For a smooth sailing abroad

The abductions of Chinese workers in Sudan and Egypt have heightened concern over the safety of Chinese nationals living or traveling abroad. But we should treat the rising trend of attacks against Chinese citizens rationally to ensure that overseas projects do not suffer unnecessarily, and the government should strengthen its early warning system against such attacks and take more preventive measures to reduce the risks.

The accelerating pace of globalization, and advancing means of communications and transportation have increased, in geometric proportions, the number of Chinese people going abroad in recent years.

In the 30 years before the reform and opening-up, only about 300,000 Chinese nationals traveled abroad, that is, an average of about 10,000 person-times a year, whereas the figure in 2011 alone was about 70 million. With the number of Chinese people traveling overseas increasing 7,000 times, the odds of a Chinese encountering trouble, too, has risen manyfold.