Chinese delegate claims ‘illegal’ African migrants pose dangers to city and residents

As US President Donald Trump’s plan to arrest and deport illegal immigrants ignites fierce debate in his home country, an advisor to the Chinese government claims China should tighten its own policies on African immigrants, who he branded the cause of many safety concerns, news portal Youth.cn reported.

Pan Qinglin, a delegate of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) from Tianjin, said Africans had taken advantage of loopholes in China’s immigration policies and the country’s traditional friendship with African nations to trick Chinese border officials and enter China. He said this was especially so in the economic powerhouse of southern China’s Guangdong province, where tens of thousands of migrants from Africa seek business and lifestyle opportunities.

In 2014, at the height of the global Ebola emergency, Xie Xiaodan, then the deputy major of Guangzhou, confirmed there were 16,000 African residents in the city, rather than the rumoured 500,000, but the authorities have never released figures on illegal immigrants.

Many of the African population in Guangdong are legitimate businesspeople, some no doubt drawn to China through the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, a campaign Beijing initiated in 2000 to forge relations with African nations.

Pan said in a proposal on Wednesday during the annual CPPCC sessions that the number of Africans in Guandong, most of whom he claimed were unauthorised to be there, had grown rapidly over the past few years and raised a wide range of concerns over social safety and public health and race issues.

Citing figures from unidentified sources, Pan said there were an estimated 700,000 Africans illegally in China, and that number could reach 50 million by 2050, posing significant threats to safety if local governments did not take control measures, the report said.