Africans in Guangzhou
[3] Since 2014, the city's African population has significantly declined due to strict immigration enforcement by Chinese authorities and economic pressures in home countries, including depreciation of the Nigerian naira and Angolan kwanza.
[9] A 2014 article in the magazine This Is Africa noted a decrease in population, blaming increased immigration enforcement and foreign exchange difficulties.
[4][7] A September 2016 CNN article on the community claimed that upwards to thousands of African residents had left the city in the previous 18 months.
[9][11][12][13][14] Migrants from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, and Senegal are the remaining African communities in Guangzhou with at least a few hundred registered members at country-based civic organizations in 2014.
[12] About 3 kilometres (2 mi) from Xiaobei and north of the Guangzhou railway station is Guangyuanxi, a more business orientated area with a major presence of Nigerian Igbo people.
[18] In Guangzhou, Africans are generally engaged in commerce, visiting or residing in the city because of its wholesale trading markets supplied by nearby factories.
[27] A newspaper source described as a "senior government official" in Uganda blamed the Ministry of Internal Affairs for illegally selling Ugandan passports.
[27] During the COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China, reports became widespread of Africans of Guangzhou being evicted from flats and hotels by landlords, and having difficulty in finding food and shelter as a result.
[35] The chair of African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, also summoned Chinese Ambassador to the AU, Liu Yuxi, to express his extreme concern.
Specific plans and proper arrangements are made to protect their life and health to the best of our ability, thanks to which we were able to save the lives of some African patients in severe or critical conditions.He also said in the regular press conference on 13 April that China will address the "African friends’ concerns" by adopting a series of measures to avoid racist and discrimination problems, and condemned "the US had better focus on domestic efforts to contain the spread of the virus.
[38] Some Africans say that overstaying in China is inevitable because it is impossible to finish the business they had come for within a 30-day time frame and they cannot afford a plane ticket home.
[24] Based on field interviews, Igbos report being under greater pressure from family and peers to become a success to justify a trip to China.
[42] Nigerian traders who are a large part of the African contingent reported being stymied by the difficulty of obtaining foreign currency in Nigeria needed to purchase goods.
[42] In order to obtain naira, Nigerian traders had to resort to the black market to buy dollars at a 75% premium, making it difficult to turn a profit.
[44] The Guangzhou Public Security Bureau carried out a major drug bust with 1,300 police officers raiding the Lihua (Dragon) Hotel in the city's Yuexiu District.
The August 2013 raid coincided with an immigration enforcement crackdown in the summer 2013 and led to the arrest of 168 suspects, most of whom were described by police as citizens of Nigeria and Mali.
"[46] The Ambassador in the same interview, a year before planned retirement, was harsh on his countrymen for engaging in what he described as rampant drug trafficking and ill-mannered public behavior ("smoking marijuana openly in another man's country") and vented "it makes you not to enjoy your job".
