“The Chinese reluctance to hire more local workers, perhaps more than any other single factor, has continued to irk the Angolans and has led to tensions between the two countries, and as the number of Chinese workers in Angola has continued to swell, local resentment against them has also grown. Over the last two years, human rights researchers have been documenting an increase in kidnappings and beatings of Chinese workers, and a ‘steady pattern of discrimination’ has started to emerge, says the Center for Human Rights Coordination in Luanda, according to the Wall Street Journal. In 2009, the Chinese embassy issued an online warning about threats to Chinese citizens in Angola, citing two cases in which armed robbers stripped Chinese businessmen of thousands of dollars in cash and equipment. Further north, in the oil-rich Cabinda Province, Chinese workers have suffered a spate of attacks including beatings, kidnappings and threats by a newly formed separatist group called the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda. Much of this violence has its roots in the attitude the Chinese originally adopted when they first arrived in Angola and other parts of Africa — namely, that Africans were ill-equipped or simply unable to perform complex jobs. Some Chinese contractors sheltered their imported Chinese laborers away in neat little roadside camps surrounded by barbed wire, armed guards and dogs. Even if you managed to get inside — which we once did by pretending to be cement merchants from South Africa touring the country to drum up business — it was impossible to talk to any of these sequestered workers, which raised the question of whether the Angolans had it as bad as the Chinese did. The sporadic and sometimes confusing nature of the meeting of these two cultures produced much rancor and very little mutual understanding.”
China in Angola
“The Chinese reluctance to hire more local workers, perhaps more than any other single factor, has continued to irk the Angolans and has led to tensions between the two countries, and as the number of Chinese workers in Angola has continued to swell, local resentment against them has also grown. Over the last two years, human rights researchers have been documenting an increase in kidnappings and beatings of Chinese workers, and a ‘steady pattern of discrimination’ has started to emerge, says the Center for Human Rights Coordination in Luanda, according to the Wall Street Journal. In 2009, the Chinese embassy issued an online warning about threats to Chinese citizens in Angola, citing two cases in which armed robbers stripped Chinese businessmen of thousands of dollars in cash and equipment. Further north, in the oil-rich Cabinda Province, Chinese workers have suffered a spate of attacks including beatings, kidnappings and threats by a newly formed separatist group called the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda. Much of this violence has its roots in the attitude the Chinese originally adopted when they first arrived in Angola and other parts of Africa — namely, that Africans were ill-equipped or simply unable to perform complex jobs. Some Chinese contractors sheltered their imported Chinese laborers away in neat little roadside camps surrounded by barbed wire, armed guards and dogs. Even if you managed to get inside — which we once did by pretending to be cement merchants from South Africa touring the country to drum up business — it was impossible to talk to any of these sequestered workers, which raised the question of whether the Angolans had it as bad as the Chinese did. The sporadic and sometimes confusing nature of the meeting of these two cultures produced much rancor and very little mutual understanding.”