TRADE WINDS guangzhou’s african community
TRADE WINDS by Graeme Nicol
“If you want fresh air, you need to open the window...
...but the flies and mosquitos are also going to get in� Deng Xiaoping saying (1980s)
Since 2000, Chinese bilateral trade with the African continent has been increasing by an average of 30 % every year, with figures set to top 100 billion USD for 2008, behind only Korea, Japan, USA and the EU in volume. Sub-saharan African nations now supply as much as one-third of China’s oil. An estimated 750,000 Chinese nationals currently live in Africa. The implications upon the West of this new Chinese-African co-operation are being increasingly discussed in developed nations who have until now have had more or less unrestricted access to African raw materials, The implications are also being discussed among Africans, for whom feelings towards China are somewhat mixed. Those countries who have raw materials appear to be benefiting from massive infrastructure investment, while those who don’t risk having their existing manufacturing industries engulfed by cheap consumer imports from China. There is another side to the story though; the “Chinese Dream”, the growing African population now living in China,
More than any other region, it is the factories of southern Guangdong Province which epitomises the “Made in China� phenomonon. At the heart of this overseas trade, just as it has been for centuries, is the city of Guangzhou, host of the Canton Trade Fair and home to 6, 7, 8, 10 million people depending on who gets counted and by whom. According to local estimates, by the beginning of 2008, some 80,000 of those citizens were Africans, working primarily in the foreign trade, logistics and import-export sectors. The heart of the community is in Xiaobei district, on the North-West fringe of the high-rise downtown, close to both the business district and the train station. Several multi-story trading malls sell everything from fake jeans to car parts to human hair extensions. Xiaobei is also home to a lesser but still significant number of Indians and Arabs.
Ommar Koumbassa is going home. He’s just finished filling a container full of goods for shipping back to his native Guinea for the last time. All that’s left now is tidying up loose ends, and then it’s goodbye China. He’ll be back, but not to stay. He speaks good enough Chinese now to base himself in Africa and run things from there. It’s time for a change anyway he says, life here just isn’t the same as it was before. Six years ago, it was football not business that brought him to Guangzhou, trying his luck in the Chinese league, having played professionally before that in Malaysia and Thailand. “Football was good to me, it gave me my money. The clubs threw it at me, but allowed me no free time to spend it” He rarely plays now, not even for fun. He’s got no time, too busy meeting people, doing business, making money. “It’s easy to make money in China...if you have money to start with...”
Money is something 28 year old Rody also has enough of. He’s been sent to China by his company, the family business. They want to diversify, and have invested in some land back in Congo-Brazzaville, land covered in rainforest. “Yeah, I know, save the rainforests, but all this, the modern apartment, the widescreen TV, its all got to be paid for. It all comes down to money. No-one’s going to make me feel guilty for wanting to continue living comfortably.” The long-term plan is to turn the trees on their land into high-quality hardwood furniture, to end up in Chinese homes just like those in the middle-class gated community or “huayuan” where Rody lives now. The short-term plan is to master the Chinese language. He has a Chinese name “Luo Di”, given to him by his teacher at Guangzhou Foreign Languages University. For someone who has only been learning 9 months, his Chinese is surprisingly fluent, surely helped by afternoons chatting with his “drinking buddy”, the security guard of his apartment block, himself a migrant to Guangzhou from Hunan Province.
“China is 100 times better... ...no make that 1000 ...than Europe.�
times better
Alex, Africa (just call me African)
“Nothing about China has changed me as a person, because there’s nothing here, nothing to make the difficulty of living here worth it. The only thing Africans can learn from the Chinese is how to cheat people and produce cheap fake goods.” Jhou, Nairobi, Kenya
Sacko Mamoutou is from Mali and has been here for several years running a logistics company from an office in Tianxiu Tower. He’s a well-known face around Tianxiu.
49 year old Fofana (right) has never lived in China, but is as much at home around Tianxiu Tower as anyone. “Moka Coffee is my place, my spot, anytime you wanna find me, I’ll be there” Except of course when he’s back in Africa. An engineer by training, he left Guinea for the USA as a young man, working in IT for several years in Texas before returning to Conakry to settle down. Moving again to China was never an option, dealing with the culture clash just too much hassle. “Europeans and Africans, we know each other, we’ve been living in each others space for the last 300 years. Africans can read Europeans. When I look at a white man’s expression I know exactly what he’s thinking. We might be Christians or Muslims but basically we’re the same, we believe in right and wrong, morals. The Chinese though...I can’t work them out...they’re something else...” After five years of making trips to Guangzhou twice a year, sending back containers of electronic products, he’s got a longer-term plan: billboards. Large scale advertising is just beginning to appear in Guinea, and with his background in IT and exposure to consumerism while in the US, it makes sense. On this trip he’s shipping back an industrial scale printing press, and taking classes in how to use it. He’s impressed with the quality of the Chinese printing equipment, as good as anywhere.
Ever since tens, even hundreds of thousands of Arabic merchants first brought Islam to coastal China back in the 8th century via the “maritime silk route”, there has been a notable Hui Muslim community in Guangzhou, with the Tang Dynasty mosque still standing and in active use. The arrival of thousands of Muslims from Africa and the Middle-East has however provided some Chinese Muslims - of which there are around 100 million countrywide - with a new niche opportunity. Not only are Halal butchers in demand for supplying the twenty to thirty African and Arabic restaurants around Xiaobei, but Muslim waiting staff are preferred to non-Muslim because of the shared cultural understanding they bring. This community of Chinese Muslims must in turn must be catered for, and recent years have seen another twenty to thirty Chinese Muslim restaurants open up in the square kilometer around Xiaobei. Most are run by migrants from the North-Western “overland silk road” regions of Xinjiang, Gansu and Ningxia.
Abdoulaye has lived most of his life in Guangzhou, much of it spent in the selfenclosed world of Tianxiu Tower, where his mother runs a take-away restaurant from her apartment. At the age of five he understands both French and English, but is most comfortable when speaking Mandarin Chinese, the language spoken by the Chinese women who perform the dual role of restaurant cook and nanny. His mother, Madam Bah, also runs a cosmetics and hair supplies store twenty floors below in the mall. Rather than enter Abdoulaye into the Chinese education system, she hopes the earnings from her two businesses will be enough to be able to educate him at an international school back in Guinea. Tianxiu Tower was built in 1999. Those familiar with ever changing urban China will know that a nine years is considered “old”. But depsite the lived-in grime, leaking pipes and rats, this is still downtown Guangzhou, and rent starts at about 2500 Yuan per month for a 50 sq m space, It’s far from being a low-rent ghetto, even having its own swimming pool, although it has apparently been empty of water for some time. The residents of Tianxiu Tower are an estimated 80 % foreign, and while most units are apartments or offices, a cluster of tiny restaurants like Madam Bah’s occupy the upper floors of one wing. From the outside the restaurant doors look like any other door, but the smell of cooking is a giveaway. Almost every West African country seems to be represented; Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mali, Guinea, Senegal, all offering their variation on African cuisine for their countryfolk, plus the chance to catch up on local news from back home.
Two year-old Huang Long has an African name too, but his mother, 30 year old Huang Aiping isn’t sure how to spell it. His father would know but he’s back in Sierra Leone on business. She says his Chinese is really good, much better than her English. They’ve been married for four years. She isn’t worried about her child growing up in China as a minority. She herself is from Guangxi Atonomous Region, part of the Zhuang minority rather than the majority Han. She has no plans to move from her store in Dongfeng Foreign Trade Mall. Her son will grow up around the store, bilingual, in contact with both his African and Chinese roots.
“It’s me Bob, I’m in China, we’re here representing our office, we welcome all of you to this place. We are here to serve you, the people of Congo and Luanda.” Bob Mkazi, 38, from Kinshasa, Congo, has been in China for 8 months. Today he’s buying jeans to send back,
Romain, from Cameroon, has been running this joint-venture import-export business from his clothes shop in Dongfeng Mall with Chinese business partner Wang for two years.
“Africans find gaps, wherever there is a gap, you’ll find Africans. It was Thailand back in the 90s, it’s Guangzhou now, it could easily be somewhere else next.” Giovanny, Angola
“All these Africans filling containers, what are they doing for their people ? Nothing, they’re just helping themselves. What Africa needs is equipment, not products.” Jhou, Nairobi, Kenya
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Many Africans continue to live on African time while in China, partly out of habit, and partly because they need to conduct business with those back home. Across from Tianxiu Tower in Xiatang “urban village�, the main street Baohan Jie comes alive each evening, Chinese traders lining the roadside with blankets of goods and foodstalls, the shops amd restaurants as busy at midnight as at midday.
26 year-old Patrick has ambition. H6’s almost finished writing his debut album. One thing he’s not short of is lyrics. He doesn’t know if he’ll record it in China or Congo. Ideally he’d record it in Britain. It was his sixteen years living in London that gave him his taste for music. His parents had always played Congolese music around the house but it was the underground “UK Garage“ music scene, a London variant of hip-hop, which inspired him to start writing. When his parents left the UK however, he was refused his appilcation for a British Passport and got deported. Unable to settle back in Kinshasa, he came to China. “i was doin good at Uni an all, if i didn’t turn up one day cos i was like ill or summat, my classmates would all be like “where’s Patrick, we need him back ‘ere man”. I was involved with counselling as well, students with problems and that, talk to them, tell them it’s gonna be ok innit...like Britain is part of me, sixteen years man, my first girlfriend was from Scotland, went up to visit her family once, and my mate Dave, he jumped from his tower block, he was always quiet, none of my mates thought he’d do nuffin like that...i mean i did stupid things too when i was a kid, got into a bit of bother, but I was alright, got into Uni, was doin my music, but still got criminal record ain’t I, so they kicked me out. Sixteen years. It’s all John Reid’s fault, innit.” (Reid was the UK Home Secretary at the time)
The rows of seats on the top floor of the Jinshan Elephant Mall are where the younger Congolese hang out in Xiaobei, mainly due to the presence of a men’s barber and a woman’s hair salon. Most of the people in this group are in their early twenties, all here in China to “do business”. All this may change. They’re all leaving, it’s time to go they say. They did make some money, but the honeymoon period of life in China has worn off... Whatever reason they give for not remaining, in reality they have little choice but to leave. The Chinese government won’t renew their visas. Returning to Congo-Kinshasa is likely their only viable option.
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Despite the success of the Olympics themselves, everyday life in China became compromised for many during 2008. Faced with the prospect of controlling the largest number of foreign visitors and foreign journalists in recent memory, and following the Lhasa riots, the government began clamping down on movement of both Chinese and foreigners, into, out of, and around the country, drawing up new rules, setting up roadblocks, and generally turning China into the kind of uniform police state that stimulates the imagination of mainstream foreign media, but which misrepresents the complexity and indeed chaos of the country in reality. A key part of this clampdown was the denial of visas. In particular, business visas became almost impossible to obtain, after the Hong Kong based agents who had for years been issuing the required papers for 1000 HK$ were closed down overnight. It will never be known how justified these precautions were. What is known though is that the economy of Guangzhou was affected when many of the 80,000 Africans living there found they couldn’t remain and had to return to Africa. Many simply cut their losses and left, piles of letters on the floor of abandoned offices a common sight throughout Tianxiu Tower. For the police, this was in some ways a problem solved, as the large numbers of Africans socialising outdoors late at night had been stretching resources. But problems were created too. Rumours circulating online of a ban on bars in Beijing serving drinks to Africans or black people during the Olympics, though proven to be the product of an over-zealous local official rather than national policy, nonetheless began to be enforced by certain Guangzhou bar owners unwilling to take chances or else trying to exploit the situation out of predjudice. A climate of fear and suspicion was created among many of the Africans who remained, an impression not helped by nightly police raids of African restaurants. Thus the street became the safest place to socialise, despite the constant hassle and indignity of random stop-and-search passport checks.
Of course there is a third option if visas are hard to come by: just stay on without one, although such a move is not without its consequences if caught by police. How does a six-month stretch in a Chinese jail sound ? It was a risk Alain Gauche from Cameroon and some of his countrymen were willing to take. “We couldn’t go back, not after investing so much time and money with manufacturers and suppliers in the area. Me, I’ve almost got my base, my network, in three more months, by Christmas, it’ll be ready, and then we can go back to Cameroon. We hear the situation might change and the embassy in Cameroon will start issuing visas again. We can come back in legally next year. But if we left now it would all be lost, two years wasted. Many Africans are the same, they borrowed money from their extended families to come here and invest. We’re proud people. We cannot show our face back home if that money is wasted.”
Alain seemed to think he would be able to escape jail, he had the money and contacts; money to cover the fine and buy a flight ticket, and contacts who would go to the police station the same day to pay for it all while he waited in custody. Preparing for the worst, if his capture went as planned he would be sent in handcuffs straight to the airport for deporting. The others would continue running the shop without him. They talked about trying to fly out of China via Shanghai or Kunming instead of Guangzhou, thus avoiding the exit fine, possibly, but getting out of Guangdong Province was too risky. On main routes they’d need to show their passports before being given a ticket, but on back routes, they’d attract too much attention as black people in rural China. They’d be thrown in jail for sure if caught. No, they were resigned to remaining in Guanzghou, and resigned to paying money; it was just a matter of when. But how much ? The fine quoted by most Africans for overstaying by one month seemed to be 5,100 Yuan, rising to 16,000 Yuan after six months, consistent with the current price of a six-month business visa on the Guangzhou black market: 16,000 Yuan. However there was no guarantee that a visa obtained on the black-market would be “genuine”. It wasn’t unheard of to try to stay “legal”, yet still end up paying 32,000 Yuan, around 20 times the average monthly wage in urban China. In the meantime they just had to keep their heads down, avoiding police, venturing out only to meet suppliers or when travelling between their apartment in Xiaobei and their shop out in Sanyuanli. They had a good location there, and a niche advanatage in being only a few guys from Cameroon, in a market packed full with a thousand Nigerians...
30 year old Collins and 32 year old Sanic, both from Nigeria, in the Bestway African Restaurant at Sanyuanli.
While other Africans have options, if you are a Nigerian in Guangzhou during the latter half of 2008, the choices are pretty simple, you either live illegally, or else you get hold of another passport and become someone else. Those working in the malls at Sanyuanli say that simply being Nigerian will earn them a minimum three months in jail, and no amount of money or contacts will help. Even for the few Nigerians who have a spare 16,000 RMB at hand, no black market visa dealer or police official is willing to risk their neck for a Nigerian. Nonetheless the several sprawling foreign trading malls strung out along the tangle of ring roads and motorway intersections of Sanyuanli are still host to several thousand Nigerians. The vast majority have no visas. The police know it. Raids on the malls occur daily, a few more picked up and incarcerated every night. Sticking together in groups lessens the chance of it being you.
The Nigerian community estimates as many as 500 Nigerians might currently be imprisoned in Guangzhou. In the absence of any reliable information, rumours are rife, some say prison conditions are terrible, basic rights such as telephone calls to family, embassies and lawyers denied. During October, news spreads quickly to much disbelief that a big strong well-respected guy from Liberia has died in prison apparently he went on hunger strike. Many Nigerians will do anything to escape the police and avoid prison, with accounts of men jumping from eighth-floor tenement windows. Most seem to survive, but face being permanently crippled. Going to hospital requires money, and carries with it a risk of capture. Despite the arrests, some Nigerians question the commitment of the Guangzhou authorities to actually dealing with the situation. After all, the malls built with NIgerian money and staffed with Nigerian labour - are still doing brisk business: the global economic downturn of 2008 is barely affecting buyers from Africa. The shop owners in the malls estimate that two-thirds of the guys who provide the labour, unpacking, unloading etc, would simply cut their losses and go home tomorrow if the Guangzhou government would only drop the prohibitively expensive exit fine or announce some sort of amnesty. Economically it makes no sense in the short-term for the Chinese authorities to do so. Not only would the local government lose potential revenue from the fines but China would also lose a key labour force fueling the rapid expansion of consumer goods into the African market, a market that is taking on increasing importance amid the drop in consumer demand from Europe and the USA that is forcing many Guangdong factories out of business and leaving many Chinese out of work. Some of the Nigerians refer to the cycle they are trapped in as “modern slavery�.
One of the origins of the issue was clamping down on the Nigerian organised crime gangs who muscled in on the drug-dealing networks of urban China back in 2004-2005, with areas like Beijing’s Sanlitun needing “cleaned-up” before the Olympics. However, refusing to renew the visas of the majority of law-abiding Nigerians who have come to trade has hardly been effective. In the streets around Guangzhou’s five-star Garden Hotel where many expat bars and clubs are clustered, gangs still sell drugs openly, the criminal elements who arrived with that specific purpose now joined by others who, because of their desperate situation, will do anything to earn much needed cash. If you’re already on the wrong side of the law, what is there to lose from selling drugs ? This is not the only way the illegal population fuels the illegal economy though: the bulk of the goods shipped to Africa by those without visas are counterfeit. Having fake or faulty goods dumped on them by a Chinese manufacturer or supplier which they then must sell at a loss, or else dishonestly, is a perennial problem for all Africans doing business here, whatever their legal status. But for an illegal Nigerian who has no legal recourse of complaint to the police, that risk becomes more or less a certainly. Knowingly buying fake goods thus requires less financial risk, and with the need for steady money in order to have any hope of paying the fines and flight ticket, it’s the option most take. Perhaps the most serious effect of living outside the law though is that it allows certain groups to take the law into their own hands. It’s not only police that are doing random stop and search passport checks, but those with no legal authority to do so such as the private security firms. It was apparently security guards who stabbed the dead guy in ”the photos”. An argument that got out of hand, a racially motivated attack or the ultimate power trip ? Or could it have perhaps been a brawl between two Nigerians ? The photographer insists not, it was definitely an attack by Chinese security, and there were witnesses. None however will dare go anywhere near a police station to make statements. By November most Nigerians in the mall had either seen or heard of ”the photos”. Apparently even the Nigerian government has seen “the photos”, but with the Nigerian embassy 2000 km away in Beijing and no regional consulates, there seems little they can do. Eventually I got to see “the photos” too, stored on a flash disk alongside the smiling 5 yuan street portraits the photogrpaher had been taking around Sanyuanli to make extra cash. Like most of the Nigerians, he feared repercussions and insisted on anonyminity.
The situation in Guangzhou has become too “hot” since the Olympcs. Because of this most of the Nigerians running the malls at Sanyuanli no longer live in the city itself. Instead they travel forty kilometers out every night into the semi-urban sprawl of the Pearl River Delta to reach the industrial district of Hongqiao. It’s safer there, less police, less “hot”. The most dangerous time to be in Guangzhou is between 6 and 9 pm, after the bulk of the shoppers empty from the malls but before the last of the bosses pack up. This is when people can find themselvs seperated from the crowd and this is when the police do most of their raids. During this time the streets are lined with groups of Nigerians. While waiting to pile into a rented van or taxi when the last of tbeir group arrives, they remain ever ready to scatter into the narrow overcrowded lanes of the surrounding “urban villages” should the immigration van arrive instead.
Upon getting beyond the Guangzhou city limits without having their vehicle stopped, the Nigerians can breathe a collective sigh of relief. There’s rarely hassle in Hongqiao, things are more chilled, if the police come, its for a reason, not just random checks. They say the local authorities in Hongqiao seem glad to have several thousand foreigners there. Whether legal or not they’re bringing money and life to a far-flung suburb which has little else to offer. In fact the several African restaurants and Chinese-run conveneice stores which have opened up beside them are the only businesses populating a stretch of shopping precinct several years old, but still sitting mostly derilict, unable to attract interest. Most of the Nigerian guys live nearby, renting apartments in tenements and newer complexes. There are still tales of people renting cheap houses with gardens in the villages on the fringes of Hongqiao, pitching tents or even sleeping under the stars, just in case they need to make a quick getaway, but most seem to dismiss this as as needlessly paranoid.
Although food is key to making Hongqiao feel like home, its not actually cooked by Africans; the restaurants are run mostly by Filipino women. The Nigerian guys insist it’s as good as anything back home though, The easy-going and funloving Filipino approach to life also reminds them of Nigeria. Aside from food, the other ingredient needed is music. With few neighbours to disturb, basslines pound out from the speakers of the African restaurants, The polyrythmic beats are contagious. Sooner or later people leave their seats and start dancing, some move on to a club ten minutes away. A live band is playing tonight and most nights: afrobeat musicians who met and formed an band in Hongqiao. It’s the tightest set ever played. Empty beers sit piled on the ground by tables, and “African Tobacco” lingers in the air. When every day is a weekday, every evening becomes a weekend.
The majority of Nigerians in Guangzhou are Christians rather than Muslims. Some come to the French colonial Stone Chamber Church to attend mass on Saturday or Sunday afternoon along with Chinese Catholics. Others come for a two-hour African-led charismatic preaching session. Others come just to socialise, or to play basketball in the church grounds, a Filipino women’s choir singing in the building behind them, However “hot” the city may be, this is one “gap” where the police will not dare make arrests. Mike Kohait, 35, from Nigeria has been living in Guangzhou for three years running his own company Kohait Investment Ltd.
Thanks to everyone who helped in this project. PhotoMA course organisers in Dalian, DJ Clark and the late Prof Yang Xiaoguang, without whose knowledge, I would not have known how to approach such a project. Boris Austin for insisting I abandon all other potential projects and get my butt down to Guangzhou. To all those down in Guangzhou, both African and Chinese, who helped me in whatever form, conciously or otherwise. Particular thanks to the guys from Guinea, Ommar and Fofana, for believing in my project and organising for me use that spare apartment in Xiaobei for free. One Love. Thanks also to those out at Sanyuanli who took risks to give me the access necessary to tell the story, I hope the situation is resolved as soon as possible and you guys get the success your hard work deserves. To teachers and visiting lecturers who helped in the edit sessions, Ulla Marquardt, Huang Wen (Xinhua), Tina (China Photo Press), Dirk Claus (Stern), Robert Pledge (Contact Press), each of whom supplied at least one idea used in the final design, My classmates for being around to bounce ideas off of and provide a sympathetic ear during computer/software troubles. Websites such as ESWN, Danwei, Global Voices etc, for bringing stories such as this to my attention. Their selection and translation of articles from Chinese media are vital in providing non-Chinese with an informed and balanced picture of China. My parents, for being good parents and wiring cash when there seemed little chance of it being spent wisely. Note: The name Hongqiao is not the area’s real name. The identity of the district has been concealed at request of the Nigerian community.
photography and text copyright Graeme Nicol 2008