China has invested heavily in Africa to the tune of billions. But now this partnership has hit shaky ground.
Africans on the continent are outraged over the treatment of African citizens living in China. Due to a rumor in China that African immigrants were infected with the coronavirus, the backlash against Africans there has been harsh. There were reports of Africans being put out of their apartments and hotels, denied service in stores and barred from entering a McDonald’s in Guangzhou, an area that has been known for years as “Little Africa.”
In fact, China is Africa’s biggest trade partner. It is also its biggest lender.
“China has spent untold billions in Africa since its emergence as a global power, investing in its natural resources, underwriting massive infrastructure projects, and wooing its leaders,” Politico reported. “Investment in Africa has bought China friends and allies in multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization, undermining the West’s once-reliable lock on the postwar world order while fueling its economy back home.”
China and the China Development Bank lent more than $150 billion to African countries between 2000 and 2018, according to the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Now China has to explain to a group of disgruntled African ambassadors in Beijing why their African citizens are being mistreated. In fact, the ambassadors wrote to Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi to complain that citizens from Togo, Nigeria, and Benin living in Guangzhou were evicted from their homes and made to undergo obligatory testing for COVID-19.
“In some cases, the men were pulled out of their families and quarantined in hotels alone,” the note, seen by Politico, said.
“There is a lot of tension within the relationship. I think both of these issues are the newest manifestations of long-term problems,” said Cobus van Staden, a senior researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs. “Africa’s official response (to its citizens in China) took into account popular sentiment a lot more than it usually would have.”
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China, for its part, says it’s taking a hard look at all foreigners in the country.
On March 28, China officially imposed an entry ban on all foreign nationals with visas or residence permits to try and slow what it said was a rising number of imported cases after the country managed to control the domestic infection, the Brookings Institute reported.
But Africans say they are being singled out. Chinese officials released data saying a large number of Africans in the country, especially in Guangzhou, are infected with the coronavirus.
“Notably, local authorities have identified Africa as the source of the largest number of imported COVID-19 cases — among all foreign cases identified in Guangzhou, 76 percent have been from African countries, including 36 percent from Nigeria alone,” The Brookings Institute reported.
On April 11, the city of Guangzhou had identified 119 imported cases of COVID-19. That included 25 foreign nationals — 9 Nigerians, 3 Angolans, 2 Nigerians, 2 from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and 1 each from France, Brazil, the U.K., Australia, Syria, Russia, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, and Madagascar.
