Working for Chinese companies improves career, living standard: Egyptian employees

AIN SOKHNA, Egypt - "My life has seen career and moral development as well as a better standard of living since I started working for the Chinese company five years ago," said Ayyad al-Ayyad, an Egyptian deputy manager at Chinese fiberglass giant Jushi's Egyptian branch.

Al-Ayyad, 29, started his career in Jushi as a technician, before promoted to a group leader and then the deputy manager of the fiberglass formation workshop department.

Jushi is a tenant company of China's TEDA corporation, one of the oldest and largest industrial developers of the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone) in Ain Sokhna district of the eastern province of Suez. And the SCZone is currently working on the development of an area of 7.23 square kilometers in the industrial region.

Hiring some 1,800 employees, including 1,750 Egyptians, the fiberglass firm helped Egypt become world's third largest producer of fiberglass after the United States and China.

"At Jushi, I not only gained a lot of technical expertise but also learned many administrative skills including planning, productivity and goal achievement," he continued, noting that the company also provides training courses for its staff, including English training as well as leadership and teamwork training.

Workers at Jushi are engaged in a daily fair competition. They are divided into three shifts with each group trying to achieve the highest level of production.

"Jushi company has made my life better professionally, morally and financially," said Ayman Hassan Mohamed, a technician specialized in machine operation.

Mohamed told Xinhua that he had been working abroad before joining Jushi four years ago, where he learned the values of responsibility and punctuality both at work and in life.

"We are developing every day. Jushi Chinese management treats us professionally and works on the constant development of our technical and professional skills," said the young man.

The Egyptian-Chinese bilateral relations have been elevated to the level of comprehensive strategic partnership with growing economic cooperation between the two countries under the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative.

Established in the SCZone in January 2012 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jushi Group Co, Jushi's investment in Egypt's SCZone has reached about $520 million and the company produces about 200,000 metric tons of fiberglass every year.

TEDA's developed area in the SCZone, where Jushi Egypt was founded, is known as TEDA Cooperation Zone, whose construction started in 2008 with the strong support of the Chinese and the Egyptian governments.

"This piece of land was basically a wasteland 10 years ago," Liu Aimin, chairman of China-Africa TEDA Investment Co, said at a recent ceremony at the TEDA Cooperation Zone in Ain Sokhna.

By the end of 2017, about 70 tenant companies have already been set up in TEDA Cooperation Zone, including four among the 500 largest Chinese firms, with a total investment of $1 billion, according to Liu.

Shandong Ruyi Technology Group, one of China's leading textile and clothing corporations, is among the Chinese companies expected to join TEDA Cooperation Zone this year.

"We started the large-scale construction in 2008 and we launched investment-attractive facilities and infrastructure projects, and we focused on providing high-quality services for mm-enterprises to keep optimizing the environment," Liu added.