cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/53862119
The official Chinese narrative on Sino-African engagement has always been seductive in its symmetry: a relationship of "win-win" cooperation between the Global South's largest economy and its most resource-rich continent built on solidarity, mutual respect, and shared development.
It is a narrative China's diplomats have polished with considerable skill. But on the factory floor, in the supermarket aisle, on the streets of Yaoundé and Kinshasa, and across Chinese social media, a starkly different reality is unfolding one of racial contempt, labour exploitation, and resource plunder, and deliberate humiliation.
The question African peoples must now confront honestly is not whether this discrimination exists. The evidence is overwhelming, well-documented, and growing. The real question is: how long will Africa's leaders allow it to continue?
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What makes Chinese racism toward Black Africans particularly unsettling is how casually it is expressed. It does not lurk in coded language or institutional procedure. It presents itself openly, even proudly.
A recent viral video showing a Chinese taxi driver flatly refusing to carry a Black passenger caused widespread outrage but it was hardly novel. In recent weeks, footage circulating on Chinese social media showed individuals tormenting a Black doll they had named "Natasha," mocking and degrading it for audience entertainment. The clip spread widely before any meaningful platform moderation occurred.
These incidents are not aberrations. They are symptoms of a deeper cultural pathology. In 2016, a Chinese television commercial for laundry detergent depicted a Black man being shoved into a washing machine and emerging to the delight of the Chinese woman operating it as a light-skinned Asian man. The advertisement ran on national television.
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Across Chinese social media platforms, including Bilibili, academic researchers have documented a pervasive and largely unchecked culture of anti-Black racism, where derogatory stereotypes about African intelligence and appearance are routinely circulated and amplified.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, African nationals resident in China experienced institutionalized discrimination that drew condemnation from the African Union and multiple African governments.
African residents in Guangzhou were evicted from their homes, subjected to forced testing and mandatory isolation disproportionate to that applied to Chinese nationals, turned away from hospitals, and refused entry to restaurants. The scenes that emerged from that episode were a window into how African people are perceived within Chinese society when the diplomatic gloss is stripped away.
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Racial contempt, it turns out, is not the only instrument of extraction. Chinese nationals have been implicated in a range of criminal and environmentally destructive practices across Africa.
On 8 and 9 June 2026 just days ago Cameroonian authorities dismantled a counterfeit currency factory in Douala engaged in the manufacturing of fake CFA Franc coins. Chinese nationals were among those implicated. The revelation struck at the heart of a monetary system that anchors the economies of fourteen African nations.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Chinese firm Bendera Mining Company has been found to be encroaching on the Kabobo wildlife reserve, conducting illegal gold mining operations inside a protected ecosystem. Across the continent, Chinese companies stand accused of illegal and exploitative mining activities that damage local environments, displace communities, and drain mineral wealth with little accountability.
Off the West African coast, Chinese fishing fleets continue to devastate fish stocks at a pace that threatens the food security of millions. Researchers estimate that approximately 40 per cent of the fish caught by Chinese vessels in West African waters is taken illegally beyond licensed quotas, inside protected zones, or using prohibited methods. The livelihoods of small-scale African fishermen are being systematically destroyed.
China's role in illegal logging is equally severe. The country's enormous appetite for rosewood has turned the timber into the world's most trafficked wild habitat product surpassing elephant ivory and rhinoceros horn in volume. Chinese companies, including Fodeco, have been directly implicated in illegal logging operations in West Africa, stripping forests that local communities depend upon for their survival.
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African governments have shown admirable patience ... in raising these grievances through diplomatic channels. That patience has not been rewarded with change. Incidents multiply. Videos circulate. Condemnations are issued and then forgotten. Chinese employers continue to wield whips on African workers in Cameroon. Chinese social media continues to circulate anti-Black content. Chinese vessels continue to empty West African waters.
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The decision about what to do with that evidence belongs to Africa's leaders and its people.
It is time for that decision to be made.
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This is about Chinese racism assaulting Africa, and it has nothing to do with Europe, the U.S. or anything else but Chinese racism.
Edit:
One paper on Chinese racism concludes (opens pdf):
Racism is not just a Western problem, it is a problem in China too. In many ways, China can be viewed as racist. From ancient times, racism has been part of the construction of the Chinese Han population. Perceptions about their standing in the international realm has provided their course of development and fuelled their ideologies that embed racial context ... The development of the Han race was centred on the Chinese perception that they are the most advanced and superior race in the world and any other culture that came to China had to be either eliminated or adapted into Chinese culture in order to stimulate civilisation. The Chinese Government choose to dominate regions of ethnic minorities so they can maintain control and enforce racial opinion that allows a consistent consensus of the superiority of the Han population. The Tibetan and Uighur regions have become subject to this kind of manipulation and institutionalised racism has become a specific tool of domination.
China can be viewed an extremist country, its racial tactics have been compared to those of Nazi Germany as it singles out other races in the quest for its own absolute power. China can be likened to North Korea in the sense that it takes violent and discriminatory measures to eliminate ethnic minorities that would ‘contaminate’ their pure race.
Here is a series of article on Chinese racism in more recent contexts.
A rights group reported, From Covid to Blackface on TV, China’s Racism Problem Runs Deep, and urged China [To] Combat Anti-Black Racism on Social Media.
You'll find much more on the web.
ModernGhana is probably the most popular news portal and Roger Agambire (owner) is a decent journalist.
My point was mostly that while we talk about clear racism from China towards Ghana, there's a background of multiple forces pulling towards their own goals here. In a sense, Ghana (and the region itself) has won a lot from having choices, but that came with a cost.
The second thing is that US diplomacy weaning turned into Chinese influence growing (with all its consequences).
I think it's interesting to see friction arising towards China but I hope are truly national and not external influences.
The 'friction arising towards China' isn't limited to Ghana but in Africa but goes far beyond, and the only 'external influences' if you want to put it that way comes from China. It is about Chinese racism.
We must note that the Chinese government bears responsibility for this as it itmaintains one of the world’s most sophisticated internet censorship regimes, [though its censorship] policies are inadequate when addressing racist content. As one of the linked sources says,
Black people who had ... lived in China [said] they had reported racist content to social media companies but only received automated responses that the content did not violate guidelines. “For me, it’s shocking that [racist] stuff like that doesn’t get censored or banned given how quickly the Great Firewall works to ban,” said a Shanghai-based West African man.
And, even worse,
While the Chinese government ostensibly condemns racism, its own state media perpetuates it. In the flagship state television China Central Television’s (CCTV) 2018 Lunar New Year gala, a skit intended to showcase the Chinese government’s investment in Africa featured a Chinese actress in blackface, reciting lines like, “China has done so much for Africa” and “I love Chinese people! I love China!” CCTV was criticized for racism in that production, but the government again featured blackface in its 2021 gala. In a performance titled “African Song and Dance,” which was supposed to celebrate traditional African culture, Chinese dancers appeared with their skin darkened by makeup.
A 2022 musical “Ironman in Africa,” produced by the Heilongjiang provincial government, extolled Chinese workers’ oil exploration in Sudan. The musical showed Chinese actors dressed in what appeared to be dark wigs and in grass skirts apparently as a caricature of Sudanese residents.
This isn't a problem of 'external influences' but rather a problem from within when the study say that
China can be viewed an extremist country, its racial tactics have been compared to those of Nazi Germany as it singles out other races in the quest for its own absolute power.
@quokk.au
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@quokk.au
Rules:
Be a decent person.
No racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, zionism/nazism, and so on.
Other Great Communities:
Rules
Be excellent to each other
go to feed...
Ghana is raising in Africa as one of the main economies and has a healthier democracy than most countries i the region, even compared to older democracies.
That said, the recent anti-LGBTQ ruling was surprising even considering how religious the country is.
An important fact is that there is a LOT of foreign influence pouring into the country's politics, given how rich is in resources and how the old order has been weakened by China's pull.
Once again, two factions are pulling Africa into their spheres of control and using dirty tactics to do so.
China's attempts to control these countries are bad, but the chronic illness that is oligarchic european control of Africa has been a cancer that needs to be excised.
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