In 1993, I was serving as a second secretary in the embassy of a certain country. One afternoon in March, I had just returned home from work (the embassy had unified office space, but due to limited accommodation, most of the staff rented civilian houses outside) when the telephone rang. It was the ambassador asking me to immediately return to the embassy because there was an urgent task! I rushed downstairs in three steps and drove quickly back to the embassy. Upon entering the ambassador's office, I saw a colleague from the Consular Department. I immediately thought that there must be some trouble involving Chinese citizens here.
Indeed, the ambassador solemnly informed us of the situation and assigned our mission: to represent the Chinese Embassy in investigating the incident where Chinese laborers were beaten by the police. The cause of the matter was as follows: In 1991, one of the country's large steel enterprises was in dire need of highly skilled maintenance personnel (machinists, fitters, milling machine operators, shapers, etc., with qualifications above level four). To solve this problem, the government of that country negotiated with our country, and it was agreed that our province would send 100 workers to work there under the name of labor export. The labor fees would be paid in pig iron by that country to ours, and these workers' salaries would be paid domestically. During their time abroad, the local factory would only provide them with meal allowances and small subsidies. Thus, both parties signed a contract valid for five years. The contract also stipulated that if either party wanted to terminate the contract within its validity period, they would have to pay a huge penalty fee. This is where the problem arose.
In 1992, that country experienced a severe economic crisis, with factories operating far below capacity, massive layoffs, and market shortages. Naturally, this steel plant could not escape the impact either. However, they did not want to bear the responsibility for breach of contract, so they deliberately created friction, trying to force us to voluntarily withdraw back to China and take on the liability for breach of contract. But after negotiations between both sides, the local factory agreed that most of our workers could temporarily return home on leave and come back when conditions improved, with neither side being considered in breach of contract. We thought the outcome was relatively smooth, but problems arose when the workers returned home.
One must understand how hard it was for these workers to get this opportunity to go abroad. Therefore, most of them lived frugally and saved some of the local currency. However, this currency was worthless once brought back to China. So before returning home, they used this currency to purchase goods to bring back. The concentrated purchasing by these more than 100 people caused a small "buying spree" in the local area (it was a small city), which also made some locals envious ("red-eyed"). When the first group of workers returning home (more than twenty people) were waiting at the train station (planning to take a train to the capital of that country and then fly back to China), the "trouble" finally "erupted."