Their stories reveal a relationship built not only by governments and major projects, but also through language, work, and the daily choices involved in making a home far from Egypt.
In an interview published by People's Daily Online in March 2026, Alaa Mamdouh Akef recalled enrolling in 2004 as part of the first class of Cairo University's newly established Chinese-language department.
Alaa Mamdouh Akef, an Egyptian sinologist engaged in research and teaching at Peking University, displays a Spring Festival couplet in Beijing. (Photo: People’s Daily Online/Wang Yuheng)
Two decades later, Peking University's official faculty profile lists the Egyptian linguist as an assistant professor and doctoral supervisor who teaches Arabic and develops Chinese-Arabic language resources for translation and artificial intelligence.
Akef's journey from a Cairo lecture hall to one of China's most prominent universities offers a human-scale view of a relationship usually described through presidential visits, trade figures and construction projects.
As Xi prepares for his first visit to Egypt since 2016, the Egyptians living in China form a less visible layer of the two countries' ties.
Egypt's diplomatic mission estimated that 8,000 Egyptians were present in China at the end of 2024, according to figures released by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) ahead of Xi's visit.
Remittances from Egyptians working in China reached $23.3 million in the 2024/25 financial year, up 19.2 percent from $19.5 million a year earlier.
The figures give the community a scale, but not a map.
The CAPMAS release did not divide the 8,000 by city, occupation, age, or length of stay, and it described them as Egyptians “present” in China rather than permanent residents.
Nor did it say how many were students, traders, professionals, or accompanying family members.
What can be reconstructed from university records, community reporting and published profiles is a dispersed population with several identifiable centres: academics and media workers in Beijing, students and researchers in university cities, and commercial communities in manufacturing and wholesale hubs such as Yiwu in Zhejiang province and Shishi in Fujian.
Their experiences put a human face to the official account of Egypt-China relations.
The relationship began on 30 May 1956, when Egypt became the first Arab and African country to recognize the People's Republic of China, and was elevated to a comprehensive strategic partnership in 2014.
Yet for Egyptians living in China, the connection is also shaped by difficult language study, work permits, children's education, mixed families, and decisions about whether a temporary stay should become a long one.
From language students to institution-builders
Education has provided one of the clearest routes into China.
More than 4,000 Egyptian students were studying in China by January 2026, Chinese Ambassador to Egypt Liao Liqiang said at a youth-exchange event in Cairo. The figure marked a sharp rise from more than 800 in 2016 and more than 1,700 in 2017.
The pipeline begins inside Egypt. Chinese has been taught at Egyptian universities since 2004, and a pilot programme introduced it as an optional second language at 12 preparatory schools in Cairo, Giza and Menoufiya in the 2022/23 academic year.
Academic cooperation has since moved beyond language: in 2025, the two countries opened applications for their first joint research laboratories programme, covering sustainable development, poverty reduction, artificial intelligence and advanced robotics.
Akef represents what can happen when that educational route becomes a career.
After graduating from Cairo University in 2008, he completed master's and doctoral degrees at Beijing Language and Culture University, followed by postdoctoral work at Peking University.
He joined Peking University's Department of Arabic Language and Cultures as an assistant professor in 2022.
His institutional profile lists Arabic computational linguistics, AI-assisted language learning, digital humanities, and Chinese-Arabic translation among his research interests. In the same People's Daily Online interview, after more than a decade in China, he described his role simply: “I see my role as serving as a bridge between Chinese and Arab cultures.”
That bridge is increasingly digital. Akef's work on corpora and natural-language processing aims to expand the resources available for Chinese-Arabic language technology. The result is a form of people-to-people exchange that extends beyond cultural events to the infrastructure used by students, translators and AI tools.
Another Egyptian academic, Mehad Mousa, followed a parallel route in Xi'an.
Born in Cairo in 1995, Mousa studied Chinese in Egypt and moved to China in 2017, later completing master's and doctoral degrees. Known in Chinese as Ai Xiaoying, she translated Chinese literature into Arabic while studying and later taught at Northwest University's Middle East Studies Institute.
Her published translations include a selection of prose by Chinese novelist Jia Pingwa.
In a 2025 interview carried by CCTV, Mousa said literary translation required more than converting words: dialect, proverbs, mythology and historical references had to be understood in their cultural setting.
Egyptian scholar Mehad Mousa picks goji berries in a goji berry plantation in Tongxin County, northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, 6 July, 2026. (Xinhua/Xie Jianwen)
She also said she hoped to take Egyptian literature in the other direction, bringing more of it to Chinese readers.
The two academics show how the profile of some Egyptian students has changed. They did not simply receive degrees and return home; they became teachers, researchers and producers of the cultural and linguistic knowledge through which China and the Arab world interpret each other.
The commercial China
China also attracts a very different Egyptian population: importers, sourcing agents, interpreters, freight operators and small-business owners whose working geography follows factories and wholesale markets rather than universities.
Yiwu, the Zhejiang city often called the world's supermarket, has been central to this story. Research published by the Australian National University's China Story project found that some Egyptian and other Arab traders first arrived in China on scholarships, then remained after graduation because their Chinese fluency and local networks gave them an advantage as commercial intermediaries.
They helped buyers navigate an enormous marketplace, negotiate with manufacturers, inspect goods, and arrange shipments to the Middle East and North Africa.
Academic research based on surveys of Egyptian and Algerian traders has described Yiwu as both an industrial district and a cosmopolitan commercial space shaped by small-scale transnational trade.
The trajectory is not confined to Yiwu. Hany Sobhy, an entrepreneur from Marsa Matrouh, settled in Shishi, a garment and port city administered by Quanzhou in Fujian province, after arriving in China in 2015.
Hany Sobhy, centre, speaks with employees at his garment-trading company in Shishi, Fujian Province. (Photo provided by Hany Sobhy/Xinhua)
According to a September 2025 Xinhua profile, he built a garment-export business and warehouse operation around Shishi's manufacturing base, lower costs, and international shipping connections.
Sobhy told the agency that the coastal climate reminded him of Marsa Matrouh. Looking back at Quanzhou's place on the old Maritime Silk Road, he said: “Now I have returned to the same place, building and operating business in a modern and open China.”
His account highlights a practical side of the Belt and Road narrative. For small and medium-sized traders, China is not an abstract corridor on a map. It is a chain of decisions about which city has the right factories, warehouse rents, ports, translators, and delivery times.
The work is also changing. Mohamed Jihad Mohamed Moustafa, a graduate of Ain Shams University's Chinese department, studied broadcasting and presenting at the Communication University of China and stayed after graduating in 2019.
A Xinhua profile published in August 2026 said he now works in international communication at China International Communications Group and as a cultural-exchange specialist at the China Investment Association.
Jihad also produces Chinese-language videos about Egypt. Xinhua said 83 videos on his Douyin account had attracted 5.53 million likes. His path, from language graduate to broadcaster, cultural coordinator and online personality, shows a newer labour market in which knowledge of both societies can itself become the product.
Egyptian presenter Mohamed Jihad Mohamed Moustafa, also known by his Chinese name Liu Zhengxi, hosts a youth cultural-exchange event at Sichuan University in Chengdu on 26 July 2023. (Photo: Sichuan News Network/He Jiaxin and Xu Yuke)
Keeping Egypt in the family
Long-term settlement raises questions that trade and scholarship figures cannot answer. What language do children speak at home? Where can they study Arabic? How does a family maintain its connection to Egypt while navigating a Chinese school and work system?
A 2024 report on the Egyptian community in Yiwu put those questions at the centre of community life.
Bilal Sultan, identified as the head of a local Egyptian association, said he sat with his daughter Sham every day to teach her Arabic and recalled his happiness when she first pronounced the word “Egypt”. Another community representative called for an Egyptian school for local children.
The report also indicated that the COVID-19 pandemic had sharply reduced Yiwu's Egyptian commercial community, although official figures did not support its claims about the size of the decline.
It nevertheless recorded a familiar expatriate tension: adults may build livelihoods abroad, but children need deliberate help to retain Arabic and a sense of belonging to a country they may know mainly through their parents.
Education and residency have long shaped the horizons of Arab traders in Yiwu. Earlier research found that access to suitable schools, changing visa rules, and rising costs complicated plans to remain indefinitely.
Some Egyptian-organized schools existed before the pandemic, but public records do not make clear the current number, legal status, or capacity of such schools.
Consular access is another part of the picture. In December 2024, Egypt's Foreign Ministry said it was working to digitize consular services after a meeting with Egyptian community representatives in Beijing.
What the anniversary numbers miss
Official commemorations in 2026 have stressed the breadth of bilateral cooperation, from trade and manufacturing to tourism, science and artificial intelligence.
Community representatives attended the Egyptian embassy's 70th-anniversary event in Beijing in May, while a cross-civilization dialogue in Cairo brought together young participants from both countries in 2025.
Seventy years after Cairo and Beijing opened diplomatic relations, these lives may be the clearest measure of how far the relationship has travelled, and of the work still required to understand it.
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