In 1793 the Emperor Qianlong airily dismissed the emissary of King George III on the grounds that China was the self-sufficient centre of the world and had no conceivable need of imports. Modern China should be so lucky. As well as foreign technology, Beijing now requires foreign oil, foreign copper, foreign iron ore and heaps of other foreign commodities to sustain its “Made in China” transformation.
That is why Chinese companies and Chinese workers find themselves in distant foreign lands that the Qing dynasty emperor would have considered beneath his contempt. It is why, for example, 25,000 Chinese are in Sudan and South Sudan, the latter a recently created country that is China’s seventh most important oil supplier.
Such faraway involvement comes at a price, one occasionally paid in blood. Last weekend 29 road construction workers were kidnapped by rebels in the border region of Sudan. One person is missing, possibly killed. In a separate incident, 25 Chinese construction workers in the Sinai region of Egypt were released yesterday after being held hostage by assailants. These are not rarities. In October, 13 Chinese sailors were killed on the Mekong river in Thailand.
Protecting one’s citizens abroad is tough for any nation. But it may be harder for China, a reluctant superpower that wants to maintain the illusion of having a low international profile. That desire is butting up against reality as China’s commercial needs suck it into a troubled world. The truth came home to many last year when Beijing scrambled to evacuate no fewer than 35,000 Chinese workers from Libya, another oil exporter with unfortunate politics.
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