I originally wrote this post in 2013 because journalists—and quite a few academics—kept asking me the same apparently simple question: how many Africans live in Guangzhou?

Thirteen years later, some of the numbers below are obviously historical. Guangzhou has changed enormously. Immigration enforcement became more restrictive, patterns of transnational trade shifted, digital technologies reduced the need for some traders to remain physically in China, and COVID-19 produced an extraordinary rupture in African mobility to the city. Xiaobei today is not Xiaobei in 2013.

But rereading this post, I am struck by how little the underlying problem has changed.

Researchers and journalists still like numbers. Numbers look authoritative. They fit nicely into headlines, introductions and grant applications. “There are approximately X Africans in Guangzhou” sounds considerably more scientific than “it depends what you mean by African, in, and Guangzhou.”

Unfortunately, the second answer is usually the more accurate one.

The spectacular population estimates circulating in the early literature on Africans in Guangzhou—20,000, 100,000, sometimes considerably more for China as a whole—were often produced from extraordinarily shaky evidence and then repeated from publication to publication until citation itself seemed to transform speculation into demographic fact. One paper cited another, which cited another, and eventually nobody seemed terribly interested in where the number had come from in the first place.

The problem was never simply bad counting. It was conceptual.

African presence in Guangzhou has always included very different trajectories: long-term residents, students, people married to Chinese nationals, entrepreneurs, short-term traders, people repeatedly moving between China and African cities, overstayers, visitors and people whose lives connect Guangzhou with Foshan and other parts of the Pearl River Delta. Deciding who constitutes the “African population of Guangzhou” therefore requires deciding which of these forms of presence counts as migration in the first place.

Much of the research produced since this post was written has helped us understand this better. Work by Heidi Østbø Haugen, Gordon Mathews, Shanshan Lan, Adams Bodomo and others—and my own subsequent work on transnational mobility, emplacement and “homing” Guangzhou—has shown why African presence in China cannot be adequately understood through a simple opposition between temporary migrants and permanent settlers.

People circulate. They leave and return. They establish businesses and families while maintaining lives elsewhere. They may become deeply embedded in Guangzhou without ever acquiring anything resembling permanent immigration status.

That is not a failure to settle.

It is one of the forms African migration to China has taken.

There is also something slightly ironic about rereading the original post today. After several pages of explaining why the population could not reliably be calculated, I eventually succumbed to the pressure and produced my own “fact-based imaginative speculation” of roughly 10,000 Africans based in Guangzhou. Apparently even I couldn’t resist the gravitational pull of the number.

The estimate matters much less to me today than the argument surrounding it.

The question I would now ask is not “How many Africans are in Guangzhou?” but: what exactly are we trying to understand by counting them?

If the purpose is demographic administration, then of course numbers matter. But if we are trying to understand African lives in China, mobility may tell us considerably more than population size.

And that, at least, is one argument from 2013 that I would still defend.

BELOW IS THE 2013 POST

How many Africans are there in Guangzhou? This is the first question that came up to my mind when I first realised that there was a sizable population of black Africans in Guangzhou, in late 2008. This is also the question that several academics and dozens of journalists have asked me: ‘how many?’, it seems that everybody wants to know the figure. In order to provide an ‘accurate’ answer, let me do some explaining first. As I have pointed out time and again, truth is that no body really knows how many Africans are there in the city. That figure is impossible to know! And this is due to several reasons. Just to point out a few: a) the Chinese government does not openly share information about the numbers of foreigners in the country (Yes, in 2011 a national census recorded some 600,000 foreigners living in the country, but I’ll talk about this a bit further down in this post); b) due to the bureaucratic complexities involved in the management of foreigners in China (from the ways of counting the entry and exit of people, through the multiple types of visas, to the several government bodies involved in the control of foreigners), I argue that actually not even the Chinese government (whatever that means) has a conclusive figure on the number of Africans that are currently living in Guangzhou (and in the whole country); c) to try to figure out how many Africans are there in Guangzhou, we have to start pulling out hair by hair – this is, at any time, there are multiple types of individuals with very diverse statuses in the city (i.e. there are the ‘more established ones’, people that have been in Guangzhou for over a decade – most of them still live on 3-6 months to 1 year visas, and very very few of them have managed to obtain long residence permits, renewable every 3 to 5 years; there are the ‘more transient ones’, which I claim are the bulk of the population, that continuously move between Africa and China, and whom usually lodge in hotels and stay for 4 to 6 weeks at a time; and, finally, there are of course the ‘first-time newcomers’ and the ‘overstayers’ – the most gosthly and uncountable of all these types- and the Africans that enter China with Western passports). So, as you can see, if we start pulling hairs apart, the composition of the African population in Guangzhou gets quite messy. How can we define who counts as an ‘African in Guangzhou’? Should someone that is visiting the city for the first time ever and that is only staying for 3 weeks on a business trip be counted as an ‘African in Guangzhou’? Should we only count the ones with valid ‘residence permits’ and forget about the ones that live in China for years juggling a plethora of different tourists, student, business visas? What about the ones that opt (or are forced) to overstay?

In 2008, research from Sun Yat Sen University pointed to a figure of around 20,000 Africans in the city based on their access to hotel records, and from some data they gathered from the Entry and Exit authorities. One of the problems with this way of measuring is that people were counted on a person-times basis – this is, if Moustapha from Senegal entered China three times in three months he was counted as three Moustaphas. Do you get it? Also, how reliable are hotel records? If Maria from Angola stayed two weeks in Guangzhou, then travelled back to Luanda, and then back again to Guangzhou, during the time of the measurement, she was then counted as two Marias. A great amount of media reports failed to notice this and started reproducing those inaccurate figures indiscriminately without checking or challenging them. Thus, the notion of the 20,000 Africans in Guangzhou (living in hotels), and their growth of about 30-40 percent every year (based on hotel customer occupation) were disseminated throughout media and readopted from time to time by academia. Needless to say, these figures left out all those Africans that do not lodge into hotels: the ones that are married to Chinese, the ones that rent appartments, the ones that arrive at friends’ houses, and so on. In his 2012 book on Africans in China, Adams Bodomo, a linguist back then based in Hong Kong University, suggested that based on his own personal calculations from what he saw in the streets of Guangzhou the figure of Africans in the city would definitively be around the 100 thousand mark (he also suggested the possibility of some 500 thousand Africans living in the whole country). Needless to say, Bodomo’s measuring tool (from what he calculated in the streets) is less rigorous than Sun Yat Sen university’s hotel based measurement.

Everyday is business day in Guangyuan West Road, Guangzhou

Given the fact that almost everyone is left unhappy when I explain how the complexities involved in trying to ascertain the ‘real’ figure of Africans in the city render the task almost impossible, let’s do some fact-based imaginative speculation (I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but keep reading): as I mentioned earlier, in 2011, the first national census to ever register the number of foreigners legally ‘residing’ in the country reported a solid 600 thousand foreigners in the PRC. Wow, maybe Bodomo’s numbers are right! Maybe there are 500 thousand Africans in China. I’m afraid not. The census was also very clear in specifying that some 70 percent* of these foreigners living in China were nationals of Korea, United States, Japan, Myanmar, Vietnam, Canada, France, India, Germany and Australia. This leaves us with some 180 thousand people living in China that could come from Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Russia and many other Asian countries. Let’s call this group ‘rest of the world’ (accounting for 30 percent of the foreigners in the census). The census also reported that half of the national foreign population resides in Guangdong province – to which Guangzhou is the capital. So, let’s assume that some 300 thousand foreigners live in Guangdong (mainly in cities like Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Dongguang, Foshan, Zhuhai, Zhongshan, etc). It is not news that many foreigners live in this province, but as Guangzhou is the main city, let’s assume that at least half of the province’s foreign population would live there: 150 thousand foreigners possibly residing in the city. Now, if we extrapolate the nation-wide percentage of foreigners and apply it to Guangzhou (remember that the ‘rest of the world’ group accounts for 30% of the total of the foreign population in the country): there would be some 45 thousand people from the ‘rest of the world’ group residing in Guangzhou – I don’t think I need to remind you that this is all fact-based imaginative speculation. Now that we have reached the 45k figure, it must be noted that Guangzhou’s foreign ethnoscapes are multifarious, complex, and highly dynamic (the city is a Mecca for people on the transnational and translocal moves). From big communities of Arabic speakers, Turks, and other Middle Easterners, to Russians, all kinds of Europeans, and Americans, to Latin Americans and Africans, the city continues to be the historic point of convergence of people from all around the world that it had been for centuries previous to the 40 years of hardline maoist dynasty. However, within Guangzhou’s foreign ethnoscapes, without a doubt, Middle Easterners and Africans are the most visible groups  (the major minorities). So, let’s assume that both of these ‘groups’ take up to 50 percent of the ‘rest of the world’ population figure: then we will be left with some 22 thousand individuals of which maybe some 10 thousand could be of Sub-Saharan origin. Finally, this fact-based imaginative speculation exercise has left us with some less than 15 thousand Africans possibly legally residing in the city (full time-ish). However, this speculation does not really satisfy me. I personally believe that the figure of foreigners in Guangzhou could be well beyond what I’m suggesting here, especially if you consider all of those who (like I did a few years ago in Beijing) live there with non-legal resident statuses.

Ojukwu Emma, President of the Nigerian Community

If you have reached this point of the post it might be because you’re really interested in knowing how many Africans are there in Guangzhou. How many? How maaaaaany? According to simple mathematical deduction based on the only data available, possibly around 10 thousand ‘legally residing’ – this is 10k people under studies, spouse, or business, visa regimes. Of course, we haven’t spoken about overstayers at all. But before that, lets pay attention to another source of relatively reliable information: community offices (representatives). Yes, African presence in the city has consolidated to such a degree that Africans have started organising themselves into ‘community offices’.  According to several sources on the ground, there maybe almost 30 different national offices in Guangzhou. Without a doubt, the most salient is the office of the Nigerian community. Held by middle age long time transnational trader Mr. President Ojukwu Emma, this office claims that there are some 2,500 Nigerians in Guangzhou** – the figure was gathered during the last ‘presidential election’ in which 99,9 percent of the ‘electorate’ voted Emma for another term as President of Nigerians in Guangzhou. During the last Malian national election, journalist Sam Piranty reported that some 650 Malian nationals were registered to vote at the consulate in Guangzhou (although some of these voters could  be people on the move not actually residing in the city). Other community offices like Congo, Senegal, or Ghana, have a ‘local’ membership of less than 200 members each. According to different community offices, the above mentioned countries are the ones with the biggest presence in Guangzhou. If we assume that each other community may have at least 100 members (which is not the case, but let’s assume – 20 communities x 100 = 2 thousand), and add up some 3 thousand Nigerians; plus maybe some one thousand Malians; plus some extra one thousand between Congolese, Senegalese and Ghanaians, we’d reach some 7-8 thousand Africans in the city (legally residing). Of course not everyone registers with the community offices. So, you could double, or triple, this number to try to account for those not interested in registering with the communities. However, according to various presidents of community offices, every African that stays for a certain period of time in Guangzhou learns about the advantages of registering with their national office in the city***.

So far, both these calculations have led us to believe that, at any given moment, there could be at least some 10 thousand Africans in Guangzhou. This could be an underestimation, however. It all depends on what do we mean by ‘Africans in Guangzhou’. If you want to count all the ones that continuously move back and forth between Africa and China as ‘African population’ of Guangzhou, or if you want to count any single black skin person in Guangzhou at any time, regardless what is their status, as an ‘African in Guangzhou’, then you may reach the 20,000 or maybe 30,000, so widely quoted. Still far away from Bodomo’s 100 thousand Africans in Guangzhou. As you can see, finding the figure is quite difficult. I actually claim that the numbers are not important at all, and that if we focus on transiency (a shared feature of most African sojourns in China) we could learn much more about this exciting case study. But still people, journalists, and academics, always want to know how many. So, let me say that after three years of doing research in Guangzhou, I am seriously doubting that there could be more than 10,000 Africans based in Guangzhou – this is, living there on a permanent basis, either legally or illegally. Of course that at any given moment there can be much more than that if you consider all the ones that are passing through or visiting (on short stays) the city.

Many families can be spotted in Dengfeng/Xiaobei – lone males are still the majority

Now, one of my problems with the widely circulated figure of ‘20,000 Africans in Guangzhou’ is that it somehow blurs the patterns and dynamics of overstayers and transients. If it is almost impossible to get an accurate figure of those Africans living in Guangzhou, then to calculate a figure of overstayers (and of those that keep constantly moving in and out) is truly out of our reach. The figures for transients and overstayers vary a lot depending on different national/cultural practices (and also as a consequence of the obstacles/policies the Chinese authorities impose upon foreigners). The majority of Angolans in Guangzhou, for instance, are women on the move that continuously move back and forth in ‘short income boosting’ trips, usually they do not overstay their permits – they come, do their business, leave, and come back. Nigerians, on the other hand, (specially young Nigerians) come to China in ‘suicidal missions’ (success or nothing) and, as is almost impossible to succeed in China in 30 days, many of them opt to overstay. So, while all black people are somehow perceived as the ‘same’ by Chinese – this is, as ‘blacks’ or ‘Africans’-  different African nationalities perform differently in China. So, as I have argued elsewhere, to make sense of the stories, joys, and tribulations, of Africans in Guangzhou, it all depends on the approach. If African experience in Guangzhou is seen through the prism of Nigerian perspectives, then we could end up believing that the huge majority of Africans in the city are there under irregular conditions, and always escaping from police. However, if the focus of any analysis is dispersed throughout the vast landscape of the different African communities and practices, the numbers of overstayers decline and a perception of most Africans in Guangzhou being there rightfully slowly emerges. It is complex.

Finally, on a side note, one other aspect that has to be accounted for when talking about Africans in the city is that there are many that move back and forth between Guangzhou and Foshan (and other surrounding cities) and that are not usually counted as residing in Guangzhou. Life in Foshan is reportedly less stressful as authorities there are not that focused on harassing black and brown foreigners, like in Guangzhou.

Building a Sino-African future?

UPDATE: In late October 2014, in the context of the Ebola pandemic fears, Guangzhou’s government finally released some ‘official’ information on the number of Africans legally residing in the city: “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”. See this post

*maybe it was 75 percent, I don’t remember at this point, and don’t want to look at my notes for writing this post 

**Nigerians are the community with the most cases of people overstaying their visas

***these offices are not consulates, and while they do maintain relations with official national embassies and consulates, they are mainly self organised. In the last few years, there has been some talk about creating a ‘Pan-African’ organising body, but this has proven somehow difficult

2026年更新：十三年后，人们仍然想要一个数字

我最初在2013年写下这篇文章，是因为记者——以及相当一些学者——不断问我同一个看似简单的问题：广州到底有多少非洲人？

十三年后，下面的一些数字显然已经成为历史。广州发生了巨大变化。移民管理变得更加严格，跨国贸易的模式发生了改变，数字技术降低了一些贸易商必须长期身处中国的必要性，而新冠疫情则对非洲人前往这座城市的流动造成了极其剧烈的中断。今天的小北，已经不是2013年的小北。

但重读这篇文章时，令我印象深刻的是，最根本的问题其实并没有发生太大变化。

研究者和记者依然喜欢数字。数字看起来权威。它们非常适合放在新闻标题、论文引言和科研项目申请书里。“广州大约有X名非洲人”听起来显然比“这要看你怎么定义非洲人、在以及广州”科学得多。

遗憾的是，第二种回答通常更准确。

早期关于广州非洲人的研究中流传着一些惊人的人口估算——2万、10万，有时甚至说整个中国的非洲人口远高于这个数字。这些估算往往建立在极其薄弱的证据之上，却又被一篇又一篇论文不断重复引用，以至于引用本身似乎逐渐把推测变成了人口统计事实。一篇论文引用另一篇，后者又引用另一篇，最终似乎已经没有多少人真正关心这个数字最初到底从哪里来的。

问题从来不只是统计不准确。

它首先是一个概念问题。

广州的非洲人群体一直包含非常不同的流动轨迹：长期居民、学生、与中国公民结婚的人、企业家、短期贸易商、不断往返于中国和非洲城市之间的人、逾期居留者、访客，以及那些生活同时连接广州、佛山和珠江三角洲其他地区的人。因此，要决定谁构成“广州的非洲人口”，首先就必须决定：这些不同形式的存在，哪些算作“迁移”。

自这篇文章写成以来，大量研究帮助我们更好地理解了这一点。Heidi Østbø Haugen、Gordon Mathews、Shanshan Lan、Adams Bodomo等人的研究——以及我自己后来关于跨国流动、地方嵌入和在广州“营造家园”（“homing” Guangzhou）的研究——都表明，非洲人在中国的存在，无法通过临时移民与永久定居者这样简单的二元对立得到充分理解。

人们流动。他们离开，然后回来。他们建立企业和家庭，同时又维持着其他地方的生活。他们可能深深嵌入广州的社会生活，却始终无法获得任何真正意义上的永久移民身份。

这并不是“定居失败”。

这本身就是非洲人迁移到中国的一种形式。

今天重读原文，还有一点让我觉得颇为讽刺。在花了几页篇幅解释为什么无法可靠地计算这一人口之后，我最终还是屈服于数字的诱惑，进行了一番所谓“基于事实的想象性推测”，得出了大约有1万名非洲人以广州为基地的估算。显然，就连我自己也没能抵挡住数字的引力。

如今，对我来说，这个估算远没有围绕它展开的论点重要。

如果现在再问，我不会问**“广州有多少非洲人？”**，而会问：我们通过统计他们的人数，究竟想理解什么？

如果目的是人口行政管理，那么数字当然重要。但如果我们真正想理解非洲人在中国的生活，那么“流动”可能比人口规模告诉我们更多东西。

至少，这是一个我在2013年提出、今天仍然愿意坚持的观点。

以下是2013年的原文

广州到底有多少非洲人？ 2008年底，当我第一次意识到广州存在数量相当可观的非洲黑人群体时，这是我脑子里冒出的第一个问题。这也是后来许多学者和几十位记者问过我的问题：**“到底有多少？”**似乎每个人都想知道那个数字。

为了给出一个“准确”的回答，我得先解释一些事情。正如我一次又一次指出的那样，事实是，没有人真正知道广州究竟有多少非洲人。这个数字根本无法确切得知！原因很多。这里只举几个。

第一，中国政府并不公开分享国内外国人口数量的详细信息。（是的，2011年的全国人口普查记录了大约60万名居住在中国的外国人，不过后面我会进一步谈到这个数字。）

第二，由于中国管理外国人的行政体系极为复杂——从人员出入境的统计方式，到五花八门的签证类型，再到参与外国人管理的多个政府部门——我甚至认为，中国政府本身（无论“中国政府”这个说法具体指什么）也未必掌握一个能够明确说明目前到底有多少非洲人生活在广州乃至整个中国的最终数字。

第三，如果真想弄清广州到底有多少非洲人，就得一根一根地“拔头发”来算——也就是说，在任何一个时间点，这座城市里都存在身份和状态非常不同的人。例如，有一些**“相对稳定的人”**，他们已经在广州生活了十年以上——其中多数仍然依靠三到六个月或一年的签证生活，真正获得长期居留许可、每三到五年续签一次的人少之又少。

然后还有**“流动性更强的人”**。我认为他们构成了非洲人口中的主体。他们不断往返于非洲和中国之间，通常住在酒店，每次停留四到六周左右。

当然还有**“第一次来的人”和“逾期居留者”**——所有这些类型中最像幽灵、也最难统计的一群——以及那些持西方国家护照进入中国的非洲人。

所以你可以看到，一旦真的开始把这些“头发”一根根分开，广州非洲人口的构成就会变得相当混乱。

我们究竟应该如何定义谁算“在广州的非洲人”？

一个第一次来广州、只出差三周的人，应该算作“广州的非洲人”吗？

我们是不是应该只统计那些持有有效“居留许可”的人，而把那些已经在中国生活多年、却不断在旅游签证、学生签证、商务签证等各种签证之间周旋的人排除在外？

那些选择——或者被迫——逾期居留的人又怎么办？

2008年，中山大学的一项研究根据他们获得的酒店登记资料以及出入境管理部门的一些数据，提出广州大约有2万名非洲人。

这种统计方式的一个问题是，它使用的是“人次”而不是“人数”。也就是说，如果来自塞内加尔的Moustapha在三个月内进入中国三次，他就会被统计成三个Moustapha。明白我的意思了吗？

酒店登记又有多可靠呢？如果来自安哥拉的Maria在广州待了两个星期，然后回到罗安达，之后又再次来到广州，而且这两次都发生在统计期间，那么她就会被算成两个Maria。

大量媒体报道没有注意到这一点，开始不加辨别地复制这些不准确的数字，没有进行任何核查或质疑。于是，“广州有2万名非洲人（住在酒店里）”以及“非洲人口每年增长30%至40%（根据酒店入住人数推算）”这样的说法，被媒体广泛传播，之后又不时被学术研究重新采用。

不用说，这些数字完全遗漏了那些不住酒店的非洲人：与中国人结婚的人、租公寓的人、住在朋友家里的人，等等。

Adams Bodomo当时是香港大学的一名语言学家。他在2012年出版的《Africans in China》一书中提出，根据他自己在广州街头的观察和个人计算，广州的非洲人口肯定接近10万。他还提出，整个中国可能生活着50万名非洲人。

不用说，Bodomo的测量工具——根据他在街头看到的人来推算——甚至比中山大学基于酒店数据的估算还要不严谨。

既然几乎每次我解释说，由于确定广州非洲人口“真实”数字涉及如此复杂的问题，这项任务几乎不可能完成，大家都会感到不满意，那么我们就来做一次“基于事实的想象性推测”吧。（我知道这个说法听起来像是自相矛盾，不过请继续看下去。）

前面提到，2011年，中国第一次在全国人口普查中统计了合法“居住”在中国的外国人数，总数大约为60万人。

哇，也许Bodomo的数字是对的！也许中国真的有50万名非洲人。

恐怕不是。

人口普查同时非常明确地指出，在这些居住于中国的外国人中，大约70%*来自韩国、美国、日本、缅甸、越南、加拿大、法国、印度、德国和澳大利亚。

这样一来，就只剩大约18万人可能来自非洲、中东、拉丁美洲、俄罗斯以及其他许多亚洲国家。我们姑且把这一组人称为“世界其他地区”（占人口普查中外国人口的30%）。

人口普查还显示，全国外国人口中有一半居住在广东省——广州是广东省省会。

那么，我们可以假设大约有30万外国人生活在广东，主要分布于深圳、广州、东莞、佛山、珠海、中山等城市。

广东外国人口众多并不是什么新闻，但既然广州是这一地区最重要的城市之一，我们姑且假设全省外国人口至少有一半住在广州：也就是可能有15万名外国人居住在这座城市。

现在，如果我们把全国外国人口的比例套用到广州——请记住，“世界其他地区”占全国外国人口总数的30%——那么广州大约会有4.5万名来自“世界其他地区”的人。

我想不需要提醒你，这一切仍然只是“基于事实的想象性推测”。

现在我们得到了4.5万这个数字。但必须注意，广州的外国人族群景观非常多样、复杂，而且高度动态。这座城市是跨国和跨地方流动者的重要汇聚地。

从规模庞大的阿拉伯语使用者、土耳其人和其他中东人群，到俄罗斯人、各种欧洲人和美国人，再到拉丁美洲人和非洲人，广州依然是一个汇聚世界各地人口的历史性节点——这种传统延续了数百年，只是在过去四十年强硬的毛主义统治时期一度中断。

不过，在广州多元的外国人群体中，中东人和非洲人毫无疑问是最显眼的两大群体，也就是主要的少数群体。

那么，我们再假设这两个“群体”加起来占“世界其他地区”人口的一半，就会得到大约2.2万人，其中或许有1万人来自撒哈拉以南非洲。

最终，这场“基于事实的想象性推测”让我们得出这样一个结论：可能有不到1.5万名非洲人合法居住在广州（某种意义上的全职居住）。

不过，这个推测其实并不能让我满意。

我个人认为，广州的外国人口很可能远远超过我在这里推测的数字，尤其是如果把所有那些以非正规居留身份生活在那里的人计算进去——就像几年前我自己在北京时那样。

如果你已经读到这里，也许是因为你真的非常想知道广州究竟有多少非洲人。

多少？

到底多——少——？

根据现有唯一可用数据进行的简单数学推演，可能大约有1万名“合法居住者”——也就是大约1万人处于留学、配偶或商务签证制度之下。

当然，我们还完全没有谈到逾期居留者。

不过，在讨论这个问题之前，我们还可以看看另一个相对可靠的信息来源：各国社区办公室，也就是社区代表机构。

是的，广州的非洲人已经发展到这样一个程度：他们开始组织自己的“社区办公室”。

根据当地多个消息来源，广州可能有接近30个不同国家的社区办公室。

其中毫无疑问最突出的是尼日利亚社区办公室。这个办公室由长期从事跨国贸易的中年商人Ojukwu Emma“总统先生”主持。他们声称广州大约有2500名尼日利亚人**。这一数字来自最近一次“总统选举”，在那次选举中，99.9%的“选民”投票支持Emma继续担任广州尼日利亚人社区的总统。

在最近一次马里全国大选期间，记者Sam Piranty报道说，大约有650名马里公民在广州领事馆登记投票（不过，其中一些选民可能只是处于流动状态，并不真正居住在广州）。

其他社区办公室，例如刚果、塞内加尔或加纳，每个在当地登记的成员都少于200人。

根据不同社区办公室提供的信息，上述这些国家是在广州人数最多的非洲国家群体。

如果我们假设其他每个社区至少有100名成员——实际情况并非如此，但姑且这样算——那么20个社区乘以100，就是2000人。

再加上大约3000名尼日利亚人；可能1000名马里人；以及刚果人、塞内加尔人和加纳人合计另外1000人左右，我们就会得到广州大约有7000至8000名非洲人（合法居住）的数字。

当然，不是所有人都会去社区办公室登记。

所以，你也可以把这个数字乘以二，甚至乘以三，以估算那些没有兴趣登记的人。

不过，根据多个社区办公室主席的说法，每一个在广州待上一段时间的非洲人，最终都会知道在本国社区办公室登记所能带来的好处***。

到目前为止，这两种计算方式都让我们相信，在任何一个时间点，广州至少可能有大约1万名非洲人。

当然，这也可能是低估。

一切都取决于我们所说的“广州的非洲人”究竟是什么意思。

如果你想把那些不断往返于非洲和中国之间的人全部计算为广州的“非洲人口”，或者你想把任何一个在广州出现的黑人——无论其身份为何——都算作“广州的非洲人”，那么你可能会得到被广泛引用的2万甚至3万这个数字。

不过，这距离Bodomo提出的广州有10万名非洲人仍然相当遥远。

正如你所看到的，要找到这个数字非常困难。

事实上，我认为数字根本没有那么重要。我主张，如果我们把注意力放在“短暂性”和“流动性”上——这是大多数非洲人在中国停留经历中共同具有的特征——我们可能会对这个令人着迷的案例获得更多理解。

但人们、记者和学者，仍然总是想知道到底有多少。

所以，让我这样说吧：在广州做了三年研究之后，我非常怀疑真正以广州为基地的非洲人会超过1万人——也就是说，以相对永久的方式生活在那里的人，无论其身份是否合法。

当然，如果把所有正在途经广州或短期访问广州的人都计算进去，那么在任何一个时间点，人数都可能远远超过这个数字。

我对广泛流传的“广州有2万名非洲人”这一说法的一个主要问题，是它在某种程度上掩盖了逾期居留者和流动人口的不同模式和动态。

如果连准确计算生活在广州的非洲人数量都几乎不可能，那么要计算逾期居留者——以及那些不断进出广州的人——就更加超出了我们的能力范围。

不同国家和文化背景的人，在流动和逾期居留方面差异很大，这也与中国政府对外国人设置的障碍和政策有关。

例如，广州的安哥拉人大多是不断流动的女性。她们频繁往返，以进行“短期增加收入”的贸易活动。通常她们不会逾期居留——她们来中国，做生意，离开，然后再回来。

另一方面，尼日利亚人——尤其是年轻的尼日利亚人——来到中国时常常进行一种“自杀式任务”（要么成功，要么一无所有）。而由于几乎不可能在30天内就在中国取得成功，其中不少人最终选择逾期居留。

所以，尽管在许多中国人的眼中，所有黑人在某种程度上都被视为“同一种人”——也就是“黑人”或“非洲人”——不同非洲国家的人实际上在中国展现出非常不同的迁移和生活模式。

因此，正如我在其他地方论述过的那样，要理解广州非洲人的故事、欢乐和困境，关键在于你采用什么样的视角。

如果通过尼日利亚人的经验来理解广州的非洲人，那么我们可能最终会认为，城里绝大多数非洲人都处于非正规居留状态，而且总是在躲避警察。

但如果分析视角分散到广州广阔而多样的非洲社区和不同实践中，那么逾期居留者的比例就会下降，而一种新的图景会逐渐出现：大多数广州非洲人其实是在合法、正当地生活。

情况很复杂。

最后，还有一个附带的问题，在讨论广州的非洲人口时也必须考虑：许多人不断往返于广州和佛山——以及其他周边城市——但他们通常不会被计算为广州居民。

据说，在佛山生活的压力要小一些，因为当地有关部门不像广州那样集中精力骚扰黑人和棕色皮肤的外国人。

更新：2014年10月底，在埃博拉疫情恐慌的背景下，广州市政府终于公布了一些关于合法居住于广州的非洲人口的“官方”信息：“广州一位副市长昨日试图缓解公众对埃博拉病毒的担忧，并表示有1.6万名非洲人生活在广州，而不是传言所称的近50万人。”参见这篇文章。

* 也许是75%，我现在记不清了，而且写这篇文章时也不想去翻笔记 🙂

** 尼日利亚人是逾期居留情况最多的社区之一。

*** 这些办公室并不是领事馆。虽然它们确实与各国正式的使馆和领事机构保持联系，但主要还是由社区自行组织。过去几年里，一直有人讨论建立一个“泛非洲”的组织机构，不过事实证明这件事并不那么容易。