More trouble in Ghana for Chinese miners working the country’s small and usually illegal gold mines. Police are holding 124 Chinese after a series of raids on workers suspected of illegal working. The high price of gold has brought an influx of pick-and-shovel wielding Chinese to Ghana, even though foreigners are banned from small scale mining in the country, which is the continent’s second largest gold producer after South Africa.
Last October, a 16-year old Chinese boy was killed and more than 100 other Chinese arrested in a joint raid by police and immigration authorities on suspected illegal gold mining in the Ashanti region. Now as then, the incident is awkward for Beijing which is caught between assuring a domestic audience that it can look after the interests of its citizens abroad while reassuring skeptical African countries that the increasing legions of Chinese working in Africa will be good local citizens.
