(Guangzhou) – Little North Road in downtown Guangzhou has long been dubbed by locals as "chocolate town". It is where African traders flood in to shops to bargain for wigs, Burqas of all colors and mobile phones of unknown brands. Some haggle with local vendors in fluent Mandarin, but languages such as Swahili and Hausa are commonly heard.

In 2014, the southern industrial hub was home to the largest African community in Asia, a study by Guangzhou University published that year showed. But China's slowing economy coupled with a crackdown on illegal aliens and deep-rooted racism – particularly against immigrants of color – has driven out thousands of Africans from what was once called the "oriental Brooklyn".

There were 11,000 Africans – both long-term residents and students –registered at the city's public security department as of June 25, government data showed. The figure was about 6,000 less compared to that in 2014.

Serges de la Roche, a businessman from Togo who goes by the Chinese pseudonym Xiaolong, is one of them. He was among a wave of migrants that according to Li Zhigang, a professor at Sun Yat-Sen University, started trickling in since 1997.

Xiaolong, like many other entrepreneurial Africans drawn to this bustling industrial town, first served as a middleman linking Chinese factories with wholesalers and retailers in his home country. He has now expanded his electronics business to sell directly to consumers in Togo and its neighbors in West Africa. After a decade of living in the city he speaks fluent Mandarin and has married a Chinese national.

But Xiaolong says business has soured in recent years, which had prompted him to think of leaving China. In 2013, he says he earned around US$ 12,000 a month, which was about ten times the per capita income of the prosperous southern province of Guangdong at the time. But now he earns just one-fourth of that because the cost of Chinese goods have risen over the years, Xiaolong said. Guangzhou is losing its competitive edge because manufacturers were either closing or shifting to Southeast Asia due to rising labor costs, making it harder to cut deals on the factory floor.

A growing number of Chinese manufacturers have also set up plants in Africa, cutting out the middlemen, he said.

The drop in incomes has made another unsavory aspect – the xenophobia –harder to tolerate. Xiaolong says locals often cover their noses and mouths with their hands when they pass by and some people even call them "nigger" in a derogatory tone.

"What is not good is that some Chinese think all Africans are rogues," said Xiaolong.

He says he was once mistakenly detained for five days, when he wasn't able to produce his passport during a police raid. He says he had submitted it to the immigration office to renew his visa at the time.

Some in the community say ongoing police crackdowns on illegal immigrants have unfairly targeted the African traders. A businessman from South Africa, who only identified himself as Mike, said in recent months, police officers have come to his office once every three days to check his passport.

Africans were also struggling to crack the job market in China, partly due to discrimination, several sources told Caixin. The management at a French language training center was at first hesitant to hire a French national of Ivorian decent, due to her skin color, a student familiar with the matter told Caixin. But she was given the job later, after the student had insisted on hiring the teacher after a trial lesson.

A study by Adams Bodomo, Professor at the African Studies Department of the University of Vienna, found that nearly 40 percent of African migrants in China had received a university education. "But the opportunities that China has offered to us are too few," said Xiaolong, who also holds a college degree, "I can be a teacher in Togo, but I can only work as a merchant here."

Xiaolong hunts for new electronic devices

Despite this uneven playing field, Xiaolong says what has kept him for long in the country, is that his two sons are half-Chinese and he wants them to learn their mother's culture.

The high cost of education in China, however, is a major factor driving out some families, said Xiaolong. In Guangzhou, the annual tuition for an international school is around US$ 18,000, while fees at a comparable school in Togo cost just a fraction of that, or about US$ 2,000 per year.

Xiaolong with his sons

In addition to his community in "chocolate town," Xiaolong says he also feels at home in Suixi, a small town in eastern Anhui province, the birthplace of his wife Xiaodie. Although Xiaodie's parents first opposed the marriage, partly because of his skin color, Xiaolong said residents of Suixi now treat him as one of their own.

Xiaolong helps with the gardening at his brother-in-law's house in Suixi. He says he is the first African in the small town

Hear more voices from the African community in Guangzhou: Fading China Dream

Contact reporter Coco Feng (renkefeng@caixin.com); editor Poornima Weerasekara (poornima@caixin.com)