Everyday relations
Everyday relations of Chinese and Angolan residents in Luanda: According to Schmitz, "In Luanda, a state-level partnership between China and Angola is widely acknowledged, while most relationships between Chinese and Angolan individuals remain tenuous." There is a context of mutual uncertainty and suspicion, but Chinese and Angolan residents are not two separate groups with opposed interests and lack of communication: They share daily life. So references to the concept of "security" are common. For example, "Wen relied on her Angolan employees, as Pedro relied on his Chinese workers. For Wen, however, Angolans could be considered both a threat to security and the guarantee of it; for Pedro, Chinese labour was both the source of unreliable products and the assurance of timely production." While searching for ways to explain the tensions, residents and state representatives use the common language of security. Pedro and Wen, for example, talked about insecurity as due to Chinese being pirates and Angolans being thieves, despite both relying, for their livelihoods, on members of these groups. For the Chinese and Angolan states, on the other hand, explanations for insecurity were because perception of a state being linked to criminality or corruption would threaten the image and success of their mutual partnership. ==See also==