Due to You Tube’s length restrictions on each clip, the video has been divided into six segment.  Watch segment one above and the following can be accessed below by clicking on the images below:

Segment 2

Segment 3

Segment 4

Segment 5

Segment 6

The Dutch-based new media organization Couscous Global recently posted an interesting little gem of a video on You Tube that asks young South Africans to express how they feel about the country’s Chinese population. It opens with a young Chinese guy asking the question in English and then turns to a racially diverse group of South African teenagers for their responses.  On the surface, it just sounds like kids giggling and fumbling through their answers.  Yet there were some very interesting, and extremely important, points they used to explain why they get along quite well with Chinese immigrants.

• LANGUAGE: The first young person to answers explains how when she goes to the market in Soweto and notices the Chinese butchers working there speak the local dialect.     I saw this phenomenon myself in Kinshasa where Chinese immigrants regularly spoke Lingala.  The ability to speak the local dialect is a critical advantage that Chinese immigrants in Africa have over their Western counterparts.  This may seem obvious, but when two people can communicate in the same language, so many differences are radically shrunk, e.g. culture, class, race.  It should be noted that in my time in the DR Congo I never met a single Westerner who could speak Lingala.  For the most part, Westerners retain an outmoded expectation that everyone should speak their rather than how the Chinese are going about it and learning local dialects in the communities they live and work.

• SEPARATION: The first young woman to speak remarked how the Chinese “don’t separate themselves.”  This is another important distinction between how the Chinese live in Africa compared to Westerners.  For the most, and of course there are exceptions, the overwhelming majority of European and American residents in Africa live behind high walls with security guards, barbed wire and an equal sense of “us and them.”   They tend to avoid the local markets in favor of expensive supermarkets stocked with imported food; they avoid public transportation as they commute in bulky 4×4 SUVs and the few relationships they have with locals is either with their domestic staffs or a privileged few that work as their subordinates in Western NGOs or companies.   In contrast, the Chinese approach is entirely different. Generally they do not live in Chinese ghettos, or so-called Chinatowns.  Instead, the overwhelming majority of Chinese immigrants to Africa live in the same, vast neighborhoods right alongside Africans themselves.  They eat the same food, shop at the same stores and squeeze in to the same crowded mini-vans that everyone else takes to get around.  When considering the living standards of Chinese immigrants compared to Africans, it is important to remember that unlike wealthy Westerners, most of the Chinese are at the same socio-economic level as their African counterparts.  Simply put, the class difference is often quite minimal.

The subtleties of this video are what make it meaningful.  The fact that Chinese immigrants are able to form this impression of themselves is an important soft-power tool that will no doubt have a broad impact on overall Sino-African ties.  I received an almost identical response from Congolese who I questioned about their views on the growing number of Chinese immigres. One Kinois resident best summarized popular opinion when said “the Chinese, they are not afraid of us.  White people fear us and hide behind the walls.  The Chinese do not.”

Scan the headlines about the Chinese in Africa and the predominant theme focuses almost exclusively on the infrastructure-for-natural resource deals.  The Chinese are signing multi-billion dollar oil and mineral deals up and down the continent while spending a comparable fortune building desperately needed infrastructure in many of the least developed countries on earth.  Here in Kinshasa, evidence of China’s foreign and trade policies is everywhere.  New roads, hospitals, parliament buildings are all being built at record speeds by Chinese construction conglomerates.  Yet not far away from the heavy earth moving trucks and the billion dollar mineral deals, a separate, yet equally transformative revolution is underway.  Quietly, tens of thousands, possibly even  hundreds of thousands of Chinese immigrants are moving in to neighborhoods across Kinshasa and dozens of African cities.  While there is no reliable data available to estimate just how many emigres have come here, there is no doubt the Chinese population is rising quickly.

When I first heard that Kinshasa was now home to thousands of Chinese immigrants, I naturally assumed there would some sort of “Chinatown” with a population cluster just as there is in Paris, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires and even Asian cities like Kuala Lumpur.  It just made sense that the first wave of Chinese arrivals would huddle together as immigrants have done the world over for generations.  ”So where is the Chinese community?” I asked a several of our local staff.  Puzzled, they responded “what do you mean? There is no Chinese community here, they live with us.”  Time and again I received the same answer.  The Chinese immigrants in Kinshasa are skipping an entire phase of assimilation by moving directly to the sprawling neighborhoods and shantytowns that is home to the capital’s 8-10 million residents.  By any standard, this is a remarkable phenomenon as there are few more seemingly divergent cultures than Chinese and Congolese.  Yet despite overwhelming differences in language, race and culture, the Chinese are adapting in ways that Westerners could never begin to imagine.

Mister Chen is one of those thousands of new arrivals to Kinshasa.  He and his family moved from China’s southern Fuzhou province three years ago to come to Africa.  When he first learned of the opportunity to come to the DRC he admitted that he knew nothing about the country as was made clear by their decision to settle in the eastern Congolese city of Kivu.  Traveling over land from the Rwandan capital of Kigali, they arrived in Kivu unaware that it is the epicenter of Congo’s violent 10-year war.  Hundreds of thousands of people, possibly millions, have died in the region surrounding Kivu and after three weeks he packed up his family to move west across the country to the relative safety of Kinshasa.  Upon arrival here he was introduced to a “Chinese association” that would provide him the logistical and financial support for him to open a small shop in one of Kinshasa’s vast, densely populated neighborhoods.  These associations are critical to understanding the success of the Chinese, both here in Kinshasa and the world over.  Just as Chinese immigrant associations in San Francisco and New York, the Chinese associations in the DRC provide what is essentially a micro-loan to new immigrants and the necessary logistical support to open a small business.  The association handles the legal paperwork, ensures the necessary bribes are paid to relevant neighborhood police and government authorities; connects the shop owner with a distribution network of Chinese importers to supply their business.  Mister Chen said he arrived from China with “only a few dollars” but was able to get his start through the help of the association.  In turn, as his business develops, he re-pays the association back in small increments until the loan is fully paid.  The association also plays another critical role that insulates the shop owner from the volatility of daily life in Kinshasa.  When the police or some other government authority comes to his store for bribes or extortion, he simply calls the association who then quickly respond to handle the situation.  This rapid response and protection from the association is an immensely important aspect of the Chinese entrepreneurial success here as it offers a level of reliability largely unavailable in a society as unstable as Kinshasa.

Mister Chen’s store has the feel of an inner-city American liquor store where all of the products are on display behind a think glass window.  He largely sells cheap, low quality Chinese-made knick-knacks that range from one-dollar headphones to shoes to plastic tableware.  Although business in his 1,500 square foot (estimate) shop was brisk during my 45-minute mid-day visit, not once did I see him sell a single product.  Instead, locals would approach the counter, throw down a $20 or $50 US bill and he or one of his local staff members would hurl a wad of Congolese francs and dollars back at the customer.   In addition to selling low-cost Chinese imports, shop owners like Mister Chen have also established themselves as among the most reliable money changers in the city.  ”I trust the Chinese more than I do Congolese,” one customer explained when I asked why he changed his money with Mister Chen and not at one of the countless money changers on the street.  ”They give us a fair price and don’t cheat us.”  By selling low-cost products along with doing a brisk currency trading business, Mister Chen said he is able to squeeze out a small profit.  ”It’s not a lot because the Congolese are very poor but I earn more here than what I was making back in Fuzhou,” he said.

When you consider the hundreds of billions of dollars Western governments and NGOs have spent in Africa to help build civil society programs none seem anywhere near as effective as what Mister Chen is doing.  His small business is simultaneously providing jobs, goods and services that are vital in a region desperate for this kind of economic activity.   Mister Chen does not think of his business as anything other than a means to earn a meager living.  What he may not realize is that what he and his family are doing is part of a larger, more powerful trend that will re-shape Africa in a far more profound way than any of the roads and hospitals Beijing is building here.

Here’s the key issue to focus on:  unlike emigres from Europe or the United States, this is the first overseas mass migration of foreigners to Africa who hail from the same economic class as indigenous Africans.  Hundreds of thousands of economically disadvantaged Chinese are moving in to neighborhoods and starting businesses in the same communities and under the same challenging circumstances as their African counterparts.  Inevitably, this can cause tensions as the Chinese often employ far more aggressive business tactics than what people are locally accustomed to in this part of the world.  So in Namibia the issue is beauty parlors and transportation, elsewhere it will be something else.  Make no mistake, the backlash against the Chinese is building momentum.

This assessment may appear to contradict my earlier post on how well the Chinese seem to be assimilating in cities like Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  The Chinese migration to the DR Congo and other countries is happening at such a rapid pace and on such a massive scale that obvious contradictions like this are going to appear for quite some time.  It is by no means a linear process.