Table Of ContentTHE WORLD IN GUANGZHOU
Africans and Other Foreigners
in South China’s
Global Marketplace
The World in
GUANGZHOU
Gordon Mathews with
Linessa Dan Lin and Yang Yang
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2017 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical
articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press,
1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.
Published 2017
Printed in the United States of America
26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 50607- 4 (cloth)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 50610- 4 (paper)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 50624- 1 (e- book)
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226506241.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mathews, Gordon, author. | Lin, Linessa Dan, author. | Yang, Yang, 1987
March 17–, author.
Title: The world in Guangzhou : Africans and other foreigners in south China’s global
marketplace / Gordon Mathews with Linessa Dan Lin and Yang Yang.
Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2017. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017018769 | ISBN 9780226506074 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN
9780226506104 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226506241 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Guangzhou (China)—Ethnic relations. | Africans—China—
Guangzhou. | Business enterprises—China—Guangzhou.
Classification: LCC DS797.32.G836 M384 2017 | DDC 305.8009512/75—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017018769
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48– 1992 (Permanence of
Paper).
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
1 Introduction 1
What This Book Is About
Impressions of Guangzhou
A Brief History of Foreigners in Guangzhou
Foreign Places in Guangzhou
How This Book’s Research Was Done
2 Foreigners in Guangzhou 29
“The Chinese Dream”: Stories of Eight Foreigners
Rich Foreigner, Poor Foreigner
Race and Money
Foreign Communities: Japanese and Nigerians
The Power of Rumor
Foreigners’ Attitudes toward China and Chinese
3 African- Chinese Relations 55
African Traders in Guangzhou: An Overview
Business Deception and Cheating
Quarrels between Africans and Chinese
Chinese Views of Africans
African Views of Chinese
v
vi Contents
4 Low- End Globalization 81
Low- End Globalization/High- End Globalization
How Low- End Globalization Works: Sourcing, Money, Copies, and Customs
Accounts of Low- End Globalization
Low- End Globalization’s Circuits
5 Legal- Illegal in Guangzhou 115
Two Paths, Legal and Illegal
Visa and Passport Worries, Jail, and Deportation
Police
Accounts of Overstayers and Friends
6 Logistics Agents, Middlemen, and Cultural Brokers 139
Logistics Agents
Middlemen
Cultural Brokers
Accounts of Logistics Agents, Middlemen, and Cultural Brokers
7 Religion in a Foreign World 165
“I Believe in God but Chinese Believe in Gold”
Islam in Comparison to Christianity
Christian Churches
Accounts of Religious Seekers
Religion: Implications
8 Romance, Love, Marriage, and Families: A Chinese Barack Obama? 195
“African Chinese”
The Travails of Chinese- African Romantic Relationships
Children
Accounts of Marriages
Conclusion: The Larger Significance of Africans in China
Notes 221
References 231
Index 241
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The biggest debt that my two research collaborators and I have is
to the people who spoke to us. I would very much like to thank by
name the hundreds of people who spoke to us, but to do so would
violate their privacy, which would be of particular danger since some
of what they described was illegal. This book is dedicated to them,
with the deepest thanks I can possibly give. For those of you I can
still find in Guangzhou when this book comes out, I will give you
a copy, but I fear that many of you will be gone by then, headed to
different parts of the world. All I can do is thank you anonymously
from the bottom of my heart. I hope that this book justifies the trust
you have placed in us.
I thank Lynne Nakano and Reijiro Aoyama for reading earlier
drafts of this book, as well as the two anonymous readers of the
University of Chicago Press. All of you provided valuable insights
and helped me to correct my stupider mistakes— although no doubt
some such mistakes remain. I also thank Heidi Haugen, Tu Hyunh,
Karsten Giese, and numerous other scholars as well, for our discus-
sions of African traders in Guangzhou. Yijing Zheng, Daina Chen,
and Lynn Sun were enormously helpful in collecting and translating
Chinese newspaper articles on Africans in Guangzhou, something
they did on a voluntary basis, to their great credit. I thank Samson
vii
viii Acknowledgments
Wong for his maps and Gene Parulis for the photographs he has generously con-
tributed to this book. And I thank the team at Chicago for their ongoing help
and encouragement: T. David Brent, Priya Nelson, Ellen Kladky, and Ryo Yama-
guchi. Finally, I thank the Research Grants Council, Hong Kong, for providing
me with a Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship 2013/2014
(project no. CUHK403- HSS- 13), which enabled me to engage in the research
that made this book possible.
E
N
Introduction
O
What This Book Is About
There are certain cities in certain eras that stand out as magnets for
those across the globe who have dreams. New York in the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries was such a place, with immi-
grants at Ellis Island awaiting their chance to pursue the American
dream in a new world far from the European villages and slums into
which many of them were born. Today, one such place is Guang-
zhou, the urban center of the world’s manufacturing powerhouse,
the Pearl River Delta. Guangzhou today is a city that for its global
opportunities attracts foreigners the world over.
Guangzhou has a large population of foreigners, but how many
is unclear. China as a whole had some 594,000 immigrants living in
the country in 2010, according to the national census,1 less than 1 of
every 2,000 people in the country. Guangzhou numbers are all over
the map. One recent report estimates that from January to August
2014, Guangzhou, a city of some 13–1 4 million people, hosted 3.05
million inbound or outbound foreigners, with 86,000 foreigners
having registered residence in the city.2 Another website estimates
that about 500,000 foreigners are in Guangzhou at any given time.3
There are 34,000 permanent resident foreigners, according to one
1
