境，非法居留，非法工作). Most of the migrants belong to the last two categories: overstay and illegal employment. Most of the African migrants arrive at China with a valid passport and visa because it was relatively easy to attain China’s multiple-entry tourism or non-business visit visas before the pandemic. But once the period of the permitted visit has expired, they remain in China illegally. Irregular African migrants such as asylum seekers are rare in China.
CHINESE AUTHORITIES’ OFFICIAL DATA
China is historically not an immigration country. China’s Population Census did not even include the category of foreign citizens until the 6th census in 2010. Therefore, there is very scarce official data on African migration in China. The few existing official data related to African migration in China come from three sources:
- China Population Census
- China Exit and Entry Administration Bureau
- Large-scale inspection carried out by municipal Public Security Bureau (which might include some undocumented migrants, but definition is ambiguous)
(1) Census
The last China Population Census was conducted in 2010, and it was the first time in China’s census history that foreign citizens were included in the census. Migrants were defined as non-Chinese citizens who stayed in China for more than three months. The data was gathered through a questionnaire in English and contains 8 questions. According to the results, a total of 593,832 foreign citizens lived in China, among which around 15,706 were Africans. African migrants only accounted for 2.6% of total foreigners. The top five African countries (South Africa, Nigeria, Sudan, Ghana, Congo and Kenya) represented nearly 50% of the total. Unfortunately, all socio-economic information were lumped for all migrants, thus the official data does not provide any more granularities specific for African migrants in terms of their gender, occupation, age. Obviously, the official census data also only includes legal migrants.
(2) Exit and Entry Administration Bureau
The second data source is the China Exit and Entry Administration Bureau, also called National Immigration Administration. According to an interview with Guangzhou municipal government, the number of Africans exiting and entering the city maintained stable around 320,000 to 360,000 person-times per year (Guangzhou Government, 2020). However, the entry and exit figure measures the flow of visitors instead of the stock. More importantly, it includes a large number of short-stay tourists, visitors and business travellers without distinguishing the length of stay. It also only counts legal entry with proper legal papers.
(3) Official inspections and surveys
The third type of semi-official data is from large-scale inspection and survey conducted by the Chinese authorities. For example, Guangzhou government carried out two inspections of foreign citizens to better monitor and control imported COVID-19 cases. It is announced in the press conference that 13,652 Africans were living in Guangzhou in December 2019 and only 4,553 remained in April 2020 after the outbreak of COVID-19. Unfortunately, it was not clear whether this number includes the unauthorised Africans, nor is the survey methodology clear.
Scholars’ estimate mainly focused on African migrants in Guangzhou who are predominantly traders and entrepreneurs. This is partially because African migration related conflicts are most heightened in Guangzhou, and partially because numbers of other categories of African migrants such as students and diplomats are easier to collect via official statistics. Compared to official number, scholars’ estimates also include undocumented migrants.
The most quoted estimate of African businessmen in Guangzhou is 20,000, from the research team from Sun Yat-sen University led by Professor Li Zhigang. Some later literatures and blogs described the methodology of this estimation comes from “information collected from hotel records, and from some data they gathered from the Entry and Exit authorities.” For example, see Castillo, 2013; Gazibo & Alexeeva, 2012. However, it seems to be a wrong impression, mixing up two papers from 2008 and 2012 from Li’s research team. In fact, Li mentioned his estimate of 20,000 for the first time in his 2012 paper, but this estimation was entirely based on “interviews and exchanges with domestic and foreign experts” (Z. Li & Du, 2012).
A second popularly quoted number comes from Professor Adams Bodomo, a Professor of African linguistics and literatures. In his Book <Africans in China> in 2012, he estimates the total number of Africans at any given time in China between 400,000 and 500,000. This number consists of traders, students, tourists as well as temporary business travels. He also claimed the African population in Guangzhou totalled 100,000. However, he did not give any explanation on his estimation methodology in the book (Bodomo, 2010). This number was quickly picked up by western media such as CNN as well as Wikipedia page of “African in Guangzhou” despite the lack of any explanation on the estimation methodology behind this number.
The third and last semi-scholar estimate comes from a 2007 new article from Guangzhou Daily Newspaper. The reporters quoted Huang Shiding, the director of Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences, that “there are 20,000 Africans living in Guangzhou according to official count”. While this figure was largely aligned with Li Zhigang’s research results, the reporters continued: “the number of Africans grow by 30% to 40% each year, and some estimate today at least 200,000 are in Guangzhou”. This last estimation of 200,000 was given without any source, but nevertheless started to be quoted widely, including also on the Wikipedia page.
In conclusion, none of the scholar estimates were based on any rigorous sampling methods, but the numbers were still widely quoted by other scholars, Wikipedia page, domestic and foreign media. The wider the dissemination, the more authoritative the number became.
Estimates on other categories of African migrants
Let us switch the gear and take a look at other categories of African migrants other than traders and businessmen in Guangzhou.
(1) Students
A. Li (2018) provides a handy summary of African students in China from 1976 to 2015, based on data from Ministry of Education. In 2015, a total of 49,792 African students studied in China, among which 83% were self-financed students. The average annual growth for the past twenty years was as high as 22% per annum. Applying the same growth rate, African students in 2019 before the outbreak of COVID-19 would be around 110,000.
(2) Other professionals
Apart from students, Bodomo (2012) gave an estimate of 4,000 to 5,000 African professionals in China such as teachers, professors, football players, government officials, etc, although the number is only based on his personal estimation.
You might ask, so… after all these, how many African migrants are in China?
CONCLUSION
I tried to put all numbers that were discussed in this article here in this table. Clearly all existing estimates vary in terms of source, time frame and scope. To conclude, it is essential to clarify what types of Africans are included in the scope, such as the geography, stay length, occupation, legal status. The second step is to distinguish between flow and stock data. The source of the number and their estimation methodology should also be questioned.
Based on my own analysis, a reasonable estimate of African migrants in China before COVID-19 could be around 100,000 to 150,000 and most of them are self-financed students. This estimate refers to migrants staying for at least 3 months who live in mainland China, including undocumented migrants. The estimate is based on the following calculation:
- Trader/businessmen/entrepreneurs 30,000 (taking Guangzhou government inspection data in 2019 December and assuming Guangzhou represents 50% of all African businessmen in China)
- African students 100,000 (taking A. Li (2008) estimation of 49,492 students in 2015 and apply a growth rate of 20% per annum)
- African professionals and government officials: 5,000 (taking Bodomo (2012)’s personal estimation)
However, it must be emphasized that no conclusive answer or agreement on the range of estimate exists. The main goal of this article is not to provide the estimate, but to review the key estimates existing in official data sources and few scholarly studies and address the misconceptions.
How many African migrants are in China?
Instead of answering this, a more important question might be “ where do the numbers come from”?
If you have read this far, there is no doubt that you really care about this topic, and hopefully you will help dessminate the right message around African migrants in China!
(This is edited from an essay written for the course African Migration Socio-demographic approaches by PSIA, Sciences Po, May 2021.)
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