The media has recently been awash with cases portraying people of Kenyans and others of African descent allegedly being profiled over Coronavirus fears in Guangzhou, China, a region popular with African migrants.
The cases rekindled the love-hate relationship that Kenyans residing in the region undergo on an almost day to day basis given the stringent visa rules and often hostile social atmosphere occasioned by the influx of African migrants in the recent years.
According to several reports, a majority of Africans living in Guangzhou have made a home in one of the villages in Guangzhou known as Little Africa, or simply Chocolate City as the media in the region have reportedly christened it.
The South China Morning Post, one of the publications in China explained that as of 2014, there were between 20,000 and 200,000, mostly male, African migrants in Guangzhou, most of them have gone there as a result of studies and work or businesses.
The reports were further corroborated by CNN in 2016 where they stated that by 2012, around 100,000 Sub-Saharan Africans had flocked to China and settled in Guangzhou, a region that quickly became the melting pot for African cultures.
Further reports from the New Internationalist in 2019 inform that the reason for the influx of Africans in the region was the Chinese Government's decision to offer 50,000 scholarships to African students to study in China.
"In less than 15 years the African student body has grown 26-fold thanks to scholarships and each year more students arrive in China from Africa than from any other region, making it the second most popular destination for Africans studying abroad after France.
"Most of those heading to Chinese universities hail from Tanzania, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Morocco, Eritrea, and Cameroon," the report by the publication reads.
Apart from the group who legitimately made its way to China, however, some Kenyans have also gone to China by using underhand means that has to a huge extent caused a huge backlash from the Chinese government.
In 2015, the Daily Nation reported a case of people leaving the country and going to China under the guise of teaching the English language which was in high demand at the time, after which they received fake identities and settled into the stream of life in China.
Despite the huge population of Africans Guangzhou, the relationships between them and the locals have been far from cordial as reports suggest that the majority of the Chinese population has not come around to accepting the African population in their midst.
Reports from CNN in 2016 informed that in some places, the Chinese took to holding their noses when in the presence of African migrants in and at times even discriminated against them by denying them housing and basic rental stalls for their businesses.
According to reports from the Chinese Post magazine in 2014, it is impossible for an African to become a citizen through matrimony as the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau (PSB) denies African husbands any more rights than a tourist, meaning that the children born from unions would be registered in the woman's name.
The publication further informs that for many Africans in the region, it is nearly impossible for Africans to marry Chinese ladies due to pressure from families who view the marriage as that of 'marrying downwards'.
As one migrant postulated, some Africans in the region who got to marry Chinese women simply did it for convenience purposes given that it would be easier to conduct businesses if one of the partners was a native of the region.
The relationships are also reported to be skewed with African men taking to Chinese women but not necessarily the other way round, a matter that points at deep-seated discrimination that is still between Africans and the Chinese.
In 2011, the Chinese government introduced the Guangdong Act, which offered rewards to Chinese who informed on overstayers and made it illegal for employers, hoteliers or educational institutes to serve illegal migrants, and insisted they report all cases to the PSB or face a 10,000 yuan fine
In 2014, the government embarked on the "beautification" of Dengfeng tore down signage celebrating foreign trade, banned street markets that had been the area's lifeblood, widened and resurfaced roads and introduced a heavy police presence.
According to some of the locals, however, the general hostility towards Africans in the region has been occasioned by the fact that many of the nationals are not used to foreigners, a matter that one confessed was slowly changing.
‘In China, people are not used to foreigners. Most Chinese have never seen foreigners in their lives, so they are very afraid of them, even to touch them or talk. But the situation is changing and we’re getting used to it," Jin Qigang, a 23-year-old waitress from Guangzhou stated.
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