Introduction

Since its establishment in 1949, the People’s Republic of China began to provide African students the opportunity for higher education. The life these students have typically encountered on a Chinese university campus has some rather striking characteristics. First, a complete and total society exists within the parameters of the university grounds. A wall defines these parameters and surrounds this entire society. All staff and students live within this wall. Two smaller walls stand inside the main wall; these walls surround the foreigners. The first wall surrounds the foreign “experts” (mainly Western professionals); the second wall surrounds the foreign students (mainly African men). These walls divide the society twice. The walls separate the Chinese from the non-Chinese and the foreign experts from the foreign students. Thus, three distinct societies live inside the school grounds: the Chinese, the Westerners, and the Africans. In a way, each group plays a different role in relation to the other. The Westerners, as foreign experts, teach local Chinese students; the Chinese professors, as local experts, teach the foreign African students. In the first case, the more commonly discussed ‘First World’ to Third World’ (North-South) educational transfer occurs; ¹ in the second case, the lesser known phenomenon of Third World to Third World (South-South) exchange takes place. This study explores South-South aspects of knowledge transfer by examining the lives of African students in China.