Trouble in China's little Africa

from the AsiaTimes Online:

...China has injected billions of dollars in aid and investment into the continent while at the same time giving a free pass on despotism and human-rights abuses to nations such as Zimbabwe and Sudan. Chinese merchants and laborers are also increasingly a presence. ...


A subplot often overlooked in this larger story, however, is the increasing number of Africans who have come to China to ply their trade...
The southern Chinese province of Guangdong, the country's (and much of the world's) manufacturing hub, has seen the largest influx of Africans, with most of them doing business in a single neighborhood in the provincial capital city of Guangzhou. An estimated 20,000 Africans now live in Guangzhou, with thousands more regularly streaming through the city as visitors who buy pirated DVDs and Chinese-made clothes, shoes, electronics and other products for resale back home. ...

(The article has a long section about traditional Chinese dislike of all foreigners, noting the African students in the 1960's had trouble, but then so did everyone else).

The African traders in Guangzhou, however, do not fit the usual expatriate profile. They are a foreign underclass generally living in shabby quarters and treated as second-class citizens and third-world poachers who are trying to elbow their way into the light of China's economic miracle.

Media stereotypes portray them as unreliable and untrustworthy, some taxi drivers refuse to pick them up and local police routinely harass them with visa checks, which only intensified in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, hosted by Beijing. Since residency is all but impossible for an African to obtain and visas generally extend no longer than three months, many overstay, dodging police checks to remain in the country. ...