Reconstructing Blackness in Grassroots Interactions Between Chinese and Africans in Guangzhou

This article examines the racial implications of daily life interactions between African traders and rural-to-urban Chinese migrants in China’s southern metropolis Guangzhou, due to a recent wave of African migration to China. Differing from previous generations of Africans in China who were mainly students from elite backgrounds, these new migrants consist of individual traders and small entrepreneurs who purchase cheap consumer goods in China and ship them back to Africa for sale. Despite language barriers and cultural differences, the two migrant groups share similar structural marginalization in urban China due to their non-resident or non-citizenship status. By focusing on these two underprivileged groups in urban China, this research foregrounds a grassroots interpretation of Sino/African trade relations, which is largely absent from official propaganda. I argue that racial learning between non-elite Chinese and Africans is a bi-directional and interactive process, which may involve mutual stereotypes and racialization on both sides. However, Chinese migrants’ shared structural marginalization with black Africans may also give rise to alternative constructions of blackness that move beyond the hegemonic black/white binary. Due to the relative absence of whiteness and white privilege in grassroots Chinese/African interactions, the notion of white supremacy can be de-centered and replaced by multiple parameters for evaluating blackness, such as nationality, English proficiency, class and economic status, indigenous aesthetic values, religion, and cultural differences.