Earlier this year, the head of security at a Chinese company in Zimbabwe posted videos to his Douyin account (the Chinese equivalent of TikTok) that showed him beating and illegally detaining local workers, according to a story published this week on the Zimbabwe Chinese Network (ZCN) WeChat page.
The videos also apparently showed the security boss insulting workers with vulgar racist language.
Those videos are no longer in circulation as they were promptly discovered on Douyin and deleted, sparing the assailant and his employer embarrassment and possible legal action similar to what happened in Rwanda this spring when a Chinese mine boss was given a 20-year sentence for beating local employees.
The editors at ZCN warned their readers with the kind of candor and directness that one never hears from Chinese stakeholders in English that a) they shouldn’t mistreat their workers and b) they also shouldn’t record the abuse on video and upload it to social media.
The article went to explain the three reasons for why these incidents continue to happen:
1) Some Chinese companies and managers are either ignorant or disregard the law: no matter what a local employee does (cheat, steal or even violence), the Chinese manager must respond legally.
2) Some Chinese managers are racist: the authors acknowledged that some Chinese bosses treat their staff poorly, including beatings and humiliation. The authors remind readers that the Chinese too are victims of racial discrimination by Whites and shouldn’t do the same to Black people.
3) Some Chinese companies and managers disregard the reputational damage this causes to China: when Chinese managers behave like this towards African workers it’s the equivalent of “handing a knife” (“递刀子”) to China’s critics.
