Abstract
While the title suggests that this book is about Africans and other foreigners in Guangzhou, it mainly deals with the presence of African traders in Guangzhou. Beyond business and trade activities, the book raises important questions including culture, race, religion, interracial marriage between Africans and Chinese, and multiculturalism in Chinese society, in this case ties with foreigners, particularly between Africans and Chinese. Gordon Mathews, Linessa Lin, and Yang Yang also discuss multiculturalism in China with its diverse ethnic groups as well as the presence of foreigners from all around the world who meet in Guangzhou mainly for business purposes. Because of business interests and ties, Chinese, African, and other foreign ethnic groups and communities interact and live in fairly good harmony.
However, multiculturalism in China is not without tensions. The notion of Chineseness based on Chinese identity and culture makes multiculturalism in China a complex and complicated issue (cf. Daouda Cissé, African traders in Yiwu: Expanding transnational trade networks and navigating China’s complex multicultural environment, in Scarlett Cornelissen and Yoichi Mine (eds) Migration and Agency in a Globalizing World: Afro-Asian Encounters, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 187–207; Allen Chun, Fuck Chineseness: On the ambiguities of ethnicity as culture as identity, Boundary 2 23(2), 1996: 111–38).
Alongside the discrimination and hatred across the various and diverse communities which are mostly driven by stereotypes and imaginaries, other intra-community issues pertain to ethnic origin, culture, and religion. The first pages of the book clearly state the complex interests and relationships between the Chinese people and foreigners, which are based on wealth, appearance, perceptions, and imaginaries. In general, the country of origin, race, and money determine the type of relationship (friendship and even love) that many Chinese have with foreigners.
While the research approach is anthropological and based on qualitative interviews conducted by the authors with African traders, the book’s methodology remains unclear because prior to the book project the authors had individually conducted research related to African traders in Guangzhou and/or Hong Kong, and different approaches and methodologies were used. Each author had different research questions and objectives. Therefore a significant question is how much of the research for this book was conducted collectively. Furthermore, the findings do not clearly identify, differentiate nor discuss the different groups of foreigners besides Africans in Guangzhou.
Mathews, Lin, and Yang describe very well how business is conducted through the globalized market of low-end products, mainly based on knock-off products. Counterfeit remains a serious issue in China. While it is easier to trace circuits of goods, the circuits undertaken by traders to renew their Chinese visa during their stay in China is more complex and difficult to track. A number of African traders manage to renew their visa by resorting to bribing Chinese immigration officers or temporarily exiting China to visit travel or visa agencies in Hong Kong or Macau, or to a country that grants them a free entry visa or visa on arrival (for example, Thailand and Malaysia). Nonetheless, many foreign traders in Guangzhou face difficulties with recurrently changing immigration rules in China.
With the presence of Chinese traders in many places where knock-offs end, competition inevitably arises between African and Chinese traders. The book, however, does not go into detail nor does it pay much attention to the rivalry and tensions between African traders and their Chinese counterparts in Chinese and African markets, the latter of which have seen the growing presence of Chinese traders.
A number of African immigrants in Guangzhou are truly attached to their religion (mainly Islam or Christianity). Most of them go to the mosques or churches there to pray as well as seek religious and/or economic assistance. Interracial marriage between Africans and Chinese is another complex issue. Most of these marriages involve African men marrying Chinese women. While there are Chinese men who marry African women, the book makes no mention of this.
The focus of this book is on the presence of African traders in Guangzhou, and it provides interesting stories of people from different backgrounds who ventured into Guangzhou as immigrants. It discusses their motivations for migration, especially those involved in business activities. The book is easy to read and accessible to a general audience. It contributes to other research done on African business activities in Guangzhou and can be used by both academics and non-academics.