The first images of African residents in Guangzhou being forced out onto the streets of the southern Chinese city started to emerge during the weekend of April 10th. Now, a full month later, the frustration and anger those accounts sparked keep seething on African social media.
Except for Africa’s governing elites, China’s efforts to quell the criticism from a broad swathe of African civil society has largely been ineffective. Beijing’s reliance on conventional public diplomacy tools ranging from newspaper editorials to diplomatic Tweets to a large-scale campaign from its own government-run media outlets is no match for a new generation of online grassroots activism (see for example the hashtag #BlackChina).
