China's "Chocolate City" Erupts
08/10/2009
A+
|
a-
Print Friendly and PDF
Diversity is popping out all over, even in the People's Republic of China, which is not normally known for multicultural values. The manufacturing city of Guangzhou has a large population of Africans, who buy cheap products and sell them at home.

A brouhaha blew up on July 15, when Chinese police were conducting a passport check to look for illegal aliens. A Nigerian man tried to escape by jumping from a second-story window and hurt himself. The local Africans became irate and took to the streets.

[Big trouble in China's Chocolate City, Toronto Star, Aug 1, 2009]

GUANGZHOU, China—The scene stunned the local, law-abiding Chinese: They'd never seen anything like it.

At a busy intersection in the heart of this southern city recently, angry Africans carried a bleeding black man, held aloft, across eight lanes of heavy traffic to deposit him smack at a police station's door.

Almost immediately hundreds of other Africans converged on the station — shouting for the police to come out and take responsibility.

Shutting down the streets in a near-riot was probably not the best strategy to convince the Chinese that they should be nicer to Nigerians, a fact which some cooler heads among the Africans recognized. But the deed is done now.

The influx of Africans into Guangzhou has been relatively recent and rapid...

For a decade now, thousands of African traders have descended upon Guangzhou - the hub of a region called "the workshop of the world" - to buy goods cheaply and re-sell them back home for a profit.

Today more than 20,000 Africans reside in this 10 square kilometre stretch that local Chinese cab drivers call "Chocolate City."

As many cities around the world have "Chinatowns," so Africans have come to think of this area as a kind of burgeoning "Africatown." The sounds of Afrobeat music permeate the air, business gets done in English or Igbo (a Nigerian language) and colourful west African dress abounds.

But the Chinese are not an immigrant nation. Fully 92 per cent belong to one ethnic group alone: the Han. They dominate political and cultural life and remain relatively cool to foreign ways.

Funny, when Americans "remain relatively cool to foreign ways," they are called racist and condemned for being unappreciative toward diversity's alleged enrichment. However, it seems acceptable to the Toronto Star reporter for the citizens of the world's largest country to have such attitudes.

Here's a TV report about the events.

Red China of course has the right to control its borders and monitor who enters the place. That said, a common complaint among Africans residing in the PRC is the "Everyday racism in China".

Mbosi knows very well that your visa must be in order. If not, you are sent immediately to the immigration department detention centre. Illegals are kept there until their relatives or friends can pay the fine of 10,000 yuan (1160 euros). After payment, the detainee remains in custody for one more month before he is deported, as an extra punishment.

Around the same time (mid-July) in California, Assembly Member Paul Fong convinced the Sacramento legislature (which apparently has nothing more important on its plate) to issue an apology to Chinse immigrants for the unkind treatment they received in the past — even though many were "paper sons," a euphemism Chinese use for illegal aliens of their tribe in California. Even the LA Times noted that aspect early in its July 23 article: California issues formal apology for past discrimination against Chinese.

The documents Chan Share clutched as he left China were forged. It was 1939 and Asians were not allowed to immigrate to the United States. So, like many others, Share claimed he was a "paper son" and had a California-born relative whose records were lost in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

(For background info, see my blog items, Chinese Shakedown in California and San Francisco Chinese Celebrate Immigration Fraud Of Days Gone By.)

Hey, can Americans get an apology for all the illegal alien Chinese who lied about their parentage to get here?

Print Friendly and PDF