

































!e study of the Chinese diaspora’s experience in South Africa helps to focus on a speci"c dimension of diasporic 
studies, contributing to the "eld as a whole and increasing the academic reach of diaspora research. !is topic 
elucidates the state’s manipulation of race for political means, investigates the machinations of systemic white 
supremacy, and uses Freud’s narcissism of minor di#erences as a lens to explore the e#ect of such racist policies 
upon a diaspora’s lived experience.

Aisthesis      Volume 13,  202275

!e Chinese Diaspora in South Africa: !e Gray Area

by Ann Williams

 Links between the African continent and the 
People’s Republic of China have recently been 
generating much press coverage—the Belt and Road 
Initiative continues to unnerve Western powers, and 
China’s interest in Africa has been subject to much 
international political and academic debate. !e 
two places, however, share a very long history of 
interaction, one that can be traced as far back as 202 
BC, or the year 545, depending on the nationality 
of scholars that are reporting (Snow 1988). Trade, 
investment, and other forms of "scal interaction 
have always been of importance, but so too has a 
more anthropomorphic interaction—that of human 
migration. Over the years and due to many diverse 
push and pull factors, Chinese people have formed 
a sizable community in Africa, one that is the largest 
in the southern tip of the continent. South Africa 
speci"cally hosts the largest percentage of Chinese 
people in Africa, as well as the largest number of new 
migrants, and thus becomes a site of a worthwhile 
investigation into questions of diaspora (Park and 
Chen 2009). !e Chinese diaspora in South Africa 
has o$en %uctuated in size, interacting with the 
political machinations of host land and homeland in 
a place shaped by race-based apartheid legislation. 
!e experience of Chinese South Africans during 
apartheid, particularly their status as more “white 
adjacent” than other ethnic groups in the country 
sparked curiosity. Were Chinese people constructed 
as a “model minority” by the state or by e#orts of 
their community? How did that a#ect the Chinese 
diaspora’s integration into society and relationship 
with other Black South Africans? Finally, what was 

the role of the state in constructing this diaspora 
through immigration policies with clear political 
aims? Using Butler’s emphasis on international 
forces as formative agents contributing to the 
creation and maintenance of diaspora, as well as 
Manning’s attention to the two-way connections 
between a homeland and a diaspora created a 
re"ned diasporic framework for study to elucidate 
these questions considering the Chinese diaspora 
(Butler 2001; Manning 2009). !rough analysis of 
the Coolie movement, South African immigration 
policies, apartheid racial reclassi"cation issues, and 
diplomatic relations with China, it became clear that 
the South African colonial government’s regulation 
of race and anti-Black motives before and during 
apartheid informed and exacerbated the narcissism 
of minor di#erence between Chinese people in 
South Africa and the Black community in the state’s 
e#ort to retain white supremacy.

Diasporic Migration Waves and Groupings
 !e movement of people is critical to 
interactions between China and Africa as a whole, as 
an estimated one to two million people from China 
live across the African continent; however, this 
number is highly speculative and unreliable due to 
di&culties in ascertaining dependable data because 
of porous borders and corruption of some African 
government agencies (Park 2012). Well over half of 
these Chinese migrants end up in southern Africa, 
and thus South Africa is the only country in the 
African continent with a signi"cant population of 
Chinese and Taiwanese South Africans. !e number 



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Aisthesis      Volume 13,  202276

of Chinese people in the country has %uctuated 
throughout history and is also di&cult to concretely 
ascertain, but according to Yoon Park’s (2012) 
research, the number is probably between 350,000 to 
500,000. Park (2012) identi"es three distinct groups 
of Chinese in South Africa—the Chinese South 
Africans, the Taiwanese, and new Mainland Chinese 
immigrants—which can further be divided into two 
waves based on time of entry, pre- or post-2000. Of 
course, these labels and groups are highly porous 
and are not to be misconstrued as homogeneous 
by any means. Migration patterns varied highly 
depending on personal push and pull factors as well; 
however, most Taiwanese and Chinese members of 
the pre-2000 group are South African citizens and 
permanent residents, whereas post-2000 migrants 
typically intend to return to China (Park 2012).

Historical Background
 It is critical to understand and contextualize the 
extensive history of Sino-African relations generally, 
as well as South African interactions speci"cally 
to properly problematize the Chinese diaspora in 
South Africa. According to Philip Snow, the "rst 
instance of evidence of trade between Africa and 
China di#ers depending on whom you ask. Chinese 
scholars tend to assert that the Han dynasty traded 
with the kingdoms of Kush and Axum in 202 BC to 
AD 220. To African scholars, however, the “Indian 
Voyager” Kosmas provides more concrete proof 
of trade, as according to his Universal Christian 
Topography, traders from Adulis (modern Eritrea) 
and Tzinista (China) met in Ceylon to trade silk, 
aloes, cloves, sandalwood, and other products (Snow 
1988). Arguably the most fundamental ancient 
interaction between China and Africa, however, 
came with the ships of Zheng He, who made seven 
voyages to various locations in the Indian Ocean, 
such as Champa, Java, Sumatra, Malacca, Ceylon, 
India, and "nally Africa. Africa was the destination 
of Zheng He’s "$h great voyage in 1417-19 which 
explored a stretch of the African coastline, including 
Mogadishu, Brava, Zhubu, and possibly other more 
southern locations. What exactly occurred during 
this interaction is contested, but whether trade 
or formal submission to the Ming throne, what 
was most important about this visit was its stark 
di#erence from European powers—Zheng He did 
not storm cities or seize land but returned to his 
original home (Snow 1988).

 !roughout this period of trade and exploration 
and brief encounters and interactions, Europeans 
were beginning to take interest in Africa. Almost 
one hundred years a$er Zheng He’s %eets "rst set 
sail, Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama landed on 
the Natal coast, but it was the Dutch who founded 
a colony there in 1652 under the tutelage of Jan van 
Riebeeck of the Dutch East India Company. !e "rst 
migration of Chinese people to South Africa came 
about as convict laborers through the Dutch East 
India company; van Riebeeck himself had made 
many requests for Chinese labor because in his 
experiences with them in other colonies they had 
always struck him as hard workers (Snow 1988). 
!ese laborers were brought to the Cape of Good 
Hope in the mid- to late-17th century but are not 
ancestors of the current Chinese South Africans, as 
they were eventually repatriated or gradually became 
a part of the area’s mixed-race population (Park 
2012).
 In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud writes 
that ampli"ed antagonism between similar groups 
with minor di#erences occurs when groups are close 
together (Freud 2014). !e next in%ux of Chinese 
people to South Africa shows how Europeans 
manipulated this phenomenon to their bene"t. 
Miners, 64,000 of which were imported to South 
Africa under Britain’s colonial rule between 1904 
and 1910, were the next large group to arrive in the 
country (Park 2012). At this time, African mine 
labor was disappearing due to protest and dispersal 
a$er the war, and mines were on the verge of collapse 
due to lack of work. Important European o&cials 
decided Chinese miners to be the answer to keep 
this vital industry a%oat, who were thought to set an 
example for the “lazy” African workers. !e Daily 
Telegraph reported at the time that “the importation 
of Chinese is the condition of keeping South Africa a 
white man’s country” (Snow 1988, 47). !e incoming 
“coolies,” a term used to refer to Chinese miners, 
were considered superior enough to Africans 
because they had a country of their own, but were 
not allowed enough freedom to challenge the white 
Europeans in South Africa and were subjected to 
extreme segregation whilst working and living in 
the country. In response, Chinese laborers engaged 
in various forms of protest, including raiding Boer 
farms, killing livestock, and destroying railways 
(Snow 1988). !e white powers also feared the most 



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foreboding alliance possible, that of the Chinese 
mine workers and the Native Black residents, but 
used Freud’s narcissism of minor di#erences to their 
advantage, by keeping the two groups separate and 
paying them di#erent wages. Additionally, in some 
cases, the Chinese mine workers attacked both white 
and Black South Africans due to the views of their 
own cultural superiority. !e legacy of the Chinese 
laborers and mine workers is important to their 
future experience as a diasporic community in South 
Africa, as the government’s use of them as a bu#er 
between white and Black South African residents 
was the onset of a pattern that continued during 
apartheid. !e protests of Chinese laborers, as well, 
can be seen as the start of a long trend of activism 
and advocacy for their community. !e miners 
were all returned to South Africa, the last leaving 
in February 1910. Chinese South Africans today, 
then, do not trace their ancestry to these groups, but 
to independent migrants that began to trickle into 
South Africa in the early 1870s from Guangdong 
Province (Park 2012).

Overview of Immigration Restrictions
 Free and independent immigration to South 
Africa, however, has never been simple for Chinese 
people. Chinese independent migration to South 
Africa began roughly in the late 1800s but was 
complicated by multiple xenophobic anti-Chinese 
restriction policies. !e Immigration Restriction 
Act of 1902 and the Chinese Exclusion Act in 
1904 limited the number of independent Chinese 
immigrants allowed to enter the country, which 
was ironic considering Chinese mine workers were 
brought to South Africa that same year in 1904. !e 
Orange Free State was even more exclusionary, as 
this law prohibited the settlement of Asiatics there as 
early as 1854. Indians and Chinese were prevented 
from owning property, being citizens, or even 
staying longer than 72 hours within !e Orange 
Free State even if merely passing through (Park 
and Chen 2009). !ese laws targeted Asiatics both 
speci"cally by name and by more inconspicuous 
means, such as requiring prospective immigrants 
to be able to read and write a European language, 
which was required by the Immigration Restriction 
Act (Yap and Man 1996). !e Chinese Exclusion Act 
wholly excluded Chinese people from immigrating 
to the Cape Colony and forced Chinese people living 

there to always carry a special license that had to be 
renewed each year (Yap and Man 1996). Stipulations 
within this law and other legislation that denied 
citizenship and prohibited land ownership for the 
Chinese relegated the groups to be treated at the very 
least a non-citizen, but o$en like a criminal. !ese 
immigration legislations were supported by the 
public as well, or at least the white public, and were 
not merely policies of state design. Chinese people 
were not welcomed by local populations at this time, 
exempli"ed by one Graa" Reinet Advertiser article 
printed in 1903 which stated, “John Chinaman is 
in every way un"tted to be a fellow citizen in this 
country…[as he is] working out the European trader 
and introducing habits and customs which it is to our 
interest to keep out of the country” (Yap and Man 
1996, 62). !ese conditions undoubtedly in%uenced 
the Chinese community in South Africa to form a 
close community and strong Chinese identity, as 
they were not treated as citizens of South Africa 
until democratization. Still, throughout these o$en 
inhospitable conditions, Chinese people continued 
to immigrate to South Africa for economic reasons 
and build a life and a home in the country.
 While the immediate a$ermath of WWII provided 
some relief to immigration restriction, the border 
was tightly closed yet again at the onset of apartheid 
and the Immigrants Regulation Amendment Act 
of 1953. Chinese people who found themselves in 
South Africa at this time were essentially trapped, 
as the Communist Party takeover in 1949 and harsh 
emigration legislation in the homeland prevented 
Chinese people from returning (Park 2012). !e 
Central Chinese Association, a group mobilized to 
protect the Chinese community’s interests in the face 
of apartheid, initially decried the stringency of this 
act by appealing to the South African government’s 
blatant belief in racial purity—“hitherto the Chinese 
people in South Africa is a homogenous community 
of pure stock. Very few mixed marriages have been 
contracted by our people. Under the stress of the 
above restriction however where the choice of a 
mate is con"ned in a small community, mixed 
marriages of an undesirable kind are more likely to 
occur” (Yap and Man 1996, 349). Whether or not 
this was a tactical method or appealing to a racist 
and white supremacist apartheid government or the 
actual belief of the Chinese community, it represents 
an instance of exacerbating perceived di#erences 



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between Chinese people and other minority ethnic 
groups to attain special privileges. By painting the 
Chinese community as “homogenous” and of “pure 
stock,” the Central Chinese Association maintains 
its unique exceptionality as a race and creates 
divisions between itself and other “Coloured” or 
“Black” communities that Chinese were living 
amongst in South Africa. !is is likely a response 
to the state’s emphasis on segregation that exists for 
almost all Chinese migration to the country, as well 
as state tactics to use Chinese people for the state’s 
anti-Black aims, like the Coolies in the early 1900s. 
Interestingly, the South African state completely 
reversed its restrictive immigration policies in the 
1980s for a speci"c group of Chinese immigrants—
Taiwanese investors—which will be discussed later.

Apartheid and Beyond
 As seen in the aforementioned immigration 
legislation, racial segregation and racist governmental 
policies of apartheid were not new to the country and 
had existed in South Africa years before the National 
Party came to power in 1948. However, with the onset 
of the National Party’s leadership came a unique 
form of institutionalization and expansion of the 
legal sanction of such segregation dubbed apartheid, 
or sometimes “separate development.” With the 
onset of apartheid came a racial reclassi"cation 
system that exposed the erroneous belief “that racial 
classi"cations are clear-cut, natural, and inevitable 
attributes of South African Society” because of the 
lengths in which the government had to regulate 
who constitutes which race (Erasmus and Park 
2008, 103). With the extreme oppression of all 
non-white peoples of South Africa also came a 
clamoring for equal rights expressed by all victims 
of discrimination to achieve equality. In the Chinese 
case, their political activism o$en won them the 
status of “white adjacent,” a phenomenon that begs 
exploration.
 !e so-called “cornerstone” of the apartheid 
system was the Population Registration Act 30 of 
1950, which established three racial categories of 
division within South African society—European, 
Coloured, and Native. !e terminology used 
changed over time, as did the categories, two of 
which expanded to account for more ethnic groups. 
Europeans came to be known as “White,” “Natives” 
were understood to encompass Bantu, African, 

or Black racial identities, and “Coloureds” were 
further divided into smaller categories with the 
Proclamation 46 in 1959—Indians, Chinese, Malays, 
Griquas, and people of mixed race (Yap and Man 
1996, 316; Erasmus and Park 2008, 100). In the 
late 1940s, as the National Party came into power, 
the Chinese community in South Africa included 
around 4,340 people, around 0.04 percent of the 
total population. !e 1951 census recorded a total 
countrywide population of 12.6 million, with 8.5 
million Africans, 2.6 million Whites, 1.1 million 
Coloureds, and 366,000 Asiatics (Yap and Man 
1996). Before 1950, Chinese people were racially 
classi"ed as “Asiatic,” but then became absorbed into 
the “Coloured” category. However, the 1951 census 
data still lumps Chinese into the Asiatic category, 
showing the incongruities involved in labeling race. 
!e Population Registration Act further de"ned a 
Chinese person as “any person who in fact is or is 
generally accepted as a member of a race or tribe 
whose national home is in China” (Yap and Man 
1996, 317). What constitutes “general acceptance,” 
however, is not clear in this de"nition. !us, racial 
labels were arbitrary and ever-changing before and 
during apartheid in South Africa according to the 
government’s deemed necessity of groupings.
 Chinese people were subjected to many other 
forms of legislation and policies that restricted 
their freedom of movement in society, including 
the Immigrants Regulation Amendment Act 43, 
the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act 55, the 
Immorality Amendment Acts of 1951 and 1957, and 
the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act (Erasmus 
and Park 2008). !e consequences of these policies 
were split into the classi"cations of “grand” apartheid 
and “petty” apartheid, arbitrary distinctions in terms 
of lived experience, but accepted distinctions in terms 
of governmental administration. !e Group Areas 
Act of 1951, a “grand” form of apartheid, was one 
of the most problematic policies for Chinese South 
Africans’ livelihoods. Essentially, the government 
demarcated areas in which each race would live 
and operate in society, such as where one could 
use a sports facility, get a job, or do business. !ose 
of the “wrong race” who were occupying a space 
allocated for a di#erent racial group were forced to 
relocate (Yap and Man 1996, 326). !is act, along 
with all the other apartheid legislation, required the 
government to decide and regulate how race was 



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Aisthesis      Volume 13,  202279

identi"ed, expressed, and de"ned, and exactly who 
"ts into which category. As Chinese people "t within 
the in-between place—the “Coloureds,” or, not quite 
White and not quite Black—the group was able to 
manipulate their racial classi"cation in ways that 
would bene"t their community. Being Black during 
apartheid, however, would not help them in any way 
due to extremely harsh treatment of Black people 
during this time. Chinese people were trapped in a 
situation in which having more political autonomy 
and human rights was synonymous with the white 
experience.
 For the South African government, attempting 
to categorize and identify an idea that is currently 
understood to be completely socially derived was a 
challenge, as seen by the case of one David Song, a 
man who achieved reclassi"cation as “white” based 
on letters of acceptance from white friends, although 
he personally admitted he “looks like a Chinese” 
(Erasmus and Park 2008, 201). Two months later, in 
May 1962, the government amended their legislation 
to ensure that applicants for racial reclassi"cation 
not only had to be accepted as white but had to look 
the part as well. A total of 183 people were classi"ed 
both into and out of the Chinese group between 
1974 and 1990—a number that clearly shows 
the potential for racial mobility but a very small 
number of successful cases (Yap and Man 1996). 
!e phenomenon of racial reclassi"cation was not 
widespread. In other instances, Chinese people 
seemed to exist in the gray area between White 
and Coloured, as they were o#ered to be included 
on the white voters’ rolls multiple times, and on 
an individual basis, many Chinese were allowed to 
reside in white areas under the Group Areas Act. 
It must be understood that Chinese people did not 
unanimously agree on the political action to take 
regarding how “white adjacent” they wanted to 
become. For example, in 1988 a$er another o#er to 
extend the vote to the Chinese community, whether 
to accept or reject the o#er was the topic of discussion 
for the Chinese Association of South Africa (CASA), 
formerly Central Chinese Association. Some 
Chinese South Africans wanted the vote, as that was 
the culmination of what the group had been striving 
for in terms of political rights, but others argued to 
reject “because the racial basis of the constitution 
amounted to ‘approval’ of apartheid” (Yap and Man 
1996, 416). Importantly, CASA members stressed the 

distinction between “full rights” and “White rights,” 
as they did not want to merely assume the position 
of whites in society. In the end, they voted to refuse 
the o#er yet again. !e South African government 
manipulated white supremacy in that whiteness 
became the normative requirement for citizenship; 
to gain any form of political rights required white 
adjacency. Non-whites were not granted citizenship 
rights, regardless of whether they had immigrated or 
had been there before the Europeans. !e Chinese 
diaspora, then, existed in a di&cult dichotomy 
between advocating for a better life for their own 
people, while refusing to accept the racial label 
that came with that privilege. !e government had 
institutionalized white supremacy to such a degree 
that citizenship rights were equated with whiteness.
 Chinese South Africans did not refuse, 
however, the special privileges granted to them on 
an individual basis to reside in white areas. !e 
Chinese community in South Africa was very small 
compared to other groups, and because of their 
history of migration as independent migrators, had 
lived and worked with many di#erent racial groups 
in many di#erent places. Chinese South Africans 
largely believed that the Group Areas Act would be 
detrimental to their very livelihood and existence 
in South Africa, and community leaders and CASA 
appealed to authorities for an exemption to the 
Group Areas Act through individualized permits, 
which were considered and granted based on merit. 
In 1971, the authorities even allowed Chinese people 
to purchase property in white areas if the whites 
who resided there already did not object. As little 
by little, Chinese people gained more exemptions or 
o#ers for white privileges, media publicity focused 
on how they could be “the "rst disquali"ed group 
to gain all White privileges” (Yap and Man 1996, 
367). !roughout apartheid, however, the Chinese 
community su#ered “petty” instances of the policy 
such as being banned from sports matches and 
being refused service at restaurants and hotels. Non-
whites, in this case, could be considered similar in 
terms of experience, as all were inferior compared 
to whites, and oppressed to various degrees by the 
white minority which held power. According to 
Freud’s narcissism of small di#erences, then, the 
minor distinctions between these similar groups 
could easily lead to antagonism. !e small di#erences 
that Chinese people had, such as a small population 



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Aisthesis      Volume 13,  202280

and the assistance of good diplomatic relationships 
between the Republic of China and South Africa, 
enabled them to achieve white adjacency in some 
respects, which caused antagonism between them 
and other ethnic groups, particularly the Black 
community, which came to a head in 2008 a$er 
apartheid had ended.
 On June 18, 2008, CASA won a court challenge 
against the South African government, winning 
recognition that Chinese South Africans fall 
within the de"nition of “black people” contained 
in two pieces of redress legislation that attempted 
to address the inequalities of apartheid and 
compensate for groups that su#ered discrimination. 
!e term “black people” is a direct word from the 
legislation itself that acted as a blanket term for all 
those that su#ered discrimination under apartheid; 
realistically, this would include all non-white people 
under such a de"nition. CASA had engaged with 
the government for eight years, attempting to seek 
clarity on the ambiguity of “black people” and 
whether they quali"ed under the legislation. !eir 
case generated much backlash in the media from 
the Black community of South Africa, with some 
referring to this ruling as “surprising, irrational, 
shallow, opportunistic, and inexplicable,” and the 
Labour Minister himself announcing, “What I know 
is that coloureds don’t speak Chinese” (Erasmus and 
Park 2008, 99). White supremacy’s narcissism of 
small di#erences is at work here—the discussion of 
which non-white group was discriminated against 
more, and which group was victimized the most. 
While it is incredibly important to recognize the 
diversity of experience under apartheid, and also 
to recognize the proportional privilege Chinese 
people received, it seemed that the state’s regulation 
of race was yet again driving a wedge between the 
Chinese and Black communities. !e Chinese "t 
into an interesting juxtaposition of apartheid society 
in which they weren’t white enough to receive full 
rights, but weren’t oppressed enough to receive 
redress from the discrimination they did face.

State Involvement and Foreign Policy
 Investigating South African immigration policies 
further elucidates not only the role of the state in 
constructing and dismantling diaspora but how the 
state manipulated the narcissism of minor di#erences 
between Chinese immigrants and Black natives to 

uphold white supremacy. Although they seemed to 
achieve a form of white adjacency that white South 
Africans sometimes accepted, were Chinese people 
ever really wanted in the country? It seemed that 
for much of South Africa and China’s history, the 
government made it next to impossible for Chinese 
people to legally immigrate. However, the case of 
Taiwanese investors in the 1980s problematizes this 
pattern and builds on an older historical context of 
the Chinese mine workers being brought to Africa 
for economic bene"t. In the late 1970s, the South 
African government began o#ering incentives for 
Taiwanese investors and their families to relocate 
from the Republic of China, including subsidized 
wages, costs of relocation, subsidized rent, housing 
loans, and other non-governmental-based incentives 
such as favorable exchange rates and cheap transport 
of goods to urban areas (Park 2012). !eir arrival 
was designed to slow Black urbanization, according 
to Yoon Park, as the investors were encouraged to 
settle in the “homelands,” rural regions of high Black 
populations (Park 2012; Yap and Man 1996, 420). 
Around 1989, at the peak of Taiwanese immigration, 
there were close to 30,000 Taiwanese in South Africa, 
300 new factories, an invested capital value of USD 
$300 million or one billion Rand, and 40,000 new 
jobs (Yap and Man 1996, 421).
 On paper and from a "nancial perspective, the 
Taiwanese investor in%ux to South Africa during this 
time was highly bene"cial for its local residents, but 
the incentives had a more sinister anti-Black motive. 
Another reason for this immigration was diplomatic, 
as the Republic of China and South Africa had 
developed very close relations at this time. It was 
clear that the political machinations and diplomatic 
connections of states had a profound e#ect on 
diaspora, but it is important to consider the two-way 
connections between a homeland and a diaspora, 
and vice versa, as Manning proposes in “Diaspora: 
Struggles and Connections” (2009). Additionally, 
international theorists Shain and Barth (2003) assert 
that “Diasporas can be active actors, in%uencing 
the foreign policies of their host lands. Diasporas, 
especially those in liberal-democratic societies, o$en 
organize as interest groups to in%uence the foreign 
policy of their host land vis a vis their homeland” 
(453). While the interactions between Africa and 
China are o$en seen in economic terms (e.g., trade 
values and investment capital), it is important to 



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Aisthesis      Volume 13,  2022

consider the anthropomorphic power of diasporic 
groups as a determinant in foreign policy. !e 
South African government’s anti-Blackness and the 
complicated relationship of diasporic Chinese to 
their homelands in%uenced South Africa’s diplomatic 
relationship with China and vice versa.
 For example, in 1960 the Republic of China voted 
in favor of a United Nations resolution to condemn 
apartheid in South Africa as a threat to world peace, 
and Chinese South Africans found themselves as 
spokespeople for the ROC whilst still needing to 
declare loyalty to South Africa. !e Central Chinese 
Association declared loyalty to South Africa as a 
response to protect themselves against ill feelings of 
Afrikaners who were disappointed with the ROC’s 
actions, inadvertently defending apartheid. !e 
Central Chinese Association also signed a statement 
with other overseas organizations published in 
the New York Times to oppose the admission of 
the People’s Republic of China into the UN in 
1967 (Yap and Man 1996, 375). White supremacy 
worked to intimidate the Chinese community 
into defending apartheid to show loyalty to South 
Africa and put Chinese people in a complicated 
relationship regarding their host land and homeland. 
Signi"cantly, the anti-apartheid stance of PRC and 
Mao’s relationship to Pan-Africanism was a catalyst 
for South Africa’s break with Taiwan (Yap and 
Man 1996). Forces within and beyond the Chinese 
diaspora’s control in%uenced these foreign policy 
decisions, but it is important to conceptualize the 
diaspora as an active entity with a bilateral impact on 
South African politics, one that was also in%uenced 
by anti-Blackness.

Conclusion
 !e study of the Chinese diaspora’s experience in 
South Africa helps to focus on a speci"c dimension 
of diasporic studies, contributing to the "eld as a 
whole. While considering the power of international 
forces such as foreign policy or diplomatic relations 
and their e#ect on the diaspora is important, the 
diaspora’s power in counter in%uencing the same 
international forces is equally worth studying, as 
hopefully shown within this paper. !e Chinese 
experience in South Africa has been adaptive, 
showing the agency of a small minority diasporic 
community in a state with racial strati"cation and 
extreme discriminatory practices. !e trend of anti-

Blackness remained consistent throughout most of 
the South African state’s relationship with Chinese 
people, manipulating their race and reputation to 
serve their anti-Black aims through the narcissism 
of minor di#erences. Even a$er the end of apartheid 
and democratization of South Africa, the Chinese 
community still faced a gray area between being 
white enough or Black enough to feel integrated 
within the community.
 
Works Cited
Butler, Kim D. 2001. “De"ning Diaspora, Re"ning 

a Discourse.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational 
Studies 10, no. 2 (Fall): 189-219. https://doi.
org/10.1353/dsp.2011.0014.

Canaves, Sky. 2008. “In South Africa, Chinese is 
the New Black.” Wall Street Journal, June 19, 2008. 
https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-CJB-209.

Chen, Anna Ying, Tu T. Huynh, and Yoon Jung 
Park. 2010. “Faces of China: New Chinese 
Migrants in South Africa, 1980s to Present.” 
African and Asian Studies 9, no. 3: 286-306. 
https://doi.org/10.1163/156921010X515978.

Deumert, Ana and Nkululeko Mabandla. 2013. 
“Every Day a New Shop Pops Up' - South Africa's 
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