Chinese migrants and Africa’s development : new imperialists or agents of change?

194 Pages·2014·3.91 MB·English

by  Giles Mohan

About the authors
Giles Mohan is professor of international development at
the Open University. He is a human geographer and studies
African governance and the transnational connections to
and from Africa, especially migrants. His recent work focuses
on China's engagement with Africa and has been funded by
a series of grants from the Economic and Social Research
Council. He has published extensively in geographical, devel-
opment studies and African studies journals and has acted as
a consultant for a range of BBC documentaries on issues of
international development.
Ben Lampert is a lecturer in the Development Policy and
Practice Group at the Open University. He has a background
in human geography and his research is concerned with the
role of migrants and diaspora communities in development in
Africa. His most recent work has been on Chinese migrants in
Ghana and Nigeria.
May Tan-Mullins is a human geographer at the University of
Nottingham Ningbo, China, having previously worked at the
National University of Singapore and Durham University. Her
research is concerned with environmental security and the
political ecology of marine resources. Her most recent project
concerns developmental debates and the politics of Chinese
engagement with African development, and environmental
and food security issues in China.
Daphne Chang is a staff tutor and a faculty associate of
the Development Policy and Practice Group at the Open
University. She is a social anthropologist. Her PhD research
investigated the intermarriage of the Maasai and the Kikuyu
in Kenya. Her recent work focuses on the lives and work of
Chinese women migrants in Africa and the gender roles/
relationships in Chinese family businesses in Africa.

CHINESE MIGRANTS AND AFRICA’S
DEVELOPMENT
NEW IMPERIALISTS OR AGENTS OF CHANGE?
Giles Mohan, Ben Lampert, May Tan-Mullins
and Daphne Chang
Zed Books
London
Chinese Migrants and Africa’s Development: New imperialists or agents
of change? was first published in 2014 by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia
Street, London n1 9JF, UK
www.zedbooks.co.uk
Copyright © Giles Mohan, Ben Lampert, May Tan-Mullins and Daphne
Chang 2014
The rights of Giles Mohan, Ben Lampert, May Tan-Mullins and
Daphne Chang to be identified as the authors of this work have been
asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
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isbn 978-1-78032-918-5
CONTENTS
Abbreviations | vi
1 The Chinese in Africa: migration and development beyond
the West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 China’s opening up: internationalization, liberalization and
emigration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3 Africa as opportunity: Chinese interests, motives and
aspirations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4 Chinese socio-economic life in Africa: networks and
realities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
5 Constructing the other: narratives of tension and conflict
in Sino-African encounters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
6 Building bridges: towards conviviality, cooperation and
mutual benefit in Sino-African encounters . . . . . . . . 125
7 Conclusion: everyday Sino-African encounters and the
potential for African development. . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Bibliography | 165
Index | 179
ABBREVIATIONS
ESRC Economic and Social Research Council
FDI foreign direct investment
FOCAC Forum on China–Africa Cooperation
GIPC Ghana Investment Promotion Centre
GUTA Ghana Union of Traders’ Associations
ICT information and communications technology
MAN Manufacturers Association of Nigeria
NGN Nigerian naira
NLC Nigeria Labour Congress
NUCFRLNMPE National Union of Chemical, Footwear, Rubber,
Leather and Non-Metallic Products Employees
PRC People’s Republic of China
RMB renminbi
ROC Republic of China
SEZ Special Economic Zone
SMEs small and medium-sized enterprises
SOE state-owned enterprise
1 | THE CHINESE IN AFRICA: MIGRATION AND
DEVELOPMENT BEYOND THE WEST
Introduction: African globalization and the emergence of China
in Africa
Much of the discussion of China in Africa has been framed by
oppositional discourses, which argue that the presence of Chinese
people and firms is either uniformly ‘bad’ for Africans or resoundingly
a ‘good’ thing. The most common of these are China’s presence as
a form of imperialism versus ‘South–South’ cooperation, large-scale
importation of Chinese labour versus skills transfer, and exacerba-
ting poor governance versus non-interference in sovereign states.
These are important debates and ultimately link to big questions of
change in the global order and the ideological perspectives of the
powerful states involved. Yet, global restructuring and shifting power
relations – the stuff of international relations and political economy
– do not take place in the abstract. These changing relationships are
about people on the move and the linkages between places, and so
migration is central to them.
For much of the last century, when we think of foreign powers
engaged in Africa we usually default to ‘the West’. It is those European
powers that colonized the continent, multinational corporations from
the developed world, or the powerful US-based financial institutions
which are seen as the key external actors engaging in Africa’s (under)
development. However, with the economic and political rise of a
group of Asian countries, Brazil, Russia and a number of Middle
Eastern states, the map of external intervention in Africa has grown
massively more complex in the past decade. And accompanying these
global shifts are migration flows of diplomats, traders, spouses, aid
workers, students, tourists and construction workers. While African
cities have always been cosmopolitan spaces, it is now common to see
and hear an even greater diversity of peoples from across the globe.
2 | one
It is the presence of China as a geopolitical actor and as a source
of migrants that has provoked most attention, with claims that there
are now as many as a million Chinese people living and working on
the continent. In the twenty-five years that we have been research-
ing in Africa, these growing Chinese connections have been very
apparent. In many of the urban centres of southern Nigeria, if, as a
Caucasian, you walk down the street, more often than not someone
will shout Oyibo, the Nigerian Pidgin word meaning white person or
foreigner. During fieldwork for this book in 2010, one of us, a white
British male, was, for the first time, referred to in a similar street
encounter in Lagos as Chinko, a somewhat disparaging reference to
Chinese-made products which has also gained traction in both Ghana
and Nigeria as a term for Chinese people. The rise of this expression
reveals how commonplace it is to see people of East Asian origin on
the streets and beaches and in the bars and shops of African cities.
In our survey in Nigeria and Ghana, which we outline later in this
chapter, around 75 per cent of respondents noted an increase in
the number of Chinese people over the past five years. Moreover,
the entry of Chinko into West African parlance attests to a profound
sense of cultural difference that we will explore in this book.
Hence this book takes seriously Alden’s (2007: 128) observation:
‘The behaviour of thousands of newly settled Chinese businessmen
and the conduct of the African communities in which they live and
work will matter as much as the diplomacy and concessions made at
the government level.’ The book asks what does this migration mean
for both the increasing number of Chinese migrants and their African
‘hosts’? And how does this make us rethink the relationship between
these new migration flows and development more broadly? The rest
of this chapter addresses our major themes and the theoretical ap-
proaches we have used to try and understand them. In both cases
we often highlight the most salient aspects and in the substantive
chapters we explore these themes and theories in more depth as
they help illuminate our empirical analysis. In this chapter we also
outline our methodology and data collection, which has unfolded
over five years and across four African countries.
the chinese in aFrica | 3
The state of knowledge and the book’s themes
As with our opening observation, the migration and development
issue has also been subject to a heated debate that tends to reflect
ideological standpoints as opposed to a focused engagement with
reality. A starting point for assessing the reality is the number of
migrants.
Dubious data While most observers accept that China has sent an
increased number of workers to Africa, particularly in the last decade,
a major problem in assessing these migration flows is that data are
speculative. Table 1.1 sets out some of the estimates for a range of
historical periods up to the present.
Notwithstanding the serious limitations of such data, they lend
themselves to several interpretations. First, the data show that size-
able, long-standing Chinese migrant communities in South Africa
and Mauritius date back to the colonial period and that more recent
immigration consisted of 1980s arrivals from Hong Kong and Tai-
wan. Second, the data also show that the rapid increases in Chinese
immigra tion to Africa over the past decade coincide not only with
China’s increased foreign direct investment (FDI) but also with
China’s trade with various African countries. Mung (2008) estimated
the current number of Chinese workers in Africa to be within the
range of 270,000 to 510,000 and in 2007 the Xinhua Press Agency
estimated that as many as 750,000 Chinese might be working or
living in Africa for extended periods (cited in French and Polgreen
2007). As noted above, more recent estimates now put the figure at
around a m illion. Whatever the general picture for Africa, the greatest
growth is found in countries with significant oil resources, notably
Nigeria, Angola and Sudan.
This paucity of data highlights three further issues that need to
be considered in any study of the Chinese in Africa. First, history
matters in terms of understanding the periodization of migration and
its relationship to geopolitical forces, which we discuss in Chapters 2
and 3. In turn, this shapes the second issue: we must have a sharper
focus on the social and geographical characteristics of migrants.
Third, and related to the earlier issue, is the question of context.