Mr Li is the face of the world's fastest growing power, China. He clinches oil deals, builds hospitals and motorways, sells merchandise, takes over companies and lays oil pipelines. Over the next few months, as part of the series Looking for Mr Li, four journalists from Radio Netherlands Worldwide and Dutch broadcaster VPRO will be reporting on the upside and the downside of globalisation, with China's expansion being the common theme in all the pieces. This report is the last to come from Zambia.
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With trembling hands, your correspondent keys in the number - obtained 'via via' - of Deputy Director Gao. I've spent four weeks trying to get permission to visit the copper mine and smelting plant which - when it is completed - should be Africa's largest. I'm amazed to find that I can get into the compound with such ease. There's a sheet bearing a painting of the Great Wall of China merging into Zambia's Victoria Falls hanging in front of the white-coloured head office. The message seems to be: two wonders of the world, two nations which can perform wonders together.
Two toilets
It turns out that Mr Gao is in an urgent meeting with his boss. The outcome is "NO". They have spoken to too many journalists in good faith, only for those same journalists to go off and right nasty stories. "That hurts," is the softly-spoken explanation from Mr Gao's colleague, Mr Xu.
The upshot of all this is that all the questions sparked over the past weeks - about people earning next to nothing, about there only being two toilets and no clean drinking water for the mine's 1,000 workers, about overtime in the smelting plant not being paid, and many,
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There will also be no explanation as to why former miner Omou Mwana has been walking around with two Chinese bullets in his body for the past one and a half years. The Chambishi Mine had been idle for a decade when the Chinese company bought it for 20 million dollars from the Zambian state in 1998.
Work had to be done 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Zambian labour was used, but workers were also brought over from China. Mr Mwana worked as a drill operator in the mine's boiling hot tunnels. The workers earned 75 percent less than their colleagues at other mines, but the Chinese bosses promised more money once the mine was back in full operation.
Mine guards
By July 2006, the miners had had enough. They were still earning next to nothing, so more than 200 men went on strike for higher wages and back pay. Mine guards shot a man in the leg at the NFC-A gates. The miners were told to collect their money from the company supervisors and managers in the local mining town of Chambishi.
They went en masse to the town's small, fenced Chinatown district, festooned with flags and red lanterns. When they got within 30 metres of the entrance, shots rang out. Supervisor Cheng stretched four miners out. In the uproar, the fleeing strikers tried to rescue their stricken workmates. It was then that Mr Mwana felt a burning pain in his back.
Invalid
He awoke in the Sino-Zam hospital in Kitwe, some 20 kilometres away. Doctor Ho denied that
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Mr Mwana was discharged five weeks later, from the hospital and from the mine. The 32-year-old father of four is now an invalid, suffers unbearable pain and has no income. After going from hospital to hospital, he has finally been referred to South Africa for an operation. However, that will be very expensive. The case against China's NFC-A company has been going on for more than a year. Mr Cheng was sent back to China a few days after the shooting incident.
*RNW translation (mw/tpf)
Tags: China, copper mine, Kitwe, miners, NFC-A, strike, Zambia