Blacks in Guangzhou: From attacking local police stations, mass disturbance to sheer silenced fear

Blacks in Guangzhou: From attacking local police stations, mass disturbance to sheer silenced fear

Before Africans flooded in Guangzhou in large numbers, the local Chinese would still refer to them as “African brothers.” But when the black population multiplied by tens and thousands, locals would denounce them using the n-word, impatiently anticipating they would be banished out of China. Everything exists for a reason, so as the sudden change in the attitudes towards Africans. 

At its peak, more than a hundred thousand Africans settled in Guangzhou; the overwhelming number of blacks, especially in small towns of Xiaobei and Sanyuan, had passers-by wondering if they had mistakenly stepped into African borders. These alien immigrants once “occupied” the city of Yuangsheng, with experience of conducting illegal acts; for instance, drug dealing, robbery, sexually harassing locals, attacking local police stations, unlawfully gathering on streets to confront officers. And over the span of 20 years, the Guangzhou blacks have been testing the patience of local Chinese, until they finally reached the locals’ limit.

Destroying immigration documents just to stay “stuck” in Guangzhou

Since 1997, it is typical to find blacks engaging in Guangzhou business. Even as the Asia financial crisis causing the global economy to collapse, the Chinese economy stayed not only safe and sound but flourished eminently. Guangzhou became one of the biggest Chinese financial hubs and accompanied by the intensive light industries in surrounding regions, all kinds of products could be sold at cheap prices. On the other hand, Africans suffered from setback to setback in Southeastern-Asia regions, while they could not afford the costs of European visas. As China lent her helping hand by enhancing Sino-African relations, Guangzhou became the next tryout settlement for Africans. 

Due to their fragile industrial foundations, African countries are heavily reliant on imports, even for clothes and basic amenities. Guangzhou, which already exported products worth billions of RMB, can of course tolerate further trading with Africans if that is purely trading. But when the African league of explorers earned riches by reselling these cheap products, Guangzhou became their oasis of the East. It is not surprising to see how Guangzhou became the Chinese counterpart of the 20th century American dream in the early 2000s. 

From the year 1997 to 2008, Africans rushed into Guangzhou in hopes of being the next Slumdog billionaire. And for those who desire to dwell in China for a long period of time, they tore up their passports once they got past immigration control, thinking that they have passed the point of no return. None of them feared deportation as no one would be able to check their origins without proper identification documents.

A majority of them weren’t proper businessmen; they were failed speculators in their countries seeking to hit the jackpot of the East. Without decent means of trade, they wander and stroll around aimlessly on the streets of Guangzhou, earning dimes just enough to fulfill their own hunger and basic needs. Although many of them lived in regions full of wholesale markets, they contributed little to the Sino-African trade. 

Thus the term “Three Afr-wrongs” is coined (“Africa” shares the same character for “wrong”); they distinguished themselves from legitimate African businessmen by not trading their ways to prosperity, but trying to suffocate Guangzhou to a standstill, hoping that they could earn their rights to reside by these desperate measures. They either tore up their identification documents or chose not to renew their passports. When the policemen tried to check their papers, they resorted to criminal acts like purchasing contraband credentials. On a good day when the police perform their checks leniently and with serious language barriers, it only takes continuous pestering and begging to get away with it again.

Attacking police stations and confronting officers in masses What’s worse than a standstill for Guangzhou were “Afr-wrongs” being the asocial factor that could ruin the society. With their powers left unchecked, they regard themselves as the masters of the land. They did anything as their ego told them: recklessly harassing females on the streets by smacking their buttocks, paying only half the prices when shopping or riding taxis without any regards, and even selling drugs in the suburbs. 

In 2009, as the number of “Afr-wrongs” flourished, the Guangzhou government started to investigate and deport these undocumented aliens. In a certain search, a passport-less African tried to get away with the passport search by jumping off the roof of an 18-meter tall building and died. After the incident, hundreds of blacks charged the local police station, angrily demanding an answer from the officers. They strongly requested the law enforcement units to return the dead body by the fall, holding signs with “Give us the dead body.” 

To be frank, did they consider China the land of holy saints, a country willing to care and answer for an illegal alien jumping off the roof by himself? The reckless assaults directly irritated the Guangzhou cops, resulting in them to enforce law with a harder fist.

In 2012, there was another incident arisen by the black in Guangzhou. A black man, who took the motorcycle taxi, agreed to pay 10 RMB at the beginning, ended up giving 5 RMB and ran away. The driver of the motorcycle taxi, who had encountered such fraud several times, engaged fight with the black man, resulting in the black man certified dead after emergency treatment.

This should be an independent event, however, the black community seemed to have figured out the opportunity of “independence.” Hundreds of black rushed onto the Guangyuan West Road, blocking the traffic and clashed with the police. The conflict lasted 2 hours, and the black left after police used electrical batons to disperse.

Worsening racial anxiety

The 2 events, together with the rise of the internet, allowing more and more Chinese to have a better understanding of the situation of black in Guangzhou, rising a huge concern on racial anxiety. After 2009, topics related to “Guangzhou is occupied by black” started to appear on the Internet. There were even rumors that over 500 thousand blacks were settled in Guangzhou. 

Chinese started to worry about the flood of the Black population in China will scramble the resources with Chinese. With the longer they stay in China, they would eventually become legal immigrants. Among all resources, sex is the easiest one could trigger citizens’ emotion. Chinese male youth has been bothered by the problem of being single for years while on the internet there were always cases where Chinese female dating the Black.

In recent years, Guangzhou’s enforcement of illegally stayed black was tightened. Most of the “Three Afr-wrongs“ were deported back to Africa. Currently, almost 14 thousands of legal black residents in Guangzhou were businessmen. However, even with their legal status, if they were investigated to be “misbehaved,” they would be deported. Not only the Chinese police but also the embassy of different African countries would also provide assistance in arresting the “Afr-wrongs” in Xiaobei and Sanyuanlei area.

The Black in Guangzhou can be described as sheering from silenced fear. They were afraid to be taken a photo, afraid their photo will be circulated on the internet and raise the tension and anger from the Chines netizens. Frankly speaking, black who lived in Guangzhou for years, already knew how bad the Chinese hate them on the Internet. Among the black people who know Chinese, can search the internet for related videos, passages, posts and inform other black. The worst consequence is if leaked any information about themselves, anything happened to them would be deported.

To put on the table, most of the black in Guangzhou were purely businessmen. After years of monitoring, the black problems were improved.

Those needed to be deported were deported, those who violated the law were also responded by the police efficiently.

All Black out of China?

When you were being labeled, your fault will exaggerated infinitely. This also happened to the yellow, for example, in Europe and America, Asia’s social status was arguably worse than the black. The black can only blame themselves for today’s situation. Not being a widely welcomed race to start with, they should have obeyed the law and regulation when arriving in China more than others, and the best was to please Chinese. 

If we consider the same situation with white people instead of black, Chinese people’s comments would be definitely changed. People would say that China was so strong that even Guangzhou attracted thousands of thousands of Westerners. However, the reality was not a video game, it was impossible to change the skin tone of the immigrants. If you are one of the “hated” black, then you should work harder and better. 

If the black entered China legally and just do business normally, it is somehow acceptable, what we need is a strengthened management and rolling but not simply say no to everyone. If African businessmen were deported with no reason, the trading business of Guangzhou would definitely shrink, Chinese factories that export to Africa would be closed, resulting in a lot of unemployed, increasing more asocial factors.

China, being the beneficiary of globalization, a superpower, welcomes people all over the world for traveling, work and do business. However, they have to obey and follow the law of Chinese, respect the culture of China. The PRC government should also strengthen the management towards foreigners, for those who violated the law, they must be deported back to their countries.

I believe what happened in Guangzhou for the past 20 years, must have provided a blueprint to other cities for how to deal with foreigners. When the close door diplomatic Qing Dynasty could also build Thirteen Factories (Thirteen Hongs of Canton) for business ports, to think 21st century China still hoped to get all foreigners out of China was unrealistic and unnecessary. 

I believe the government will be able to manage them well, to be wealthy, democratic, civilized, peaceful, free, equal, fair, justice, nationalistic, dedicate, honest and kind.

This directly hit the sore point of the Chinese society. Asking the Black to leave China is therefore a social conscience. Furthermore, Chinese, with a traditional concept of clan for thousands of years, are extremely concerned about the “bloodline,” it is unacceptable to have a mix, especially a black with a Chinese. People worried the future of China would become a multinational country, like the USA, with Guangzhou becoming Asia’s Detroit.

Citizens’ concern on racist anxiety has been kept on accumulating until 2017 when the Tianjin Representative of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPCC) Pang Qinglin submitted a proposal to suggest China deal with Black community problem in Guangdong strictly. The proposal stated that from all aspects with statistics, there were an estimated 500 thousand black population in the province, meanwhile, among the 500 thousand Black, only 20 thousand were legal immigrant, while the others were either illegal immigrant or had expired residency, causing a series of problem to China. 

Rumors from Internet Exaggerated the Problem caused by Black

Pang’s move had a great social meaning, implying the problem of black was already on the country’s ruling perspective, however, the 500 thousand Black was a fatal figure. 

In 2013, Guangzhou announced that there were 530 thousand Black traffic, therefore the internet believed that there were 500 thousand black in Guangzhou. However, the number of people stayed and the number of people in traffic are 2 different concepts. For example in 2018, there was already over 23 million people traffic, however, foreigners living in China are less than 1 million.The only reason that there seems to have several hundreds of thousands of black living in Guangzhou is simply because they live together in a tiny area. 

Furthermore, Chinese female dating black people is also not as ridiculous as rumors on the internet. Searching through the internet, there were just a couple of Chinese females taking a photo with black, however, duplicated forward and resend blurred the focus. Affected by emotion, citizens tend to treat a single case as a social phenomenon. Therefore when 3 Black from Africa were deported back to their home countries, the internet was crazily spread “over 300,000 black were deported to Africa, 100,000 women became widows.”

I have lived in Xiaobei district for half a month and haven’t met a mixed baby, not even a pair of black-chines couple yet. Black dating Chinese women do exist, however, it is just an uncommon case and in a dynamic society.

Internet rumors loved to exaggerate truth by exceptional cases, believing Guangzhou women love black, which was an insult to the Guangzhou citizens and Guangzhou itself.

In fact, in Guangzhou, the proportion of Chinese female dating Europe, Latin American, other Asian countries’ men is a lot higher than those dating with a black. However, since black’s “the inferior race” perception was deeply rooted in the country, it was easy to move the racial emotion of the Chinese general public. Frankly speaking, normal Chinese female hate black, even the Chinese prostitute in the Xiaobei district, they never seek black customers, instead the middle east or European.

Moreover, differing from perception regarding black the crime rate for black in Guangzhou was similar to other foreigners in Guangzhou for 1.68%, with no significant area of attention.

Deportation of black terrified the black community

In terms of the number of foreigners in Guangzhou, Black is not the largest community. And worth taking note, after 2014, a decreasing trend for the number of Black in Guangzhou was recorded.

Excerpt: Zhihu Web News, (May-2019)

https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/65361477