Lingnan university

Master of Arts in China Reginal studies

Course Name: Global Connections and

Cultural Diversity in Africa- China
Relations CRS504

Examination
Q1: For the last two decades, African presence in southern China has
grown.exponentially. Certain urban spaces in the city of Guangzhou have been
radically transformed by the connections established by Africans and Chinese
both in China and transnationally. What are the implications, in terms of urban
governance, of the continued presence of Africans in Guangzhou at the local,
provincial and national levels in China? Consider as well the post- pandemic
context. Based on the relevant readings, lectures and documentaries, give at
least 2 examples to support your answer. (20%)

Answer1:

During the past twenty years, the number of Africans who are living in Guangzhou
has increased a lot. And this circumstance has made an obvious difference to Chinese
urban management of foreigners in China. To explain the change of the governance of
foreigners especially Africans in China, I use two samples, the African community
office in Guangzhou and the African Pentecostal churches, to describe how these
Africans make implications to Chinese urban governance. And considering the post
Covid-19 pandemic background, I will also talk about the difference of the
governance of managing Africans in China.

According to some research and reports, Guangzhou has become the initial
destination and living city for most Africans who would like to work or study in
China. Hence, how to manage the large number of Africans has been the crucial
problem for Guangzhou and Chinese central government. Since 2008, foreigners who
are living in China are categorized as the floating population and should be managed
by rules and regulations. Therefore, Africans in China have been considered as ethnic
minorities and ruled by the surveillance.

In order to control the number of Africans in Guangzhou, Guangzhou city,

Guangdong province and central government have taken a series of administration
measures to regulate and prevent the growth. For instance, government announced
that encourage residents to reflect any illegal activities that Africans are involved such
as overstaying, illegal entrance and working without any permits. Government hope
to depend on local citizens to solve the illegal migration problems.

To guarantee the right of Africans in Guangzhou, some Africans have decided to set
up the community offices. When some Africans face unfair or illegal treatments, the
community offices’ representative will deal with the problems with Chinses
authorities. Moreover, more and more African community leaders have recognized the
importance of the community office and should unit all Guangzhou African
communities to discuss or realize some negotiation with government. Moreover, the
community office also can provide monetary support, law consultation support, and
so on. Although the African community office just is in the primary step, it is the
impactful organization that can be one of the representative channels to reflect
Africans viewpoints and protect their legal and reasonable interests.

As the African community offices have more and more influence in Guangzhou local
communities, the government has accepted the representation of the community
offices and would like to deal with some social problems related to Africans through
these African community offices. It means that these community organizations are
more like the agents that response to connect the Guangzhou Africans and
government to deal with the conflicts in peaceful solution. Although these community
offices are not the official agencies in China, they seem to balance the interest
between the Africans and government. At least, Guangzhou African can represent
their comments and government can maintain the social order and peace more easily.
To Chinese central government, firstly, the Guangzhou African community office case
can provide central government another method of how to manage the foreigners in
China much better. Not only Guangzhou but also other domestic cities. For instance,
Shanghai, there are almost million Japanese are living, working, and studying in
Shanghai. The better way to manage these huge amount of Japanese is discussing with
the Japanese representative organizations rather than focusing on individual.

Another sample about how Africans make implications to Chinese urban governance
is the African Pentecostal churches in Guangzhou. As most of African countries were
colonized by Europeans, a number of Africans are catholic. And in Guangzhou, the
African Pentecostal churches make influence between Africans in Guangzhou and the
local residents and government. In China, Chinese government just have pretty low
tolerance for religious activities especially which are organized by foreign residents in
China as the administration is afraid that these kinds of religious activities may be
harmful for China’s national security. China has the Religious Bureau which is
belongs to State Council to manage all religious affairs. And another department
called The Public Security Bureau is responsible to regular all religious activities and
shut down the unregistered religious group. While Guangzhou government still
provide some limited freedom only for foreigners to apply the nongovernmental
religious approvement at their own sermons. Because of these kinds of religious
limitation and forces, African pastors would like to restrict the amount of Chinese
Christian members and just accept African Christians.

Although Chinese official religious policy doesn’t allow the unregistered religious
groups to run and the African Pentecostal churches mostly are illegal at all,
Guangzhou government usually would like to adopt the pragmatic to allow these
African Pentecostal churches to exist as long as they are inconspicuous and keep
small scale and the police doesn’t monitor any religious sermons. In turn, the African
pastors usually comply and obey Guangzhou government policies. Moreover, African
Pentecostal churches have become the unofficial but crucial channel for Chinese
bureau to inform some important official documents and messages to the illegal
African migration members in the communities.
General speaking, as more and more migration from all over the world especially
from Africa come to Guangzhou, the cultural and some religious conflicts have
become much more common and serious than before. It means that Chinese
authorities, from regional government to central government, must face the new
challenge of religious problems and think how to innovate or improve the religious
management policy to adapt new challenge.

The Covid-19 pandemic has made big difference to Chinese urban governance. Some
management conflicts about Guangzhou Africans happened during the pandemic. For
instance, as the healthy code should be registered and recognized through ID card or
passport. However, a part of Africans were illegal migrants, so they can not apply the
healthy code and it meant that their activities and freedom were limited. Another
problem was the isolation. As most Africans lived in narrow flats in Guangzhou, when
the community occurred pandemic, they were forced to leave their home. While as
some obstacles in communication, some Africans rejected to obey the isolation policy
and conflicted with police. At last, as the cultural and custom difference, Africans
didn’t agree to provide individual information to the Guangzhou government while
government usually used the violated method to deal with the problem. After the
protest from African ambassadors and government, China changed its management
governance. Chinese government has tried to improve its urban governance for
Africans. As some of the problems and misunderstandings were because of the ethnic
discrimination, Chinese authorities tried to eliminate the discrimination to Africans in
Guangzhou. And the government also has enhanced the communication with the
Africans to know their requirements and interest and publicize government
governance rather than adopting the forced way to manage the Africans.

In conclusion, the Africans in Guangzhou have made some difference to Chinese

urban governance at all. They let Chinese authorities try to change the original
management methods (high pressure and forced) to much more peaceful and civilized
ways towards the Africans in the community.

Reference

1) Roberto Castillo （2015），‘Homing’ Guangzhou: Emplacement, belonging

and precarity among Africans in China, International Journal of Cultural
Studies, p10-p15
2) Heidi Østbø Haugen (2013), African Pentecostal Migrants in China:
Marginalization and the Alternative Geography of a Mission Theology, African
Studies Review,p87-p99
Q2: In his book ‘China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants are Building a
New Empire in Africa’, Howard French asserts that China’s presence in Africa
is a part of a neocolonial project. Based on our discussions and readings around
soft power and neocolonialism (week 8), elaborate an argument for or against
the view of China as a neocolonial power in Africa. Give at least 2 examples
supporting your argument. (20%)

Answer 2:

Accroding to HowardFrench’s book ‘China’s Second Continent: How a Million

Migrants are Building a New Empire in Africa’, China is taking the neocolonialism in
Africa to scramble the natural resource and occupy the market. While I don’t
completely agree this viewpoint absolutely.
According to the definition of neocolonialism, it is the reimposition of imperialist
rules by a country over another independent country. Compared to the original
colonialism, neocolonialism usually adopts economic imperialism, cultural
imperialism, and political conditional aid to influence the developing countries rather
than taking military ways.

Alyaa Wagdy el-Shafei and Mohamed Metawe (2021) tried to explore and research
whether China brings the neocolonialism into Africa. They used Egypt and China
bilateral relationship as the research objectives to explain the fact that Chinese
investment in Africa. According to neoliberals, the development of trade between the
two countries is the driving force of two economic interdependence. Taking China
and Egypt as the sample, Egypt's rich marble and granite sell well in the Chinese
market, and China's large engineering equipment and small daily commodities are
also sold to Egypt in large quantities, which means that China and Egypt have
established an interdependent economic relationship rather than unilateral
dependence. Moreover, unlike Western countries require the developing countries to
adopt the improvement of human right and other political conditions, China announce
that it would like to build up the non-interference and equal foreign diplomatic and
economic relationship with developing countries.

Some Western states accuse that China makes debt trap to scramble African market
and resource. While China doesn’t put forward any political conditions to gain
Chinese economics aid. China use the concessional loans to provide the essential and
necessary infrastructure to African countries, and these infrastructure makes benefits
to the recipient countries’ international trade and industry. The Five Principles of
Peaceful Coexistence are the cornerstone of development assistance provided by
China and African countries, and China uses the Five Principles of Peaceful
Coexistence to overcome accusations of neocolonialism. China has also provided
unconditional medical assistance and peacekeeping troops to Africa under the
authority of the United Nations.

From the trade data resource between China and Egypt from 2007 to 2017, the scale
of the bilateral has grown quickly. Moreover, China and Egypt will not only corporate
in economic area, but also will enhance the cooperation in politics. In general, China
and Egypt relation is not the dependency relationship, but is the win-win cooperation.
Vivien Marsh, the UK scholar, is from social media perspective to research Chinese
soft power in Africa. He compares CCTV’s Africa Live and BBC two different
political viewpoint medias’ news report in Africa by quantitively method to show
whether Chinese media can compare the Western media to influence Africa.
However, so far, CCTV's Africa Live is not always different from the BBC's Focus on
Africa TV, both of which attempt to express a distinctive and occasionally more
optimistic view of Africa than that broadcast on popular news in the US and UK.
While CCTV's news on China in Africa is very different from other African issues.
Each African news program is in the protect of a main news organization that has
recognizable values out of Africa.

The data shows that CCTV's Africa Live does not favor positive news about Africa
over supporting the rise of Africa narrative. The positive news collected from CCTV's
Africa content is instead consistent with the 'rise of China' problem. CCTV's trend to
cover mediation than conflict makes its visual style less compelling, but promotes the
idea that Africans are seeking their own solutions. The BBC's Africa in Focus has a
more optimistic and thematic depiction of Africa, explained by its wider agenda and
investigate for news that is not mainstream or cultural, making the editorial mixture
richer. However, Africa Focus has much fewer sources than Africa Live, uses fewer
African journalists, and often makes use of the BBC's main news archive business.
This means that it often broadcasts material planed for the BBC's general nations and
international news agencies than for African audiences.

And it is doubtful for Chinese state-owned media can impose its value or viewpoint to
African audiences through its soft power. While Western medias, as represented by
the BBC, are not accepted by Africans absolutely for the belief that media should
serve democracy as freedom and democracy are not really suitable for African needs.
China’s medias don’t have any factors of colonialism at all, and China’s model of
developing economics has been interested by a number of African countries that can
help China’s social media to challenge Western media dominance. Therefore, China’s
media can make influence in Africa is because of China’s economic soft power
influence rather than considering the neocolonialism.

At last, according to Fackson Banda’s article about China in African mediascape, this
study places China's support for African media in a historical context, arguing that
contemporary China’s media intervention in Africa must be seen as section of China's
long-standing anti-colonial and anti-imperial work in its domestical and oversea
identity programs. The study argues that China's current support for African media
takes a tripartite form, namely infrastructure realignment, ideological expurgation,
and cultural reproduction.

In the article, culture is supposed as the whole that encompasses the experience of
national life, not just artistic performances, dances, etc. In the framework of Sino-
African cultural exchanges, formal, informal, and informal education is a form of
socialization in this sense. When African students enter China, they are exposed to
Chinese culture. This can be said to be a cultural gain for China or African countries.
Through this cultural exchange, China has expanded its cultural influence in Africa.
In this sense, China's support for African media culture can be seen as China's
exercise of its "soft power".

China and Africa are regarded as agents and actively participate in the construction of
a new cultural environment. The question should not be just what China has done to
Africa, but what China and Africa have done together. Against the backdrop of anti-
imperialist, postcolonial sympathy, and empathy, it seems natural to exploit the
similarities between China and Africa to try to understand the ideological and
theoretical trajectory of China's aid to African media. Many African countries remain
mired in the politics of nation-building and development, so China's state-led model
of capitalism and nationalism is an option. African media, especially state-owned
media outlets, will become an ideological tool. In turn, this nationalist representation
of capitalist development and progress may give rise to a more localized imagination
of national and economic identities. After all, many Africans secretly oppose what
they see as Western media hegemony and aspire to affirm their postcolonial cultural
identity.

In general, China and Africa are the win-win or cooperation relationships. From
economic perspective, not only China gain resource and market from Africa, but also
African countries get the opportunities to open Chinese huge market. From culture
perspective, China’s medias are not like Western medias’ performance in Africa.
Chinese would like to hold the anti-colonialism and inter-benefit viewpoint to report
African news. And Sino-Africa also have lots of culture communication in civil and
official. It can enhance Chinese soft power in Africa and at the same time help
African culture get into Chinese market.

Reference
1) Alyaa Wagdy el-Shafei and Mohamed Metawe (2021), China drive toward
Africa between arguments of neo-colonialism and mutual-beneficial relationship:
Egypt as a case study, Review of Economics and Political Science, p141-p149.
2) Vivien Marsh (2015), Mixed messages, partial pictures? Discourses under
construction in CCTV’s Africa Live compared with the BBC, Chinese Journal of
Communication, p9-p13
3) Fackson Banda(2009), China in the African mediascape: a critical injection,
Journal of African Media Studies Volume 1 Number 3, p351-p358