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Kurdish Businessmen and Iraqis find job
opportunities, new lives in China
9.8.2007
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August 9, 2007
Yiwu, China, -- The war in Iraq has spawned a
new refugee crisis: An estimated 2 million Iraqis
have fled the country. A small, but rapidly
increasing number of Iraqis is finding a haven on
the other side of the world — in the southern
Chinese trading city of Yiwu.
Yiwu, in China's Zhejiang province, is home to the
world's largest wholesale market.
Iraqi trader Moussa Anwar says many Iraqis come to
China to do business — and end up wanting to stay.
Indeed, the Iraqi embassy in Beijing says the number
of Iraqis in China has increased by 50 percent over
the past two years, and most are in Yiwu. Exiled
Iraqis estimate there are about 100 Iraqi trading
companies and 1,000 Iraqis in the city at any one
time.
Nihad Fouad Majid, from Iraqi Kurdistan, was one of
the first to set up in Yiwu, opening his office five
years ago. Driving around in his blue Lexus, it's
clear he has done well.
Majid ships 50 containers a month to Iraq, mainly
filled with consumer goods such as clothes, shoes
and auto parts.
Official statistics reflect an increase in trade. In
2003, Chinese exports to Iraq were worth $56
million; last year, that figure was $490 million.
But doing business with war-torn Iraq isn't easy.
Majid says he loses $200,000 to $300,000 a year to
gunmen in Iraq who take his shipments and demand
payment for their return. If he doesn't pay, he
says, they kill the driver and sell the goods.
In Iraq, his trucks are often fired at, he says, and
two of his drivers have been wounded as a result of
gunfire.
Majid says that life is freer in China than in Iraq
today.
One example is his weekly soccer game, something
that probably wouldn't be possible in Iraq. Every
week, his all-Iraqi team — made up of Shia, Sunnis
and Kurds — takes on a Chinese side. |
Nihad Fouad Majjid is a Kurd from Iraqi Kurdistan
who has been living in Yiwu and trading with Iraq
for the past five years. photo NPR
Yiwu, in China's Zhejiang province, is home to the
world's largest wholesale market |
Yiwu is home to a huge mosque, and the extensive
Middle Eastern community makes it easier for Iraqis
to adapt to life here. Another factor is the
relative ease of obtaining a yearlong business visa.
Behind the mosque, halal snack stalls do brisk
business. For recent arrivals, the bustling scene is
a stark contrast to their lives back home in Iraq,
where even going to the market was a risky, possibly
life-threatening venture.
Karim Mahmoud says he left Iraq six months ago
because he wanted to work — which the war made
difficult.
When he lived in Baghdad, Mahmoud says he feared
being kidnapped every time he left the house.
An engineer in Iraq, Mahmoud now works as a trader
in China. He worries about his wife and children —
who are still in Baghdad — but he sees his future
outside his homeland.
If the Chinese authorities allow it, Mahmoud says he
will stay in China "forever."
Like the other exiles in Yiwu, Mahmoud is grateful
to China for making his new life possible, even as
he acknowledges it is in Beijing's interests to
build trade ties with Iraq.
He repeatedly emphasizes China's policy of
noninterference in other countries, in stark
contrast to the United States.
That these refugees fleeing the fallout of America's
attempts to impose democracy on Iraq would rather
live in this Chinese city is a small victory for
Beijing's attempts to project its soft power across
the globe.
npr org
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