Turning Ethiopia Into China's China

摘要

Ethiopian workers walking through the parking lot of Huajian Shoes' factory outside Addis Ababa in June chose the wrong day to leave their shirts untucked. The company's president, just arrived from China, spotted them through the window, sprang up, and ran outside. Zhang Huarong, a former People's Liberation Army soldier, harangued them in Chinese, tugging at one man's polo shirt and forcing another worker's into his pants. Amazed, the workers stood silent until the eruption subsided. Zhang's factory is part of the next wave of China's investment in Africa. It started with infrastructure, especially the kind that helped the Chinese extract African oil, copper, and other raw materials to fuel China's industrial complex. Now China is getting too expensive to do the low-tech work it's known for. African nations such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Rwanda, Senegal, and Tanzania want their share of the 80 million manufacturing jobs that China is expected to export, according to Justin Lin Yifu, a former World Bank chief economist who teaches economics at Peking University. Weaker consumer spending in the U.S. and Europe has prompted global retailers to speed up their search for lower-cost producers.