China's Silent Army
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Lan was brought here in a black taxi which has seen better days and which will come back in the small hours of the night to take her home to the flat she shares with four compatriots. If something goes wrong, she’ll turn to the scrap of paper with her address written on it in Arabic which she keeps hidden in her pocket like a precious treasure. That scrap of paper represents her only lifeline between the hubbub of Arabic around her and the world she understands, between the reality all about her and her own reality. With her long hair uncovered and her almond-shaped eyes, Lan is clearly a foreigner in this busy, traditional corner of old Cairo. Her arrival in this country was an 8,000-kilometer leap into the unknown, an attempt to start life anew after her fortieth birthday. With her relentless drive to succeed, this was nothing that Lan couldn’t handle.
Lan and her husband both come from Liaoning, a province bordering North Korea in northeast China. They arrived in Egypt seventeen months ago, hoping to make their fortune overseas. They left behind them a fourteen-year-old son who now lives with his grandparents, although Lan herself describes him as “a difficult teenager.” Ever since arriving in Egypt, Lan has been taking her cart loaded with 25 kilos’ worth of all types of clothing, from pajamas to hijabs, and wandering through the streets of Cairo in search of customers; this has become her obsession. She dedicates around ten hours each day to her task, dragging her cart up and down staircases in old, dark buildings, knocking on doors in the hope of walking away with a handful of Egyptian pounds in exchange for a cotton dressing gown or some sheets made of fake silk.
Lan is one of the many thousands of Chinese men and women who make up the group known as the shanta sini, or “Chinese bag-people” in Egyptian Arabic. This army of migrants from the poorest areas of China, many living in the country illegally on expired visas, have managed to conquer Egypt’s retail textile market with nothing but their go-getting attitude and determination to escape from poverty.1 Together they personify the virtues that have made Chinese migrants the most enterprising on the planet for at least the last three centuries: a capacity for self-sacrifice, a good nose for business, the ability to adapt to their surroundings and a talent for cutting costs. A tendency to save money, a discreet nature and an exclusive web of intra-Chinese contacts also provide invaluable help. Today the army of the shanta sini can be seen everywhere where they arrive with just a bundle of belongings on their backs in search of potential consumers.
Yu, a young woman aged around twenty, is playing with her hair in a fashionable café opposite the American University in Cairo. Looking at this sharp, beautiful woman, anyone would expect her to be completely oblivious to the sufferings of the shanta sini. In fact, she’s an expert. “They get off the plane today and tomorrow they’re out on the streets of Cairo selling goods from door to door. They don’t speak a word of Arabic,” says the niece of one of the Chinese pioneers who identified a gap in the market over a decade ago and who has since gone on to make a fortune worth over 4 million euros. That uneducated emigrant who fled poverty in China is now a successful businessman with eight factories and sixty warehouses across the country. Yu says that, in order to understand how the Chinese have managed to carve out a niche for themselves in a country which has a long textile tradition and exports cotton to the whole of Europe, we must embark on a journey across the thousands of kilometers back to Canton, at the industrial heart of China.
It is there, right at the mouth of the Pearl River, where Chinese entrepreneurs buy the fabric and begin a cycle of business that they end up controlling from the top down. Silk, polyester and wool are shipped in containers to Libya, a country that shares a border and a customs agreement with Egypt. Chinese entrepreneurs understand that to start an empire in a globalized world, it’s important to be able to squeeze the margins. Not only is this something they have been doing for centuries, but the ability seems to be engraved into the genetic code of the Chinese people. As Yu explains, this is why they export the fabric to Libya rather than to Egypt, as the country puts comparatively less tax on Chinese textiles. Once on African soil, the fabric is exported again to Egypt with the help of an Egyptian middleman, before going on to fuel the underground workshops that have been set up in apartments on the outskirts of Cairo.
It is not easy to get access to one of these small, secret factories. We failed completely on our first trip to the Egyptian capital, when one businessman agreed to a date and then refused to let us in, while a second only let us get as far as the front door. It was just as difficult on our second visit to Cairo, despite being accompanied by several Chinese workers from the sector. We failed because of the distrust that is caused by the sight of a foreigner poking his nose into their business practices, especially when these are propped up by various illegalities that help them to topple the local competition. In fact, lack of transparency was one of the elements we encountered most regularly throughout our journey through the Chinese universe.
However, the presence of a Chinese friend finally paid off when Ding Tao, a modest businessman with ten years’ experience in the country, welcomed us right into his center of operations: a makeshift workshop in a four-room apartment in a suburb full of rundown buildings and vandalized cars left on street corners. Inside the apartment, different tasks were organized by room: in one room, a young man and two women, both dressed in hijabs, cut out material and use six sewing machines to make the clothing; in another room, the clothes are ironed and packed into boxes; meanwhile, a fifth employee works on number crunching in the office.
Despite the Chinese entrepreneurs’ preference for employing their fellow countrymen, whom they consider to be more disciplined workers, the owners of the workshop use Egyptian tailors because they are cheaper. “If they were Chinese we would have to pay them twice as much, as they would be much more productive. That’s the price of the market,” explains Ding Tao’s wife, who can speak basic Arabic. Each month they pay their employees between 250 and 300 euros to work for ten hours a day, six days a week. Minimal salaries and an extremely low production quality guarantee a product that can be sold at an unbeatable price. As well as the miserable salary, the workers suffer from severe job insecurity, as there are no contracts or medical insurance, leading to a constant turnover of staff. This is a similar situation to the one seen in China’s manufacturing hubs, such as Wenzhou or Shenzhen, where a factory can easily renew its entire workforce in just two years. The Egyptian workers reject the possibility of demanding better working conditions, since they are sure that the police know about the underground workshops but tolerate them in exchange for bribes. In an economically stagnated country where 16.7 percent of the population lives below the poverty line,2 and which is suffering from the aftermath of a revolution that overthrew the tyranny that had been clinging on to power for the last three decades, their choice is simple: it’s either this or nothing.
But why would the Egyptian people want to buy clothes at home when they can easily go out and buy them in traditional shops? Yu, who talks as if she’s telling us a story, soon clears up this mystery. “In Egypt, women eat lots of sweets and many of them are very fat, and so they prefer to buy clothes at home. That way, they avoid the shame of having to display their bodies outside their own houses.” In other words, in order to spare their customers a hard time at the shops, emigrants such as Lan set out through the Egyptian twilight after evening prayers to tackle their customers in the doorways of their own homes. “Aiz haga?” (“Do you want anything?”) they blurt out from the landing. Sometimes the only answer is a door slammed in their faces. On other occasions they get lucky and sell a piece of clothing, or the lady of the house asks them to take her measurements for a dressing gown which the shanta sini will bring back to her home a few days later.
One day, this miserable, frugal life of braving the heat and loneliness to roam the streets of Cairo will finally come to an end. The Chinese emigrant, who is typically uneducated and exploited by his employer but shrewd and good at saving, will one day decide to take a ste
p up in the production chain. He will stop distributing goods and, after investing months’ or years’ worth of savings, will instead become a producer and businessman in his own right. Starting off with a workshop and just one area of distribution, he will go on to expand his network, often while also embarking on other business opportunities. With business practices bordering on the illegal—or even crossing the line completely in terms of silencing the Egyptian authorities—it is possible to expand very quickly. They are helped on their way by an extensive web of Chinese contacts, who serve both to point them towards new opportunities and to act as an invaluable safety net. In fact, time and time again agreements between the importer and the textile factory, or between the workshop and the distributor, are made between Chinese nationals. The Chinese people’s tendency to stick together goes beyond a national level. In fact, transactions between Chinese emigrants in all the countries we visited—not just Egypt—were often restricted to people from one particular village or region. This is partly because of the great variety of different ethnic groups and languages spoken in China and partly due to the importance of family ties. Sharing a language and a birthplace creates a strong sense of trust and guarantees loyalty to the company. As a result, Chinese businesses ranging from private enterprises to state-run companies operating overseas regularly import their entire Chinese workforce from just one area.
“If all the workers on a construction site come from the same town or village, they are much more easily controlled and they don’t go against the law or their bosses. Their colleagues and friends, sometimes with family ties, are also watching. And no Chinese person wants his family to lose face at home, or to be accused of being lazy or a thief.” The words of a young Chinese worker who has spent several years living in Africa sound like an echo of the Maoist era, when tens of millions of Chinese people were sent to labor camps where they lived in a constant state of paranoia. Workers were obliged to carry out the duties of a “good comrade,” both guarding their co-workers and being guarded, informing on them and being informed on, whether in the factory or in the camp, at school or in the apparent privacy of their own homes. Nobody could escape the all-seeing eye of the authorities.
A SHADY BUSINESS
Under these circumstances, some entrepreneurs have been quick to launch new business ventures offering all kinds of highly profitable and ethically unsound services to this growing influx of emigrants. After expanding their textile network across Egypt, Yu’s family has embarked on a new enterprise—bringing Chinese emigrants to Egypt. The family takes advantage of the lack of controls on immigration and the siren call of a better life, a message that strikes a deep chord in the areas of China which have not yet jumped on the train of progress and where opportunities are few and far between. Yu tells us that her family uses the company’s license, which can easily be obtained by the use of bribes, to apply for visas which they sell for around 5,000 yuan (520 euros), although this price varies depending on whether the applicant is a friend or relative. Family members and friends spread the word in their home towns and villages, especially in China’s northeast provinces, where the privatization of heavy industries inherited from the Maoist era has caused unemployment to rise to between 30 and 40 million people in little over a decade.3 This “pull effect” spreads like wildfire in the areas where the opening up of China’s economy resulted in the dismantling of the unproductive Maoist factories at the end of the last century, taking away the livelihood of millions of families and causing serious damage, the effects of which can still be seen today. “People aren’t dying of hunger, but there are hardly any opportunities to get ahead,” Yu tells us in justification.
This situation has forced China to break with its centuries-old tradition of reluctance to allow its nationals to leave the country. In fact, the state is now facilitating emigration—and even actively encouraging it4—as an escape route for its unemployed workers. “China has distanced itself from the task of controlling the migration of its nationals and has transferred responsibility for this on to the receiving countries. Some of these are weaker states, such as some African countries where corruption and a lack of administration make it relatively easy for Chinese people to enter the country,” explains Antoine Kernan, an expert in Chinese migration at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.5 “It is much easier for Chinese migration to happen today than it was in the past,” adds Kernan, who has followed this phenomenon both in China and in Francophone countries in Africa.
This is a winning strategy for Beijing and China’s local governments: emigration helps to combat unemployment, alleviating the social tensions thriving in the areas that have been struck the hardest by layoffs. What is more, the problem tends not to reappear once the emigrant finishes his or her time abroad. Workers usually come home with a significant amount of capital to invest in the education of their children or in business opportunities which offer a greater level of financial security than they ever could have enjoyed before leaving China.6 In a way, it could be said that China is exporting labor in return for capital to be reinvested in the country, generating economic growth (and jobs) within China itself.
Seen from this perspective, the door-to-door textile business carried out by the shanta sini is little more than the repetition in Egypt of what has been happening continuously over the last three decades of China’s miraculous expansion: the success of some rests on the shoulders of others. Over those three decades, the “factory of the world” has always been fueled by an enormous contingent of emigrants who work for up to fourteen hours each day for a miserable salary, and the Egyptian textile business is fed by the sacrifices of those same poor emigrants. At the end of the day, the efforts of these individuals contribute to the collective success of the Chinese people. The reason why Chinese emigrants nowadays choose to settle in the Democratic Republic of Congo or Venezuela instead of Spain or Canada is essentially because the developing world is still comparatively unexplored and therefore offers many more opportunities to emigrants than the West, with its strict regulations and more competitive markets. Yu estimates that there are 15,000 Chinese people making a living by selling door-to-door in Egypt, far more than the 5,000 suggested by the Chinese embassy in Cairo. “There’s not a corner of Egypt which the shanta sini hasn’t yet reached,” Yu assures us. The Egyptian press has gone even further, estimating that the army of “Chinese bag-people” is made up of between 60,000 and 100,000 emigrants,7 while the Chinese media have placed this figure at somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000.8
The business opportunities on offer go beyond bringing Chinese emigrants into Egypt; in fact, many of them actually arrive from Thailand on a tourist visa and end up staying in the country for several months. Some opportunists have also profited from the everyday needs of the new arrivals. When the emigrants arrive in Cairo, these businesses hire an apartment for them, show them how the industry works, advise them on which areas of the city to cover and explain the inner workings of the Egyptian pound. They also take them to the warehouses to buy merchandise, for which the intermediaries receive a small commission. This “gold fever” leads some people, such as Mrs. Lan Jie, to try their hand at even shadier activities, such as procuring prostitutes. This is another very profitable business, although it is not without its risks. Apparently oblivious to any offense this might cause in a highly traditional country where 90 percent of the 80 million inhabitants are faithful to Sunni Islam, Mrs. Lan is looking into opening a brothel in the Egyptian capital. She wants to diversify her business dealings, which are slowing down in the textile industry and her underground dealings with emigrants. “There’s too much competition now. There are lots of shanta sini and they don’t earn as much as they did before,” she tells us in a Chinese restaurant in Cairo. And so she has decided to start importing beautiful Chinese prostitutes.
In fact, she has already started trialing the project: over the course of our dinner she receives a call from a client, which she answers with “the girl is not at home today.
” Completely unashamed and without any scruples, Mrs. Lan is perfectly happy sharing details of her business with us. “Each time a client goes with a girl, he pays 600 Egyptian pounds [around 75 euros]. My commission is 200 Egyptian pounds,” she explains. With guaranteed supply and demand, her only concern is that the police are still not on her payroll, a key factor in a business of this kind. “Do you know how to bribe the police?” she asks our Chinese friend, who confesses that he knows nothing about the subject. She doesn’t give up that easily. “If you come over to our house you might change your mind,” she insists, giggling mischievously.
Lan Jie is not the only Chinese expat to set out to run a prostitution business outside China, a country bursting with all kinds of brothels, from luxury karaoke bars where prostitutes sing in the nude to dingy massage parlors with pink neon lights where massages always finish with a “happy ending.” Sometimes the same pattern is re-created abroad. The spread of Chinese businesses and expats across the world has stimulated demand for a variety of services, from Chinese restaurants and clinics specializing in traditional Chinese medicine to acupuncture and massage parlors. Although it cannot be attributed to the Chinese alone, prostitution is always one of the star businesses.
Hidden behind karaoke bars, massage parlors and hairdressers’ shops, prostitution in Africa led to the first act of international intervention by China’s special police unit, which was set up by the Ministry of Public Security in 2007 to combat the trafficking of women. In November 2010, ten Chinese police officers landed in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo with orders to dismantle a prostitution network trafficking women from the poverty-stricken region of Sichuan in western China, who were supposedly being forced to work as prostitutes in the Congolese capital. According to the Chinese press, the drama came to an end when the women surprised the police officers by refusing to leave the country. After all, in Kinshasa they could earn US$50 a time, a small fortune compared to a monthly salary equivalent to just $300 back in Sichuan.9