Tag: Chinese immigration

Codrin Arsene writes from a black man’s perspective. About one hundred Algerian and Chinese residents clashed in Algeria’s capital a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated phenomenon. Violent clashes between Chinese immigrants and Ten reasons why Chinese are despised in Africa discontented Africans have occurred all over the continent from South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, my research site in Tanzania, to Ethiopia and Egypt. The situation is getting worse by the day since various factors are provoking these unforeseen acts of xenophobia. In the light of the latest attacks against Chinese in Algeria, I’m piling up a list of the top ten reasons why Chinese are despised in Africa. I am basing my list on the most common answers I received from Africans I interacted with in South Africa, Zambia and Tanzania. I believe these causes might be similar in other countries as well. The top is not made from the most significant to the less significant factor as this is irrelevant since all these causes act together and can only be seen as a whole!

Disclaimer: This article is more about perceptions than facts. These perceptions are the ones that cause xenophobia even if there is a loose connection to facts. This article is not meant to suggest that Chinese people are hated all over the continent. In fact, many Africans I talk to every day praise the Chinese for being hardworking, honest and direct people. The only reason why this article was written was to contextualize the attacks against the Chinese people in Africa, not to draw conclusions about the Chinese Diaspora itself.

1. High unemployment in urban centers (where most Chinese immigrants work) fuels tensions over migrant workers. In Dar es Salaam, I met Chinese citizens working on less than 60,000 Shillings a month (45 dollars) which is unacceptable even for the average person working in the city.
2. Chinese workers in Africa, most of which happen to be uneducated, have no respect for local customs. I witnessed one Chinese getting brutally beaten in Zanzibar last August because he refused to stop drinking beer in front of his shops and listen to loud music. It goes without saying that this type of behavior is offensive during a religious holiday, especially one as important as the Ramadan.
3. Chinese traders sell extremely cheap products which break easily. This causes tensions between buyers and sellers.
4. More than half of the uneducated Chinese that I interacted with are very aggressive in their behavior and use curse words loosely. This is another cause of frustration among the local people.
5. Various Chinese living in Africa are not only aggressive but racist in their attitudes and behavior. Instead of trying to see other Africans as their equals, they claim to be superior in front of the ones they interact with. This brings back old memories from the colonial period. Moreover, the actions of a few (not every Chinese I met in Africa is racist) affect the perception of the whole community.
6. Many Chinese do not speak the local language at all which makes communication even harder.
7. Various Chinese run enterprises throughout Africa have failed to pay their employers, something that is seen by many Africans as another form of direct exploitation. While the Chinese government has taken concrete measures against some of these companies, these instances are still prevalent in much of Africa.
8. At least in East Africa, Chinese citizens have been incarcerated for illegal fishing, illegal activities or even prostitution (I myself and currently into the businesses of two Chinese run brothels in Tanzania.) Illegal fishing in Tanzania made a lot of Tanzanians who depend of the fish trawled out of Lake Victoria and the Indian Ocean think that “the Chinese” are stealing their food. Such generalizations are harmful but the local authorities have not put any effort into addressing them. Not all Chinese are illegal fishermen or crooks but if people take some isolated incidents out of context they are more likely to form negative opinions about them.
9. There are more and more biased media accounts in East Africa that portrait the Chinese community in less than favorable terms. It took me a lot of time to find out why this is the case. My findings point to the fact that the businesses of some of the most important businessmen in Tanzania and Kenya are affected by the Chinese firms operating in this part of Africa. These owners have many political connections and are now pressing of the local mass media to write about the Chinese community in negative terms. Two businessmen told me they actually ordered inflammatory articles against the Chinese community.
10. There is almost no effort to control Chinese immigration in East Africa. More and more Chinese people come here every year which creates anxieties among the local people. And why shouldn’t that be the case? In one month since I came to Dar es Salaam I interacted with Chinese who, to come to the first reason why Chinese I despised in Africa, are plumbers, electricians, instructors, engineers, agriculturalists, babysitters, carpenters, miners, machine operators, street sellers or even baggers. Again, I don’t think this is a problem on its own but uncontrolled migration causes much of the anxieties to begin with. – african-politics.com