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image captionChinese workers kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2007.
On October 6, two Chinese nationals were killed and ten others injured in a suspected suicide attack outside the airport in Karachi, Pakistan. The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest in a series of attacks on Chinese workers in Pakistan and other countries in recent years.
More than half a million Chinese workers are employed in development projects around the world, often in politically unstable areas, and many have been killed or kidnapped.
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How many times have Chinese workers been attacked in Pakistan?
image captionThe October 6 suicide attack is the latest in a series of attacks on Chinese workers in Pakistan.
The two Chinese nationals killed in the October 6 attack were part of a convoy of people participating in the construction of power plants in Port Qasim, near Karachi.
The workers were killed when a vehicle bomb exploded near the city’s airport. Ten other people were injured.
The BLA, which demands independence for the Baloch people, said it had “targeted a convoy of high-level Chinese engineers and investors” arriving from the airport, in what it called a suicide attack. .
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called the attack a “heinous act.” The Foreign Office said the attack “will not go unpunished”.
The two Chinese nationals killed were working on a construction site in Port Qasim, in the Pakistani province of Sindh.
In March, the BLA also admitted to attacking a naval air base near the port of Gwadar, Balochistan, which is being developed by Chinese companies.
The insurgents 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 BLA claims that the Baloch people have not received a fair share of wealth from foreign investments made in the province or from the extraction of minerals (such as oil) by foreign companies in the region.
How many Chinese work abroad and why?
image captionChinese overseas development projects mainly employ Chinese workers.
Some 568,000 Chinese nationals work overseas on projects around the world run by Chinese companies, according to data from China’s Ministry of Commerce from 2022.
Most of these workers are involved in projects under China’s broader Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), known as the New Silk Road.
China has invested around US$1 trillion in the BRI to develop projects such as roads and railways, ports and power plants.
The aim is to create new routes for Chinese exports and deepen trade ties between China and all nations that have committed to participating in this project.
Pakistan hosts one of the largest BRI projects: the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. The initiative includes a series of road and rail routes from China’s western border to the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar, via Pakistan.
Like Pakistan, many African countries, such as Kenya, Ethiopia and Senegal, have borrowed billions of dollars from China to build better transport and energy infrastructure.
Residents of host countries often complain that companies managing development projects offer them few jobs and mainly employ Chinese nationals.
“Local populations in African countries do not like this situation,” Professor Steve Tsang of the SOAS China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London told the BBC.
He adds that “companies hire a lot of Chinese workers and we have the impression that they only use Africans in jobs with the most difficult conditions.”
“China claims that its overseas investments are beneficial for all,” analyst Alex Vines of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, known as Chatham House, in London, told the BBC.
“But she gave jobs to Chinese workers to solve the unemployment problem in China,” adds Mr. Vines.
How dangerous is it for Chinese citizens to work abroad?
image captionPakistani armed groups have often attacked Chinese workers at the port of Gwadar.
China’s overseas investments have led its citizens to work in some of the world’s most dangerous countries, including areas of active conflict.
Pakistan, for example, is ranked among the most politically unstable countries, according to a World Bank list.
BBC World Service correspondent in Karachi Riaz Sohail says there have been 16 attacks linked to Chinese development projects in Pakistan, in which 12 Chinese nationals were killed and 16 others injured.
This includes the March 2024 killing of five Chinese engineers who were 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.
These attacks have not been claimed.
In Africa, several attacks have been carried out against Chinese employees working in gold mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in a region where political violence by armed militant groups is widespread.
In July 2024, six Chinese nationals and at least two Congolese soldiers were shot dead at the site of a gold mine in the northeast of the country, partly owned by a Chinese company, the Reuters news agency reported at the time.
The perpetrators of the attack are believed to be members of a militia called Congo Development Cooperative. It is one of several armed groups fighting for control of land and natural resources in the region.
In January 2022, Nigerian gunmen reportedly kidnapped three Chinese workers in Niger State, from the construction site of a dam built by Chinese state-owned Sinohydro.
According to a report by the US-based Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIEE), armed groups in Africa and Southeast Asia often find it profitable to kidnap Chinese nationals because they expect companies pay large ransoms to free them.
In Afghanistan, in the two decades between the Taliban losing and regaining power, they frequently kidnapped Chinese foreign workers whom they held for ransom.
So far, the Chinese government and companies have dealt with attacks on overseas workers by “paying ransoms to secure their release, pressuring host country authorities to provide better security and exporting surveillance technologies to help identify and intercept potential extremists,” notes the PIEE.
China also trains the armed forces of host countries to provide better security. Finally, Chinese companies are increasingly using private security companies to defend against suicide bombers, shooters and kidnappers.
“But there are limits to what Beijing can reasonably expect from host countries,” the PIEE report said, adding: “Chinese overseas direct investment has been directed to countries where the rule of law is less strong.”
Following the latest attack in Pakistan, the Chinese embassy in that country reminded its nationals and Chinese companies there to be vigilant and “do everything possible to take security measures.”
