Chinese firms thrive in S. Africa

Hisense contributes to localized income hike

When Hisense, a Chinese consumer electronics company, opened its plant in South Africa in 2013, local employees took the bus or carpooled to get to work. Now, most of them drive their own cars and sometimes “scramble” to find a parking spot, according to a report released by the Xinhua News Agency on Saturday.

“Some of the cars are second-hand or entry-class, but it still highlights the improved income and living standard,” Li Youbo, manager of the South African branch of Hisense, told Xinhua. Headquartered in Qingdao, East China’s Shandong Province, Hisense has been expanding its business in Africa since 2000, when it built a TV production line in Johannesburg. In 2013, it opened another plant in Atlantis, about 50 km from the city of Cape Town.

Last year, Hisense produced 261,000 refrigerators and 389,000 televisions in South Africa.

Liu Xin, general manager of Hisense’s international marketing company, said Hisense South Africa hired 700 local employees, accounting for over 90 percent of the total staff. Thirty-three of them are senior executives and managers.

Reagan Adonis, 33, joined Hisense five years ago as a refrigerator quality inspector. Now he has been promoted to the supervisor in charge of quality assessment for 13 production groups.

“My family could hardly make ends meet before I found a job here. But now, I am able to send my four children to school,” he said.

Besides TVs and refrigerators, Hisense’s South Africa plant now also produces freezers, cellphones, AC units, washing machines, and kitchen appliances, which have entered a total of 5,112 shops belonging to 18 chain stores across South Africa.

In addition to meeting the market demand in South Africa, the products are exported to a dozen other African countries and regions including Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Mauritius, Mayotte, Reunion, and Madagascar, according to Hisense.

Leng Jing, a researcher at the Qingdao Academy of Social Sciences, said current China-Africa cooperation has expanded from government assistance to enterprise investment and financing cooperation, from general merchandise trade to capacity cooperation and processing trade, and from project contracting to middle and high-end industries.

The China-Africa Development Fund, the first stock fund set up in China that focuses on investment in Africa, has invested in 91 projects in 36 African countries, with a total investment of $4.5 billion. Those projects are estimated to have promoted over $20 billion of investment from Chinese firms in fields such as agriculture, infrastructure, capacity cooperation and resource exploitation.

Leng said direct investment from Chinese firms can improve African countries’ ability to develop and create jobs locally, which echoes the objective of the Belt and Road Initiative.