Now there must be reason why the Guangzhou authority round up the Africans and forced them to undergo 14 days quarantine. The western MSM was quick to level accusation of racism But the truth is somewhere else. Apparently there are many undocumented resident by purposedly throwing their passport as to make them untraceable And in time of pandemic it is all but impossible to trace them.
So the authority forced them all to undergone quarantine And that give them apprearance of discrimination toward the African. But it make sense to me
The viral video of Nigerian resisiting forced quarantine by biting the face of the nurse inflame the population and create atmosphere of hysteria and animosity
Quartz is left leaning outfit generally critical of China but in this article they said the truth
However, these figures describe the legal residents, not the overstayers. It is well known that visa overstayers account for a significant portion of the African population in the city. A great deal of the intense commercial activity that takes place between Guangzhou and places like Addis Ababa, Mombasa or Lagos is organized by them.
As in many other parts of the world, one of the paths that these illegal residents take is that of hiding (or “losing”) their passports. By doing so, they “voluntarily” become undocumented, and effectively set themselves down a highly precarious path where the main aim is to be untraceable if caught overstaying. Being untraceable, however, does not bode well in a pandemics scenario where asymptomatic individuals shed the virus, and where one of the main strategies is to “test and trace” in order to mitigate. Accordingly, Guangzhou’s longstanding overstayer population is cast in a new light in the wake of Covid-19. Local authorities fear an outbreak among the city’s foreign communities especially amongst a group of foreigners without clear, stable and documented identities. But the local authorities also fear a central government crackdown/purge if Guangzhou’s foreign community becomes a virus hotbed. The impossibility of fully managing and/or controlling the overstayer population exacerbates these pandemic-related fears and anxieties.
Covid-19 is proving to be a landmark in terms of the relation between technology, mass surveillance and mobility control in the country. It is not unthinkable that special mobility and access measures could remain in place even after Covid-19 ceases to be a threat. In a post-pandemics China, undocumented individuals will have a hard time trying to circumvent these new technological hurdles.
For example, without a legal abode, it is impossible to apply for Alipay Health Code, a system that assigns a color code to users indicating their health status, and determining their access to public spaces such as malls, subways and airports. In this context, African overstayers and the thriving commercial sectors in which they insert themselves may be among the first ‘victims’ of the new normal in China. This may well be the last nail in the coffin of an already declining African population in Guangzhou.
