Book review: China's Silent Army, by Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Araujo
In a four-room apartment in a Cairo suburb rented by a Chinese businessman, five Egyptians sew women's clothes then pack them for delivery.
China's Silent Army
by Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Araujo
Allen Lane/Penguin Press
The clothes are delivered to their Egyptian customers by an army of "Chinese bag people". An estimated 15,000 Chinese make a living selling door to door, speaking little or no Arabic. The secret behind this business? Many local women do not want to show their bodies in a shop.
These salespeople are among tens of thousands comprising China's Silent Army: the Pioneers, Traders, Fixers and Workers Who are Remaking the World in Beijing's Image. The book, by Spanish journalists Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Araujo, was first published in Spanish; it has just been brought out in English.
It is an excellent piece of investigative journalism. Over two years, the two visited 25 countries in Africa, Central and Southeast Asia, and Latin America to meet the members of this army and the local people among whom they live. They went from Peruvian mines to Siberian forests, from Sudanese dams to jade mines in Myanmar.