Writing about race in Africa–China relations is contentious. On the one hand, there is an audience which assumes anti-Black racism in China to be self-evident and regards efforts to contextualise if not downplay it to be puzzling and problematic. On the other hand, there are those who consider discussions of anti-Black racism in China to be unreflectively imposing Western frameworks and contexts on a distinctively Chinese context. This essay argues that this tension is related to other contentions about the nature of political economic asymmetries in Africa–China relations, and the politics of knowledge production regarding who is speaking about whom.