Author: Adams Bodomo.

This special issue of The Journal of Pan African Studies is dedicated to research on the African Diaspora in China. Africa-China relations have increasingly constituted a prominent research topic in many humanities and social sciences disciplines since the turn of the Millennium. An important aspect of this research theme is dedicated to issues of migration between Africa and China and the formation of Diaspora communities in these two parts of the world. We often hear of research on Africans in China and Chinese in Africa. There is however a tendency to conflate the two quite distinct phenomena into "Chinese in Africa/Africans in China" and special issues of various journals are then published about these two different and rather disparate migratory and Diaspora phenomena. This special issue aims to be uniquely focused and is dedicated solely to exploring the African presence in China and the formation of Diaspora African communities in various cities including Guangzhou, Yiwu, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Macau, and many other prominent locations within Greater China. There is already a significant body of about 50-odd research journal articles and a book that have enabled us to have fairly good answers to empirical questions like why Africans go to China, the major cities Africans live in and visit, what they do there, and how they are received by the Chinese state and the Chinese people. In this introductory article to the volume, I first review the issues involved in the rise of a new African Diaspora in China. Then I outline the various places in China where the African presence is most prominent. Finally, I introduce the papers featured in the volume.