Ma Tianjie is one of China’s most well-known environmental journalists and the creator of the popular “Chublic Opinion” blog that tracks Chinese public opinion on current events. In his latest column on the always-interesting Panda Paw Dragon Claw blog, Ma outlines three outcomes from the recent tensions in Guangzhou that he forecasts will have a lasting impact “on the hearts and minds of the African public and on the long-term prospect of China’s presence on the continent, will likely be long-lasting regardless of the intention of political elites on both sides.”
Highlights of How Ma Tianjie Contends the Guangzhou Crisis Will Shape China-Africa Relations in the Years Ahead
- TENSIONS BETWEEN CHINESE AUTHORITIES AND AFRICAN COMMUNITIES WILL LIKELY CONTINUE: “Coronavirus exposed the deep-rooted issue of managing foreign nationals in Guangzhou. For China’s brand of pandemic-fighting measures to work, which has now evolved into an ultra-sophisticated system of mandatory hotel quarantine, home quarantine, neighborhood watch, travel history tracking, and massive testing, it has to have a confident grasp of the movement of people living in China. While Chinese citizens can be more easily brought under such a society-wide system of control through all kinds of surveillance and administrative measures, foreign nationals are more challenging to incorporate. Different visa types, people working on incorrect visas, multiple nationalities and the diplomatic issues that entail, as well as various language and cultural factors all make it more difficult to monitor and control this diverse group of residents.”
- RACISM ON CHINESE SOCIAL MEDIA WILL BE (SLIGHTLY) TAMED: “To further complicate things, throughout the Guangzhou incident, Chinese social media (Weibo and WeChat) became hotbeds for racist comments against the African community. The Chinese internet actively censors any information that is considered politically sensitive, but racially inflammatory comments, including the N-word, did not seem to qualify for that category. This is beginning to change.”
- TRUE PEOPLE-TO-PEOPLE CONNECTIONS ARE TAKING PLACE: “One impact of the coronavirus outbreak in China is a rekindled sense of civic duty among many of its citizens. The crisis that almost brought Wuhan to its knees in Jan and Feb mobilized people to donate and volunteer for their fellow countrymen. Now that sense of civic duty is being extended to Africans in Guangzhou.”
