On October 6, two Chinese citizens were killed and 10 other people were injured in a suspected suicide attack outside the Karachi airport in Pakistan.
The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility. It is the latest of several attacks on Chinese workers in Pakistan and other countries in recent years.
There is more than half a million Chinese workers employed in development projects around the world – often in politically volatile areas – and many have been killed or kidnapped.
How often have Chinese workers in Pakistan been attacked?
The two Chinese nationals who died in the October 6 attack were part of a convoy of people involved in the construction of power plants in Port Qasim, near Karachi.
The workers were killed when a bomb exploded in a vehicle near the city’s airport. Another 10 people were injured.
The ELB, which is fighting for a separate homeland for the Baloch people, said it had “targeted a convoy of high-level Chinese engineers and investors” arriving from the airport in what they said was a suicide attack.
Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called the attack a “heinous act” and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the attack “would not go unpunished.”.
The two Chinese nationals who died were working to develop Port Qasim, in Pakistan’s Sindh province.
The BLA also admitted attacking a naval air base near the Gwadar port in Balochistan in March, which is being developed by Chinese companies.
The insurgent group also admitted to killing three Chinese academics and their Pakistani driver in April 2022 in a suicide attack near the Confucius Institute, which is run by Chinese nationals at the University of Karachi.
The ELB says the Baloch people have not been receiving a fair share of the wealth derived from foreign investment in the province or from the extraction of minerals (such as oil) by foreign companies in the area.
How many Chinese citizens work abroad and why?
There are about 568,000 Chinese citizens working abroad in projects around the world led by Chinese companies, according to Chinese Ministry of Commerce figures for 2022 (the latest figures available).
Most of these workers participate in projects within the framework of China’s vast Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), known as the New Silk Road.
China is estimated to have invested US$1 trillion in the BRI to develop projects such as roads and railways, ports and power plants.
This aims to create new routes for China’s exports and deepen trade ties between China and all nations that have signed up as partners in the plan.
Pakistan is home to one of the largest BRI projects: the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. This initiative comprises a series of road and rail routes from China’s western border, through Pakistan, to the port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea.
Like Pakistan, many countries in Africa, including Kenya, Ethiopia and Senegal, have borrowed billions of dollars from China to build better transportation and energy infrastructure.
Residents of host countries often They complain that the companies that run the development projects offer them few jobs and employ mostly Chinese citizens..
“Local people in African countries are bothered by this,” Professor Steve Tsang of the SOAS China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London tells the BBC.
“Companies hire a lot of Chinese workers and there is a feeling that they employ Africans only in the jobs with the harshest conditions,” adds Tsang.
“China says its investment abroad is beneficial for everyone,” analyst Alex Vines from the Royal Institute of International Affairs, known as Chatham House, in London, told the BBC.
“But has given jobs there to Chinese workers to solve the problem of unemployment in China“Adds Vines.
How dangerous is it for Chinese citizens to work abroad?
China’s overseas investments have led to its citizens working in some of the world’s most dangerous countries, including active conflict zones.
Pakistan, for example, is ranked as one of the most politically unstable countries, according to a World Bank list.
BBC World Service correspondent in Karachi, Riaz Sohail, says there were 16 attacks linked to Chinese development projects in Pakistan, in which 12 Chinese citizens were killed and 16 others were injured.
This includes the murder in March 2024 of five Chinese engineers who had been working on the Dasu hydroelectric dam in the Bisham region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a highly volatile area in the northwest of the country.
In November 2018, gunmen killed at least four people in an attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi.
No one took responsibility for these attacks.
In Africa there have been several attacks on Chinese employees working in gold mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in a region where political violence by armed militant groups is widespread.
In July 2024, six Chinese citizens and at least two Congolese soldiers were shot at the site of a gold mine in the northeast of the country, owned in part by a Chinese company, the news agency reported. Reuters then.
The perpetrators of the attack were reportedly members of a militia called the Congo Development Cooperative. It is one of several armed groups fighting for control of the region’s land and natural resources.
In January 2022, it was reported that gunmen in Nigeria kidnapped three Chinese workers in Niger State at the construction site of a dam being built by Chinese state-owned company Sinohydro.
According to a report by the US-based Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIEE), armed groups in Africa and Southeast Asia often They consider it profitable to kidnap Chinese citizens because they expect companies to pay large ransoms to free them.
In Afghanistan, in the two decades between the Taliban’s loss and regaining power, the group frequently kidnapped Chinese foreign workers and held them for ransom.
How is China trying to protect overseas workers?
The Chinese government and companies have so far confronted attacks on overseas workers by “paying ransoms to secure the release of workers, pressuring host country officials to provide greater security, and exporting surveillance technology to help identify and intercept workers.” possible extremists,” says the PIEE.
China is also training armed forces in host countries to provide better security. And Chinese companies have increasingly been hiring private security firms to defend against suicide bombers, gunmen and kidnappers.
“But there are limits to what Beijing can reasonably expect host countries to implement.“says the PIEE report. “Chinese foreign direct investment abroad has gone to countries with weaker rule of law.”
Following the most recent attack in Pakistan, the Chinese embassy in that country reminded its citizens and Chinese companies there to be vigilant and “do everything possible to take security precautions.”
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