How Chinese entrepreneurs have flourished in Dubai
February 7, 2014 Leave a comment
How Chinese entrepreneurs have flourished in Dubai
Staff Reporter
2014-02-05
The last two decades have seen the rise of Dubai as a global metropolis and many Chinese businesspeople have scrambled to get a piece of the pie, the Beijing-based Economic Observer reports.
Before Chinese tourists became one of the most welcomed groups at Dubai’s shopping malls in recent years, the country’s entrepreneurs were already using the emirate as a hub for distributing goods imported from China to other parts of the Middle East and North Africa, the newspaper said.
Many of these were trade officials dispatched to Dubai around 1997, who saw the potential business opportunities and quit their government posts, the newspaper added.
There are over 200,000 Chinese businesspeople currently active in the trade, the newspaper stated, mainly concentrated at the Dragon Mart, a block with buildings that have a total floor space of over 300,000 square meters, half of which is meant for business use.
Opened in December 2004, the Dragon Mart hosts nearly 4,000 vendors and is the largest marketplace for Chinese goods in the Middle East, posting an annual turnover of tens of billions of US dollars, the newspaper revealed.
Chinese workers began flocking to Dubai after Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum became prime minister in 2006 and launched several infrastructure projects, the newspaper said.
Workers from China were initially seen as a cheap labor force, the newspaper said, but they can now earn around 4,000 dirhams (US$1,100) per month, two to three times the salaries of Indian or Pakistani workers.
Chinese workers no longer constitute the main workforce on Dubai’s building sites, however, and mainly hold management posts or work as technicians in local construction companies.
Chinese investors have also entered Dubai’s property market, which was opened to foreigners in 2003, and has been accredited with rising property prices — the world’s largest increase in 2013 — after the emirate was announced as the host of the 2020 World Expo, the newspaper said.
Zhu Jian, a Dubai-based manager at China Overseas Holdings, said he is positive about the property market outlook, noting a 2013 survey that showed prices of prime property in the emirate were still low when compared with Beijing.
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