Until recently, Jiahao’s guest house in a quiet corner of Cairo was a modest pit stop for Chinese tourists on their way to visit the Egyptian pyramids. But this spring, the hostel suddenly began to attract a different kind of client.
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Jiahao, the hostel’s 26-year-old owner, began welcoming groups of factory owners from across China and Southeast Asia – grizzled businesspeople whose trips were not about sightseeing, but survival.
“Many business owners now book week-long stays,” Jiahao said. “I drive them to meet local officials, help them with translations, and sometimes even sit in on investment negotiations.”
These visits are part of a broader shift in global supply chains, as a wave of Chinese manufacturers set up Egyptian factories in the belief that the African nation represents a haven from sky-high US tariffs.
Chinese exporters have been offshoring production in droves ever since US President Donald Trump first began targeting China with tariffs during his first term in office, with many of those early movers choosing to cluster in Southeast Asia.
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But countries across Southeast Asia themselves became targets of steep US duties in April, when Trump announced so-called “reciprocal” levies of up to 49 per cent on imports from the region – as well as an eye-watering 145 per cent additional tariffs on Chinese goods.