COVID-19: Pandemic drives hundreds of Africans out of Guangzhou, says American news channel

The entire episode of COVID-19 outbreak in China triggered the most severe anti-Black racial clashes in China in decades.

At the turn of the 21st century, Guangzhou -- already a magnet for internal migrants -- became an accidental experiment in multiculturalism in China, as loose immigration rules and factories churning out cheap products attracted droves of African entrepreneurs, reports CNN.

Business boomed, and by 2012 as many as 100,000 Sub-Saharan Africans had flocked to the city, according to Prof. Adams Bodomo's book "Africans in China." While that figure was never verified, it pointed to the generally accepted opinion that, between 2005 and 2012, at least, this was the largest African expatriate community in Asia, the American news channel report said.

The era also witnessed a rise in interracial marriages in the community.

Ten months on, more than a dozen experts and Africans who spoke with CNN said that number has further dwindled, due to several repatriation flights to Nigeria and Kenya, and tougher coronavirus-era visa rules, with most foreigners barred from entry to China. Many who remain are rooted in China by Chinese wives and children.

"For the whole issue of African traders in Guangzhou, I suspect that era is over," Gordon Mathews, professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong told CNN.

"I'm skeptical that (their physical presence in the city) will ever be at the scale that it has been."