Convicts for Export

Brahma Chellaney

By Brahma Chellaney

7:58 p.m., Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Illustration: Chinese labor by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times

 

 

Relieving pressure on overcrowded national prisons by employing convicts as laborers at Chinese-run projects in the developing world is a novel strategy China has adopted – an approach that is certain to create a new backlash against Chinese businesses overseas in addition to highlighting the country’s egregious human-rights record.

China executes three times as many people every year as the rest of the world combined, according to Amnesty International, which in 2008 estimated that "on average China secretly executes around 22 prisoners every day."

China has evolved in important ways as a result of its economic "opening," with the new social pluralism prompting the state to cut back on totalitarian practices. Yet, with its Soviet-style autocratic structure intact, there is little space for political pluralism. Those who challenge government policies or practices or stage demonstrations against official highhandedness risk long imprisonment.

The forced dispatch of prisoners to work on overseas infrastructure projects raises new issues regarding China‘s human-rights record.

Thousands of Chinese convicts, for example, have been pressed into service in projects by state-run Chinese companies in Sri Lanka, a strategically important country for China, which is seeking a role in the Indian Ocean. Sri Lanka sits astride vital sea lanes of communication.China – in return for being allowed to make strategic inroads – providedSri Lanka offensive weapon systems that helped end the long civil war on that island nation. Now, Beijing is being rewarded with port-building, railroads and other infrastructure projects.

Chinese convicts also have been taken to a microstate in the Indian Ocean, the Maldives, where the Chinese government is building 4,000 houses on several different islands as a government-to-government "gift" to win influence there. So far, however, Beijing has failed to persuade the president of the archipelago of 330,000 people to lease it one of the 700 uninhabited Maldivian islands for setting up a small base for its navy.

The Chinese practice in overseas projects, including in Africa, is to keep the number of local workers to the minimum and to bring in much of the workforce from China. The novel twist is that some batches of laborers now being brought in are made up of convicts "freed" on parole for project-related overseas work.

The convict laborers, like the rest of the Chinese workforce, are housed near the project site. The Chinese logic is that if any convict worker escaped, it would be easy to find the runaway in an alien setting.

Chinese firms actually bring in more than just convict laborers and other workers at overseas projects. To help boost Chinese exports, they get all equipment, steel, cement and other construction material from China.

Such practices run counter to the Chinese commerce ministry’s August 2006 regulations – promulgated in response to the backlash against Chinese businesses in Zambia following the death of 51 Zambian workers in an explosion at a Chinese-owned copper mine – that called for "localization," including hiring local workers, respecting local customs and adhering to safety norms. During an eight-nation 2007 African tour, President Hu Jintao made a special point of meeting with Chinese businesses to stress the importance of corporate responsibility in their dealings at the local level.

Earlier, in October 2006, the State Council – China’s Cabinet – issued nine directives that Chinese businesses overseas, among other things, "pay attention to environmental protection," "support local community and people’s livelihood" and "preserve China‘s good image and its good corporate reputation."

Chinese domestic regulations, however, are sometimes promulgated to blunt external criticism, rather than actually be enforced, except when a case attracts international attention.

For example, China enacted an environmental-impact assessment law in 2003, which was followed up in 2008 with "provisional measures" to permit public participation in such environmental assessments. Yet it remains more zealous about promoting exports and economic growth at home than in protecting its air and water.

Similarly, despite the State Council’s 2006 nine good-conduct directives to Chinese companies engaged in overseas operations, the government and corporate priority still is to boost exports aggressively, even if such a push results in environmental and social costs for local communities. Indeed, as part of the government‘s "going global" policy, Chinese companies are offered major incentives and rewards for bagging overseas contracts and boosting exports.

The use of convict laborers adds a disturbing new dimension to the "going global" strategy, which was first unveiled in 2001.

As it is, some Chinese projects, especially dam-building schemes, have been embroiled in disputes with local communities in several countries, including in Botswana, Burma, Pakistan, Ghana and Sudan. In fact, several small bombs went off less than three months ago at the site of Burma’s Myitsone Dam, whose construction by a Chinese company in the insurgency-torn, northernmost Kachin state is displacing thousands of subsistence farmers and fishermen by flooding a wide swath of land.

China is not only the world leader in building dams at home but also the top dam exporter. It has no qualms about building dams in disputed territories like Pakistan-held Kashmir, in areas torn by ethnic separatism or in other human rights-abusing countries. But its use of convict laborers at dams and other infrastructure projects will create new rifts with local communities.

China‘s declaratory policy of ”non-interference in domestic affairs” serves as a virtual license to pursue projects that benefit governments known to repress their citizens. For example, in Sudan, where China has emerged as the principal backer of a regime accused of committing genocide in the arid western region of Darfur, 13 of the 15 largest foreign companies operating are Chinese, with Beijing making huge investments in the Sudanese economy – from hydropower to oil. It also has sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of weapons, including tanks and fighter-jets, to help prop up President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur.

Chinese companies on their own cannot get prisoners released in thousands, let alone to secure passports and exit permits for them. It is obvious that the controversial practice of pressing convicts into service at overseas projects has been instituted by the Chinese government.

Until Beijing’s treatment of its own citizens and those of other countries is guided by respect for basic human rights and the rule of law, China is unlikely to command respect on the world stage.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of Asian Juggernaut (HarperCollins, 2010).

© Copyright 2010 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

Success breeds confidence, and rapid success spawns arrogance. That, in a nutshell, is the China problem facing Asian states and the West. But no country faces a bigger dilemma on China than the United States because the present American policy simply isn’t advancing its objectives.

Rising economic and military power is emboldening Beijing to pursue a more muscular foreign policy, as exemplified by several developments – from China’s inclusion of the South China Sea in its "core" national interests, an action that makes its claims to the disputed islands non-negotiable, to its vile protests against the Indian prime minister visiting a state of the Indian Union, Arunachal Pradesh, on which Beijing has resurrected its long-dormant claim.

A new chill in relations between American and Chinese militaries, underlined by a Chinese admiral’s carping lecture on American "hegemony," has torpedoed the Obama administration’s hopes to make China a responsible partner in global affairs by giving Beijing a larger stake in solving international problems.

The shift in Beijing’s South China Sea position has resulted in its conveying to the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian claimants that any discussions between and among them over their claims would amount to interference in China’s internal affairs. But no less significant is that China’s expanding naval role and maritime claims are beginning to collide with U.S. interests, including the traditional emphasis on freedom of navigation.

Having earlier preached the gospel of its "peaceful rise," China is beginning to take off the gloves, convinced that it has acquired the necessary muscle.

That approach has become more marked since the advent of the 2008 global financial crisis. China has interpreted that crisis as symbolizing both the decline of the Anglo-American brand of capitalism and the weakening of American economic power. That, in turn, has strengthened its twofold belief – that its brand of state-steered capitalism offers a credible alternative and that its global ascendance is unstoppable.

Chinese analysts have gleefully pointed out that after having sung the "liberalize, privatize and let the markets decide" line for so long, the United States and Britain took the lead to bail out their troubled financial giants at the first sign of trouble when the global crisis broke out. By contrast, state-driven capitalism has given China economic stability and rapid growth, enabling it to ride out the international crisis. Indeed, despite the perpetual talk of an overheating economy, China’s exports and retail sales are soaring and its foreign-exchange hoarding is approaching $2.5 trillion even as America’s fiscal and trade deficits remain alarming.

That has helped reinforce the Chinese elite’s faith in the country’s fusion of autocratic politics and state capitalism, with the largest companies – all government-owned – aggressively advancing the national strategy to secure long-term resource supplies from overseas.

The biggest loser from the global financial crisis, in Beijing’s view, is Uncle Sam. That the United States remains dependent on Beijing to buy billions of dollars worth of Treasury bonds every week to finance a yawning budget deficit is a sign of shifting global financial power balance – an advantage China is sure to milk politically in the years ahead.

The current spotlight may be on European financial woes, but the bigger picture for Beijing is that America’s chronic deficits and indebtedness epitomize its relative decline. Add to the picture the two wars the U.S. is waging overseas – one of which appears increasingly unwinnable – and what comes to the Chinese mind is a global superpower bogged down in serious troubles.

Against that background, China’s growing assertiveness may not surprise many. Late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s advice, "Hide your capabilities and bide your time," seems no longer relevant. Today, China is not shy to showcase its military capabilities and assert itself on multiple fronts.

Yet America’s economic and military travails are crimping its foreign-policy options vis-a-vis China. Although the Chinese economy is still more dependent for its growth on the U.S. economy than vice versa, Washington seems more reluctant than ever to exercise its leverage to make Beijing correct policies that threaten to distort trade, foster huge trade imbalances and spark greater competition for scarce raw materials.

By keeping its currency ridiculously undervalued and flooding the world markets with artificially cheap goods, China runs a predatory trade policy that undercuts manufacturing in the developing world more than in the West. However, by threatening to destabilize the global economy, China threatens Western interests.

Furthermore, its efforts to lock up supplies of key resources mean it will continue to lend support to renegade regimes. The U.N. Security Council’s latest Iranian-sanctions resolution is a "win-win" outcome for China because it exempts the key sector that matters to both Beijing and Tehran – energy – and opens the path to greater Chinese aid to, and clout in, Iran.

The present U.S. policy on China is a study in contrast to the way Washington unabashedly exercised its leverage when another Asian country – Japan – emerged as a global economic powerhouse in the 1980s. As it rose dramatically to become a potential economic peer to the United States, Japan kept the yen undervalued and erected hidden barriers to the entry of foreign manufacturers into its market. That resulted in the U.S. piling up pressure on Japan and periodically arm-twisting it to make trade concessions.

Today, the United States cannot adopt the same approach against Beijing, largely because China is also a military and political power and Washington depends on Chinese support on a host of international issues – from North Korea and Burma to Iran and Pakistan. By contrast, Japan has remained just an economic power.

It is significant that China became a global military player before it became a global economic player. China’s military power base was built by Mao Zedong, enabling Deng to focus single-mindedly on rapidly building economic power. Before Deng launched his "four modernizations," China had acquired a global military reach by testing its first intercontinental ballistic missile, the 12,000-kilometer DF-5, and developing a thermonuclear warhead.

Over the past three decades, the 13-fold expansion of its economy generated even greater resources for China to sharpen its military claws. But for the growing Chinese military power and political weight, U.S. policy would have treated China as another Japan.

The United States played a critical role in China’s economic rise by not sustaining post-Tiananmen Square sanctions. But the central assumption guiding U.S. policy on China has gone awry – that assisting China’s economic rise would help create both a compatible and cooperative partner and political openness within. The challenge the United States faces today is to reframe its policy before it becomes too late to resist China’s push for a redistributive global order whose institutions and rules respect the centrality of an authoritarian great power.

Brahma Chellaney is author of the international best-seller "Asian Juggernaut" (HarperCollins, New York, 2010).

© Copyright 2010 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.