Zambian Sunset, Flickr Creative Commons (wgbhmorningstories)

Old and young

Thirty-two years after his birth in Henan Province in central China, I meet Paul in his uncle’s restaurant in Lusaka, Zambia. After completing his secondary education, Paul moved to Beijing in search of better opportunities. He unsuccessfully tried to enter University and changed jobs dozens of times, finally settling as  a tourist guide.

“This is not China,” Paul tells me, “we must adapt to local conditions and to the local way of working and doing business”. Paul belongs to a new generation of Chinese migrants in Lusaka, which is rather different from the old one in terms of adaptation to the new environment. He is sharp and speaks good English, and his relationship with the African waiters of the restaurant doesn’t seem hampered by linguistic and cultural barriers. This is quite rare: it is common to see African workers making fun of the dodgy shyness of their Chinese employers, and using overly simplified English to talk to them, especially when they are old.

Dr. Zhang represents this older generation. He came to Zambia fifteen years ago as a volunteer and opened a small clinic in a dusty street in central Lusaka. His wife helps him out in the clinic; they have a son at one of the city’s secondary schools.

Dr. Zhang cannot speak Nianja, the most common language in this part of Zambia. His poor English is of little use; I wonder how he manages to talk to his patients. Indeed, his relationship with patients does not seem smooth, and he keeps complaining that many of them often fail to pay.

The world of Dr Zhang is all here: a wife, a child, his clinic and his poor patients. He doesn’t interact with other Chinese or mix with locals. He is a world away from home.

Big and small

Another major divide in the Chinese community in Lusaka is occupation. It is possible to identify two different kinds of Chinese living in Lusaka: some of them migrate to join a previously-established family business (usually restaurants, but also farms, stores or clinics), while some others work for Chinese companies active in the mining, construction or service sectors. The former do not generally plan to return to their home country; the latter usually spend no more than two years in Zambia, avoiding responsibilities required by permanent residence, and becoming both objects and subjects of an “orientalizing” discourse. They fit well into Aihwa Ong’s notion of flexible citizenship, which can be understood as a new form of relational identity based on transnationalism and induced by global capital circulation. In both situations, the center of social life is a closed circle: family in the first case and work colleagues in the second. As a result, the Chinese community in Lusaka is quite loose, and people have few opportunities to meet outside their closed circles.

While Paul and Dr. Zhang are both involved in small businesses, Micheal represents the world of Chinese big business in Africa. He works for a large Chinese company, and his offices are in a tall glass building in the centre of Lusaka. He has already worked in India and Egypt for the same employer. “Zambians”, he declares, “are the best people”. Michael came here one month ago and will stay for only three months. His main concern is safety: “Here you don’t feel as safe as in China; it is dangerous to go out when it’s dark.” Michael lives in a compound with his Chinese colleagues, where they have a Chinese chef and evening “amusements” organized by the company. His only ties to Zambia are a passport visa and mosquito repellent.  Despite his admiration of its people, Michael says couldn’t ever settle Zambia.It’s a good place to be for a short period, he tells me. As I say goodbye and leave his office, two local attendants enter with a box of Chinese packet-lunch, duly prepared by the Chinese chef for all the workers.

King Cobra

The rise of anti-Chinese campaigns is a new common element that all Chinese in Zambia have to confront. After a disappointing result in the 2001 general elections, the Patriotic Front (PF) leader Micheal Sata, a.k.a. “King Cobra,” started to play the ethnic card and exploited  existing discontent with Chinese presence among sectors of the Zambian electorate, like textile workers and miners (see BOX 1). In doing so, the PF injected popular social demands into what had become a moribund political debate and won 29.4 percent of the votes in 2006, becoming the second largest party after the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), and further strengthening its position after the 2008 elections.

The Chinese community of Lusaka is a diverse mix of people from different generations, with different business interests and personal stories. Sata’s rhetoric ignores those differences and portrays all Chinese migrants as foreign exploiters. “They are just flooding the country with human beings”;  this  is how Chinese migration is viewed by King Cobra. The Patriotic Front political Manifesto draws on such claims, and indirectly accuses the Chinese of being the main beneficiaries of the MMD government (see BOX 2 ). Western media, with their uninformed and stereotypical discourse on Chinese colonialism in Africa, bear great responsibility in legitimizing xenophobic anti-Chinese campaigns of this kind. Several newspaper headlines may serve to illustrate: while United Press International (11 November 2009) warns that “China Tightens Grip on Africa”, the Telegraph (31 August 2007) makes the stronger claim that “China is trying to colonise Africa,” while the Daily Mail (18 July 2008) claims to explain “How China’s taking over Africa, and why the West should be VERY worried” [uppercase in the original text].

Chineseness as a reaction

Paul is the only Chinese I interviewed who is willing to talk about anti-Chinese campaigns. He entirely subscribes to the theory of Taiwanese influence, and adds that Zambians should instead complain about the “Whites”, who imposed their own culture and religion, while the Chinese came only to work.

Like Paul, Dr. Zhang doesn’t belong in Zambia, but he also probably won’t ever live in China again. Yet he still feels Chinese. As I mention Zambian relationships with Taiwan, he immediately overheats and launches an exited and ill-formed monologue on the territorial rights of the People’s Republic over its small Republican sister, while his worried wife clumsily tries to stop him. When I asked what made him Chinese, a young accountant at a Chinese-owned hotel in central Lusaka told me that he was Chinese “in his spirit and his heart”. Others pointed to Chinese culture and language as their identity markers.

Every Chinese migrant has to face the new Zambian environment alone, relaying only on their family and colleagues, which brings many of them to take refuge in an imaginary notion of Chinese superior civilization based on a not very well-defined Chinese culture.

Entering a new phase?

This scenario may change if young Chinese in Lusaka will enter a new phase in which they need to compete or cooperate with each other. Competition for resources and business opportunities may come as a result of new migration inflows from China, while cooperation may be a reaction to a perceived threat from Zambian Government or society. Up to the present, none of these two contrasting needs has emerged, but all interviewees agree that trends seem to point to that direction. In particular, if anti-Chinese campaigns regain strength, the community may, as Paul puts it, “develop strategies of bad-times solidarity”.

While the engagement of China in Africa under a formal policy framework has received growing attention from political and social scientists, relatively little has been written on Chinese communities on the continent. Chinese presence in Africa is not only a matter of mining companies, large farms and export processing zones; it also encompasses the lives of thousands of migrants, who don’t fit the common stereotype of Chinese exploitation. The story of China in Africa should not forget about the many Pauls and Wangs now scattered in African urban and rural areas.