John Lee Tao

Anthropology 467

Cultures of Africa

Dr. Mahir Saul

Bringing Anthropology to the Sino- African Relationship

In contemporary discourse the relationship between China

and Africa is often discussed as neo- imperialistic, with the

idea that China’s presence in Africa is out of self-

motivated ‘land grabbing,’ resource harvesting, and

international political strategy. Furthermore, the West

typically perceives China’s actions as marginally threatening

and certainly very aggressive in its endeavors in Africa.

While there are elements of truth within some of the more

ubiquitous publications, a comprehensive framing reveals the

problematic and essentializing nature of common discourse.

Through transnationalist analysis, an exploration of both the

historical and contemporary relationships between China and

Africa, and a multi-disciplinary review of literature

analyzing the Sino- African relationship, the image becomes

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clearer: the exchange of money, labor, resources, knowledge,

and other forms of socio-economic capital, has been present

much longer and in a more nuanced manner than common

literature indicates. The relationship between China and

Africa is fraught with misunderstandings on a local,

regional, and international level; and, in a rapidly

globalizing and transnational world there are salient

questions of socio- economic identity and new racial and

ethnic configurations which need to be understood. Through

the main texts of Africans in China by Adams Bodomo, and The

Dragon’s Gift by Deborah Brautigam, amongst other voices on

Sino- African relations and transnationalism, this paper

seeks to reconcile contemporary voices discussing the Sino-

African relationship and provide potentially important

theoretical frameworks for analysis of these issues in order

to ultimately understand the questions: why are there

Africans in China? Who are these Africans? What are the

implications of a permanent African presence in China?

Recent understandings of China’s presence in Africa is

often considered to have started fairly recently in global

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historical standards. And the Western fear of China’s

presence is certainly contemporary discourse. According to

Adams Bodomo in his 2012 book Africans in China, there are three

specific events in history which helped to shape and define

the African- China relationship. He argues that the three

events were when: 15th Century Admiral Zheng He sailed to the

East African coast on a trading mission; the 1955 Bandung

Conference, and lastly the creation and meeting of the Forum

for Africa- China Cooperation (FOCAC) created in 2000. While

these three events are significantly dispersed

chronologically, and do discuss some of the key events

interlocking China and Africa, this image painted by Bodomo

is that of infrequent, rare, contact between China and Africa

prior to the modern day influences; however, by analyzing and

contextualizing the history one will find that the Chinese

presence has not only been existent for much longer than

discussed but it is also a force which has always been

present within Africa since the fateful 15th Century Admiral

Zheng He first arrived there. As Deborah Brautigam notes in

her 2011 work The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa, “China

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never left, we just stopped looking” (Brautigram 2011: 54,

emphasis in original). Thus, to ultimately understand the

contemporary relationship between China and Africa is it

important to explore their shared history and to look at the

points, and types, of contact between the two entities before

being able to explore and seek to understand why there are

increasing numbers of Africans in China today and what are

the implications of that presence.

Most of the properly researched literature often ground

China’s presence in Africa back to the early 15th Century

through the Chinese Admiral Zhang He’s journey to Africa:

The Chinese are fond of recounting how theirMing Dynasty fleet sailed to the coast of East Africa several times between 1418 and 1433 under the direction of Muslim admiral Zheng He. Chinese archives record this as atruly mighty fleet, with some 28,000 men andsixty- three vessels, each at least six times larger than the three small ships sailed by Columbus. The Chinese did not colonize the lands of Africa. As a Chinese diplomat said, they took “not an inch of land, not a slave, but a giraffe for the emperor to admire” The doctors and pharmacists carried on each of Zheng He’s giant ships also took back African herbs andlocal medicinal compounds, perhaps to combat

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a series of epidemics raging in China at that time (Brautigam 2011: 23)

Although prima facie this does not necessarily seem important

in understanding the relationship today, it highlights the

attitudes and beliefs of the proponents for China’s presence

in Africa as well as the opponents. China and the pro-

Chinese supporters note that even going back to the first

contact between China and Arica very little was taken or

disturbed. The Chinese did not ask for land, they did not

ask for slaves, they merely took some plants and herbs of

medicinal value and a giraffe. After this initial point of

contact China essentially left Africa alone to do its own

thing. Proponent’s often argue that this reveals the

benevolence of China’s presence especially compared to, and

in light of, the later colonial period wrought by the

European powers. On the other hand, the opponents of the

Chinese presence point out that the Chinese’s behavior in

Africa has not changed at all from Zheng He’s events because

China, to this day, they argue, seek to gain agricultural

business and products from African countries. And, opponents

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point to the fact that Zheng He’s sailors produced offspring

with some of the African locals and then left, to show a

suggestion of the imperial mentality within the Chinese.

It is, sadly, after this historical event where the

literature on Sino- African relationships often depart.

Some, such as Bodomo, do not find contact between Africa and

China again until over five hundred years later at the

Bandung Conference. The Bandung conference was the first

Afro- Asian conference, held in Bandung, Indonesia which

sought to oppose the colonialism in Africa and prevent

neocolonialism in the future by other parties. It is this

foundational conference which helped contribute to

contemporary China’s apolitical stance when working within

Africa. However, before discussing China’s political theory,

it is important to note that this was not, in fact, the next

time China and Africa came into contact with each other.

Brautigam notes that her field work in China in revealed that

the Chinese presence has always silently been within Africa

since their contact with each other. There was the 1949

Bogor Conference which pre-date’s Bandung, and is, in fact,

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the reason for Bandung. Then, there is also the event in

1954 where:

China’s suave premier Zhou Enlai introduced the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” during negotiations with India over the Tibet issue: 1. mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity 2. mutual non- aggression 3. non- interference in each other’s internal affairs 4. equality and mutual benefit 5. peaceful coexistence […] more than half a century later, Chinese leaders still point to these principles as the bedrock of their foreign policy and their aid strategy (Brautigam 2011: 30)

Although it is true that the Chinese presence and action in

Africa did not truly increasing until roughly the 1950s, the

contacts, discussions, and interest between the two starts

existed and can be traced back well into the 15th century

which many researchers often do not account for. The

implications of this indicate that not only is the Chinese

presence in Africa not novel to our contemporary age, but

also potentially suggests that Sino- African relations are

not built purely upon a foundation of neo-colonialism

because, why now? It is indisputable that the Chinese have a

significant impact on the economics of Africa and some of

their actions are particularly dubious, and some certainly

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harmful; however, China has had the opportunity for hundreds

of years and never capitalized on the chance.

After the Bandung Conference Bodomo highlights the 2000

Forum for Africa- China Cooperation (FOCAC) which is a

triennial gathering of African and Chinese leaders,

alternating cities between African capitals and Beijing;

however, this reductionist stance of history undermines

Bodomo’s argument of a paucity of interactions between the

two entities. Deborah Brautigram writes extensively to

combat some of these essentializing notions of the Afro-

Sino relationship and discusses how as a student conducting

fieldwork in the 1970s she “spent a year in West Africa

interviewing local people and Chinese aid workers, studying

China’s approach to aid, and visiting Chinese projects deep

in the interior” (Brautigam 2011: 7). Throughout her book,

The Dragon’s Gift, she explores this idea that Chinese presence

has been pervasive in African history, it just did not draw

attention to itself. Her main argument seeks to:

dispel many of the myths: the Chinese are notnew donors in Africa. They did not prove an

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unreliable partner, “dumping” Africa after Mao died, returning only as their resource hunger grew. Their aid program is certainly large and growing but not enormous. They areundoubtedly interested in gaining access to Africa’s petroleum, minerals, and other natural resources but there is little evidence that aid is offered exclusively, or even primarily, for that purpose. From the evidence, China’s aid does not seem to be particularly “toxic”; the Chinese do not seemto make governance worse, and although it is popularly believed that aid comes with “no strings attached,” economic engagement usually does come with conditions, some of iteven (indirectly) governance- related (Brautigam 2011: 20- 1, emphasis in original)

Bodomo’s analysis, which does not adequately explore the

history and nature of the Sino- Afro relationship furthermore

perpetuates some of the mythic notions of China’s presence in

Africa. Through some ethnographic research, drawing on her

own experiences, and analyzing the copious, but often vague,

data allows Brautigam to show that the Chinese influence in

Africa has always been historically present and are not as

detrimental as one would initially think. It is interesting

to note; however, that while Bodomo only seeks to highlight

those three historical events he does concede that “[m]ost of

these studies use the word emergence to describe the

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increasing presence of Africans in China, implying that the

phenomenon of Africans migrating into and forming communities

in the country is a novel one when Africans have actually

been present in China for a long time” (Bodomo 2012: 18).

Thus, we find that the relationship between China and

Africa has historically been complex and dates back over five

hundred years. To describe the Chinese presence in the

modern day as being “new” or “emerging” obscures the critical

historical facts. Afro- Sino relations have gone far back

and they have often interacted in interesting ways. As

highlighted, Admiral Zheng He’s sailors left behind Afro-

Sino children in Africa, the Chinese presence has been

present and active throughout most of the 1900s, and it is

undoubted that there have been personal connections leading

to both a migration of Chinese to Africa as well as the

converse, the Africans migrating to China. However, before

discussing the presence of Africans in China, and the Chinese

presence in Africa through an analysis of identity

construction, it is important to establish the

transnationalist ties which have bound these two entities to

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each other in order to explain the reciprocal and increasing

human movement patterns. To reach this level of analysis it

is equally important to establish some key definitional terms

as a point of departure.

First, who are the Africans? Africa is not a cohesive,

unified, political entity. It is comprised of 54 independent

countries, with two other potentially recognized states as

well. The attitudes, socio-politcal and economic stance of

North Africa are wildly distinct from that of South Africa.

The experiences felt by Africans growing up in West Africa

compared to that of the individuals in Congo- Brazzaville can

also often times be dramatically different as well. Much of

the literature, while recognizing Africa has comprised of

many sovereign bodies, discusses the “Africa- China”

relationship rather than the, for example, “Nigeria- China”

relationship. This is intellectually problematic because it

places and equates a continent, a very large continent, with

that of one country. And, while there are territorial

disputes over Chinese land, the capital in Beijing attempts

to put forward a “One China” political front while “the unity

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of a thing called ‘Africa,’ its status as a single ‘place’

however the continental descriptor may be qualified

geographically or racially (‘Sub- Saharan,’ ‘black,’

‘tropical,’ or what have you) seems dubious” (Ferguson 2006:

1). Additionally, China has historically been self-

sufficient and isolated from the rest of the world. While

there is a burgeoning African presence, many of the Chinese

have never seen an African, and as one of Bodomo’s informants

notes: “Sometimes, these people (Chinese) are just ignorant

about things. They only know Africa as the poor continent

(Some even see Africa as a country, that’s so pathetic) they

see on TV and so on…It’s just a cliché that have been fed in

their minds when they were growing up and from their media”

(Bodomo 2011: 117). Furthermore, many Chinese do not realize

that being phenotypically black does not necessarily mean an

individual is African. Therefore, for the purpose of this

paper it is unfortunately necessary to fall back upon the

literature and discuss the Africans as anyone who identifies

as having citizenship from one of the African countries,

anyone who claims to have been born there, or anyone who

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chooses to use Africa as a marker for their identity.

However, even falling back on this problematic ideology

presents its challenges.

Secondly, as seen above, the literature tends to

essentialize the relationship between Africa and China,

essentialize Africa, and unquestionably essentializes China.

Who is China? is also an important analytical exercise which

must be completed before being able to discuss some of the

larger transnationalist notions. Specifically, is China the

government? Is China the private investors? Is China the

entrepreneur that relocates self and family to Africa? The

literature and discussions often conflate all of these

parties together, claiming China acts as one political

entity. While it is true China takes the political stance of

a “One China” that stance is, rather, intended for clear geo-

social boundaries and should not be conflated with the many

potential Chinese actors and influences operating within

Africa. And, while it is true that the Chinese government

has strong connections and ties with many of the private

enterprises there are still slippages and gaps in the

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relationship which need to be problematized in order to

generate a more comprehensive picture of the Sino- Afro

relationship. As Brautigam aptly summarizes:

The Chinese are doing many things in Africa: touring presidents delivering grand promises for partnership, provincial companies with very long names, huge global corporations, resource- hungry and profit- motivated. They are factory managers demanding long hours of work, tough businesswomen, scrap metal buyers,traders. They offer frank deals that they expect to work well for China, but also for Africa: roads, broadband, land lines, high- tech seeds. They bring aid workers: vocational teachers, agricultural specialists,water engineers, youth volunteers, and others who have come, as so many from the West have done, out of curiosity, a sense of adventure, or a desire to help the poor. And they have not just arrived on the scene. Some Chinese families came to Africa in the 1820s. Sino- Africans—Eugenia Chang, Jean Ping, Jean Ah- Chuen, Manuel Chang, Fay King Chung, and others—have served African governments as parliamentarians, finance ministers, and ministers of foreign affairs. Their long history in post- independence Africa gives China legitimacy and credibility among many Africans. Arriving after independence, they never really left. The West simply did not notice the Chinese teams laboring upcountry building small hydropower stations and bridges, repairing irrigation systems, managing state- owned factories, all usually without the kind of billboards other donors

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favored to advertise their presences (Brautigam 2011: 310)

These issues, questioning who are Africans, and dissecting

who is China, are important in establishing a theoretical

framework to understand the transnational connections between

these two entities.

The African presence in China, contrary to popular

belief is also not particularly new. Stemming from

educational policies and foreign aid from China there has

been contact between Africans and the Chinese within China.

What is new, however, is the increased presence and the

shifting nature of this presence. However, it is first

important to ground this discussion within some crucial

theoretical frameworks. Some scholars have discussed the

African presence in China as being a part of the “Africa

diaspora” a term which “has been applied across vast temporal

and spatial scales to refer to many dispersals of people from

the African continent. It first emerged in the 1950s and

1960s to describe the history of the dispersal of communities

of African ancestry around the world, and the social,

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cultural, and political connections between them” (Mercer,

Page, Evans 2008: 54- 55, internal citations removed, see

original). Yet, as we have seen with the analysis of Africa

and China, it is problematic to reduce African movement as a

diaspora as “historical writing on diaspora has unwittingly

homogenized the continent of Africa in its attempts to

develop ‘a theoretical framework and a conception of world

history that treats the African diaspora as a unit of

analysis’” (Mercer, Page, Evans 2008: 55, internal citations

removed, see original). To properly understand the Sino-

Afro relationship it is necessarily imperative to remove

oneself of the Western perspective. China’s actions in

Africa, leading to the rise of Africans in China, does not

conform to Western practices even though it takes on the

flavor of some of the Western ideologies. It is imperative

that these ideologies are rejected to properly understand the

current dynamic between China and Africa otherwise,

“[i]mperial hierarchies [will] thus continue to shape the

imagined geographies of international development which place

Africa on the bottom rung of this ladder reliant on

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‘successful market economies’ for help” (Mohan, Power 2009:

1).

Why are there Africans in China? There are several

historical reasons for this phenomenon which tie back to the

narrative of Chinese aid in Africa throughout much of the

early 90s and the colonial period. As Brautigam reveals,

“during the late colonial period, China hosted students from

Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, and other colonies struggling for

independence” as an aid initiative to help African countries

(Brautigam 2011: 121). Furthermore, these numbers are fairly

significant as “Beijing University professor Li Baoping

estimated in 2006 that more than 18,000 African students have

received Chinese government scholarships per year from 400 to

1,600 a clear sign that Beijing sees study in China as a

cost- effective way to implement some of its goals for

Africa” (Brautigam 2011: 121). In an effort to show

dedication to its aid, “Beijing pays the costs of tuition,

airfares (for the poorest countries), and housing, and gives

students a small stipend—the same level a Chinese student can

expect” (Brautigam 2011: 121). This educational support of

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African students is not the only form of support from China,

“between 2003 and 2008 more than 4,000 Africans traveled to

China for agriculture- related courses lasting from three

weeks to three months” (Brautigam 2011: 236). And, Brautigam

notes that “[i]n her travels across Africa between 2007 and

2009, [she] frequently ran into people who volunteered to

[her] that they had been on training courses in China. Rhoda

Toronka, the CEO of an African Chamber of Commerce Industry

and Agriculture, went to Beijing for three weeks on a

training course for African chambers of commerce” (Brautigam

2011: 120). This evidence highlights the idea that there has

been African presence in China and that the presence will

likely increase due to educational endeavors both supported

by Beijing and also through increased desire of Africans who

are learning Chinese in African countries.

Furthermore, neither education nor vocational training

alone drive Africans to migrate to China. With the long

standing history of Sino- Afro relations, as discussed, more

Africans are moving to China to take advantage of niche

markets and other business and economic ventures which will

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allow them an opportunity for success. This movement is part

of the global South- South movement which is being engaged

with more often in critical academic discourse through such

works as Migrants and Strangers in an African City: Exile, Dignity, Belonging

by Bruce Whitehouse. Bodomo writes, “the African presence in

China has become a striking phenomenon. Most of the Africans

in China are economic migrants of various sorts. In cities

across China, especially on the eastern seaboard, sizeable

African communities have emerged since 1997” (Bodomo 2012:

XXV) and furthermore, “[o]bviously, African immigrants in

China are finding niches which open up to them. Some are

respectable, and others are reprehensible and even illegal”

(Bodomo 2012: XXVI). There are increasing opportunities and

possibilities for Africans in China as a result of the long

history of exchange which is often underrepresented within

popular discourse analyzing the Afro- Sino relationships.

These increased opportunities for Africans in China stem

from a larger phenomenon. Transnationalism arising as a

result of globalization. These new migrations are changing

the global dynamic and altering our understandings of

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identity in a globalizing era because “[t]he complexity of

the transnational networks built by global migrants,

connecting them with their new residential localities, their

original homelands, and their conantional communities in

third countries, is enormous”(Smith and Guarnizo 2009: 612).

In our globalizing world, “more people, with more or less

power, are moving across the globe finding more or less

resistance and more or fewer opportunities in the localities

to which they move” (Smith Guarnizo 2009: 619). It is this

transnational context in our rapidly globalizing world which

also explains the increased African presence in China, as

well as the converse relationship of more Chinese in Africa.

Thus, as academic literature and research moves forward it is

more important than ever that we adopt new approaches and new

critical ways of engaging with phenomenon such as Africans

moving to China. I suggest, taking from Aihwa Ong “while

mobility and flexibility have long been part of the

repertoire of human behavior, under transnationality the new

links between flexibility and the logics of displacement, on

the one hand, and capital accumulation on the other, have

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given new valence to such strategies of maneuvering and

positioning. Flexibility, migration, and relocations,

instead of being coerced or resisted, have become practices

to strive for rather than stability” (Ong 19). To truly

understand the relationship between China and Africa is is

important to situate it within the dialogue of

transnationalism and that we should reframe our perspective

of viewing the “rest of the world as peripheries or sites for

testing models crafted in the West. [We] can then make a

unique contribution to an understanding of how the economic

structures of development are integrated with the production

of cultural identities” (Ong 30). This theoretical framework

would allow us to fully analyze the situation happening

between China and Africa and give us access to understanding

and thinking through critical issues of identity.

In grounding this theory, I return once again to Bodomo

and look at the reception of Africans within China. They

range from: “Chinese businessmen find Africans to be good

business partners and happily trade with them. Africans are

very well received by their Chinese business partners”

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(Bodomo 2012: 97) to “[w]hen I asked her what the differences

were between doing business with Chinese and doing business

with Africans, she said that she has had bad experiences with

the latter. In her opinion, many of the African customers

did not keep their promises” (Bodomo 2012: 54).

Additionally, “[l]ike many African businessmen, Mr. A.

complained a great deal about visa problems, including the

cost, effort, and length of time it took to renew a visa. As

a result of these difficulties, Mr. A. planned to return to

Mali permanently the same year I interviewed him. Visa

issues actually greatly affect the business activity of

African businessmen in Guangzhou” (Bodomo 2012: 52). These

informative pieces of evidence reveal the ambiguous and

shifting relationship between Africans and the Chinese. As

more contact occurs, as more Africans become prominent in

China, and as the Chinese continue their engagement with

Africa it is imperative that fresh analysis is applied to the

situation and rather than relying on popular discourse we

need to look at the South- South migration of individuals,

the people to people relationships, and understand this

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phenomenon within a context of transnationalism. Once again

Bodomon is key in noting that “I demonstrate that people-to-

people relations are important aspects of the relationship

between Africa and China and argue that both the Chinese

government and African governments ought to encourage and

facilitate the peaceful intermingling of Africans and Chinese

because Africans in China and Chinese in Africa can serve as

cultural and economic bridges to the further development of

Africa- China relations” (Bodomo 2012: 14, quoting Bodomo).

Essentially, to understand some of the more salient

anthropological notions of kinship, identity, and

transnationalism the Sino- Afro relationship is crucial.

Finally, drawing one last time upon Bodomo:

Africans have already intermingled with Chinese in all of the major cities I studied, to the extent that there will be emerging generations of African Chinese involving Africans with residency and/ or Chinese heritage. There are already many offspring from mixed marriages (mostly between African men and Chinese women), and many Africans are permanent residents in places such as Hong Kong and Macau (Bodomo 2012: 226- 227)

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The relationship between China and Africa is complex and

multilayered with much more history than popular discourse

often grants it. While it is often assumed that China is

neo- imperialistic and out to “land grab” from China, a

nuanced view reviews the situation to be more difficult to

understand. China’s engagement with Africa has led to an

increased presence of Africans in China, a result of

transnational forces, and there has even been established a

“Chocolate City” within Guangzhou. Furthermore, it is

important to engage with the question of economics in order

to access the notion of cultural identity as the relationship

between China and Africa is, without a doubt, deeply mired

within economic scholarship. Transnationalist discourse will

help to problematize the understandings of Afro- Sino

relationships but will also provide us with a clear means to

understand what this relationship can look like. More

scholarship needs to be completed for us to truly understand

the situation as this is a very contemporary issue. The

Africans and Chinese have a long standing relationship and as

we continue into the future, that relationship will continue

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to grow and evolve into new identities, new relationships,

and new understandings of our transnational and rapidly

globalizing world.

Works Cited

Bodomo, Adams. Africans in China: A Sociocultural Study and Its Implications on

Africa-China Relations. Amherst, NY: Cambria, 2012. Print.Brautigam, Deborah. The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa.

Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.Ferguson, James. Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order.

Durham: Duke UP, 2006. Print.Mercer, Claire, Ben Page, and Martin Evans. Development and the

African Diaspora: Place and the Politics of Home. London: Zed, 2008. Print.

Ong, Aihwa. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham:Duke UP, 1999. Print.

Whitehouse, Bruce. Migrants and Strangers in an African City: Exile, Dignity,

Belonging. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2012. Print.