ABSTRACT
China’s one million migrants in Africa has generated lot of speculations on these people being an instrument for China to build up an empire. Based on investigations in several African countries like Angola, Zimbabwe, South African and Tanzania, the author provides a meso-perspective to understand the relationship of “the state” and “the individual”, namely through the operation of self-organized associations in each hosting country to look at the interactions between the Chinese embassy and the Chinese community, new migrants from mainland since late 1980s in particular. From the reactions of these associations towards security challenges, the author suggests that associations are more dynamic and display creative agency on the ground. Instead of serving as instruments of the mystified “China’s grand strategy”, migrant associations are in a complementary position in term of “national interest protection”, and engage constructively with the African authorities.
