Forever foreign? Is there a future for Chinese people in Africa?

ABSTRACT

Chinese migration to Africa has been limited both in size and scope until relatively recently. It was only in the late 1990s and the 2000s that significant numbers of Chinese migrants began arriving in Africa, with the first significant waves hitting South African shores. Chinese entrepreneurs, fortune seekers, and professionals, together with temporary workers – from across China – made their way in increasing numbers to destinations across the African continent. Many entered Africa with or following Chinese state-owned and private companies, on contracts to work on construction, oil, and mining projects. Beyond these large state-sponsored and private-sector projects, reports of the development of Chinatowns, Chinese shops, and Chinese farms and factories across the African continent have been circulating for nearly three decades. This paper examines these new, intensified Chinese flows to Africa and explores the possibilities of their future on the continent. Based on my in-depth examination of developments in South Africa, I argue that while the Chinese state's global ambitions and African ambivalence towards these latest arrivals influence Chinese migrant lives and destinies, the migrants themselves are also having impacts on their African host nations and changing the way we understand human flows.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese migrants
• Africa
• South Africa
• migration flows

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In the mid-2000s several stories appeared in the press about a Kenya family with claims to Chinese ancestry; apparently about 20 Chinese sailors swam ashore to the coast of Kenya after a shipwreck nearly 600 years ago. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-07/11/content_459090.htm.

2 Some Chinese scholars argue that the first Chinese were shipped by the Portuguese to Africa as early as 1593; see Li Anshan (2012).