By Zhuang Pinghui for South China Morning Post
Seeking to calm Ebola fears, official says rumours that half a million live in the city are wrong
A deputy mayor of Guangzhou has sought to allay fears over Ebola disease, saying yesterday that 16,000 African people live in the city, contrary to rumours there were nearly half a million.
A Guangzhou airport official also said the city was handing out free mobile phones to visitors from Ebola-hit countries so the authorities could keep in touch with them.
City border checkpoints recorded 430,000 arrivals and exits by nationals from African countries in the first nine months. But only 16,000 live in Guangzhou.
“There has been a misunderstanding. The count is about visits and exits, not the number of residents, let alone the number of stranded African people,” deputy mayor Xie Xiaodan said.
He added that most of the residents were businesspeople, students or teachers [KEEP READING HERE]
This figure of 16,000 African residents in Guangzhou is quite close to what I had calculated in this 2013 post on How many Africans are there in Guangzhou?
Africans in China 
Pingback: How many Africans are there in Guangzhou, China? If you really want to know you must read this! | Africans in China
Pingback: [Article] How many Africans are in Guangzhou? | AfricaChina Diary