China's Silent Army
Page 25
Sitting in his leather chair, Xiong Yaozhi fidgets awkwardly each time we ask him a question. He is the head of the Emigrant Workers Abroad section of a governmental organization, the Foreign Economic and Trade Commission of Chongqing district, whose task is to promote, facilitate and supervise relations between recruitment agencies, employers and employees. In other words, it tries to impose order on a process that fuels the abuse that is paid for—as always—by the weakest members of society. Xiong is polite but sparing in his words, and he begins the interview with an attack: “Foreign journalists always misunderstand China.” Without taking his eyes off the reports laid out on top of his desk, he also bluntly tells us that “many Africans are quite undisciplined, not to mention lazy.” When we ask him why China has to take its own workers all over the planet, he refers to the speed of the projects. “Big infrastructure projects need to be done quickly and Chinese workers are more capable of working quickly.”
This type of thinking extends as far as the highest echelons of the Chinese government. “It’s a way of making sure that projects are completed on time,” said the evasive then-spokesman of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Qin Gang, when we met him at the University of Oxford in the spring of 2011. In fact, a predominant form of discourse exists among Chinese government employees, diplomats, entrepreneurs and academics to justify sending Chinese workers abroad by suggesting that there are no qualified workers in the recipient country of origin or, if they do exist, that they will not be as efficient as their Chinese counterparts. This means of justification, which occasionally verges upon xenophobia, may be valid in the case of some countries such as Angola or the Democratic Republic of Congo, where war has led to a massive deficit of human capital. However, this argument is not sustainable in countries such as Iran, Mozambique or Costa Rica, where we found that it is used equally often despite the surplus of workers in these countries. In Cuba, for example, Chinese government officials use the argument that “Cubans are not motivated by the low wages imposed on them by the socialist system” to defend the fact that Chinese investments on the island are always accompanied by a Chinese workforce. This series of excuses leads to what must be a unique phenomenon—the massive exportation of workers—which in itself says a lot about China’s perception of non-Chinese.
After half an hour of conversation, Xiong seems more relaxed. He lights a cigarette and begins to talk more confidently. He assures us that his department is trying to supervise employment contracts to ensure that they will not exploit the weakness or ignorance of the workers by offering them unrealistically high wages for their services—sometimes as high as 8,000 euros—or unfair working conditions.34 He then tackles the question of the rights of emigrant workers. He starts by following the official party line, but little by little this begins to fall apart. “China’s policy is to prioritize people. Emigrants are people and we have to take care of them,” he says in a fatherly manner. He does, however, recognize that “some companies try to take advantage and don’t consider certain issues such as security or the payment of salaries. The workers who are in a good position are happy, but some companies don’t even offer basic working conditions. That is when workers go on strike,” he admits. It does seem strange, however, that Chinese employees in the heart of Africa can exercise the right to go on strike, while they would not be able to do so in China. “Some emigrants have worked in several countries. They understand the workplace situation perfectly and they can get very sensitive. They start going on strike over the smallest issues,” he concludes.
Finally, we question him about the role of the authorities in terms of guaranteeing workplace rights. “When there is a conflict, we work with the local governments to resolve it. For example, when there is inadequate accommodation or if there is an issue with the quality of the food. Most of all we intervene when workers are paid late or not paid at all.” In the case of a problem with the contract, guarantees or labor rights, Xiong argues that the workers’ rights depend on the capacity of the countries in question to uphold the law. “Technically, they should follow the legal process in force in that country. However, some African countries have a very weak and basic legal system and do not uphold the law. Nothing can be done in those cases,” he admits. In these situations, the only option left to the dispossessed workers is to resort to seeking the protection of the Chinese courts, and even then this is not always possible. As for the courts themselves, we have already seen what their sense of justice entails when it comes to choosing between the powerful and the weak.
7
The Chinese Miracle Defies the Planet
“Fighting against Nature is an infinite pleasure.”
Mao Zedong, 1917
From the dirt track leading into the woods, we watch as the forest unfurls its explosive natural beauty in what seems to be an infinite wilderness. This is hostile, impenetrable territory for staunch urbanites like ourselves and, in general, for any strangers to the remote district of Krasnoarmeysky in the forestry heart of the Russian Far East. A brief incursion into this natural tangle with Anatoly Lebedev, a leading environmental expert in the region, is enough to give us a sense of the sheer exuberance of this unique universe tucked away between the Pacific Ocean and inhospitable Siberia. Barely 100 meters into the bushy undergrowth, the chirping of birds and the sounds of the forest’s diverse fauna ring deafeningly in our ears. The humidity is so high that we can almost touch the air, leaving the forest’s native species and occasional human visitors competing for oxygen.
In this uniquely diverse ecosystem, the sun struggles to break through the tops of the lush Korean pines, oaks and fir trees. Occasionally a clearing opens up in the forest and a halo of light beams vertically down to the ground, revealing an army of ants, beetles and slugs resting on the base of a felled tree. These small oases of light and warmth—a shock to the human sensory system—are simply warning signs pointing to one of the greatest environmental tragedies striking the sparsely populated Primorsky region: deforestation on a massive scale.
With the sleeves of his old shirt rolled up to his elbows, Lebedev stops in his tracks every now and again to lean against a tree trunk measuring a meter or so in diameter, warning us to check that none of the deadly ticks that transmit fatal encephalitis have become stuck to our skin or clothes. Whenever he does this, a swarm of bloodthirsty mosquitoes descends on him, swirling about his head of gray hair. However, this is no problem at all for this exceptional man in his seventies whose mission is to save the forests and their inhabitants from the greed and negligence of Russian entrepreneurs and officials and their Chinese associates.
The plundering of Russian forests was initially caused by the economic depression that has plagued Siberia and the Russian Far East since the fall of the Soviet Union, Lebedev explains with an air of melancholy. “Before the end of the USSR there were state-owned industries for exploiting forestry resources. They took on the entire production chain, from felling the trees to processing the wood. All the added value remained in the area; they even produced wood pulp to make paper. Tens of thousands of people worked for those companies, which sold timber to the domestic and foreign markets. But after the capitalist revolution, as I call the collapse of the Soviet Union, these companies went bankrupt and a painful period of privatization began.”
Born in Vladivostok in 1941, Lebedev is the founder of the NGO the Bureau for Regional Outreach Campaigns (BROC). This intelligent and well-spoken man began to take an interest in the environment when he set foot for the first time in the immensity of the Arctic. “My father was an icebreaker captain. As an engineer, I was involved in two missions to the Arctic. I came into contact with many writers, geologists and other members of the intellectual elite. That was when I began to understand the importance of the spiritual relationship between humans, industry and the environment. This was why I created BROC in 1997,” says the man who became a representative of the regional assembly in 1989 after “the first and last democratic elections in Russia.�
�� During that time Lebedev was at the forefront of various legislative initiatives to protect indigenous territories and populations. “It was the first time that anything like that had been done in this country.” Before this he had done almost every type of job imaginable: naval engineering and military service, followed by work as a journalist and later as an environmental activist. Not to mention his stint as a KGB agent.
“As a result of my skills as a paratrooper and submariner, as well as my education in philosophy and the arts, the authorities involved me in the surveillance of people who were considered to be ‘mentally unreliable.’ I was supposed to inform the KGB about their ‘erroneous’ behavior,” he recalls. “What I really did was warn people to be more cautious in their conversations and then I told my superiors that the person in question supported the Communist regime and that everything was fine.” Nobody was safe in those days: after being “betrayed by a friend,” Lebedev barely escaped being imprisoned in a labor camp. He forms part of a generation of Russians trapped between the Communist repression of that era and the oligarch-run system that has been introduced into the new Russia. Angered most of all by the new generation’s loss of culture and integrity, Lebedev speaks bluntly about the looting process that followed the fall of the Soviet empire, when a small group of people—many of them ex–Communist officials—fought a merciless and violent battle for the country’s wealth.
The collapse of the Soviet system swept away the livelihoods of thousands of families in the region who not only lived off the income generated by the timber industry, but also off the exploitation of other forest products such as honey, ginseng, wild fruit, wild boar meat and bear fat. Contrary to what many people expected, the dismantling of the state-owned industries did not lead to a more efficient use of these resources. Instead, it resulted in a looting process carried out by what were effectively mafia organizations. “The state-owned companies had to be destroyed and privatized. The private investors, many of them ex-Soviet officials, literally killed each other in a fratricidal war over who would buy the privatized companies.” This was no surprise: the biggest country on the planet also harbors the world’s largest reserves of coniferous forests, with 57 percent of the world’s total temperate forest surface area. They represent an endless source of resources with enormous potential which, as has also occurred in the country’s energy and mining sectors, the post-Soviet elites have been quick to get their teeth into.1 After the collapse of the USSR the forests went from being under the control of the government to being subjected to a process of violent pillaging, as the only thing that mattered was—and still is—the ability to get rich quickly.
First, the entrepreneurs began to savagely and unsustainably loot the area’s tree species, felling them without thought to maximize profits. At the same time, the victims of the closure of the state-owned enterprises—the former employees who found themselves destitute—headed to the forests in search of a means of supporting themselves. Forced into a state of desperation by a lack of job opportunities, they carried out random raids into the forest with nothing but vans and a few chainsaws to get hold of the odd bit of rare wood that could later be resold. The scale of this attack was much smaller, but the constant and disorganized string of raids had disastrous long-term consequences. “They started to compete for the forest’s resources. Lots of unemployed people entered the industry illegally, without access to a concession, selling to the Chinese as soon as the border with China opened,” explains Lebedev. It was 1991 when China entered onto the scene. “The Chinese bought everything, whether it was legal or not. Lots of people in the rural areas of Siberia are very grateful to China, because in those days it was the only option left to them. Some forest villages still exist today thanks to Chinese demand. If that hadn’t happened, they would not have been able to survive.”
Since then, the corporations responsible for most of the modern-day drama have been logging indiscriminately using unsustainable practices with concessions obtained in a variety of ways. “The problem is caused by the companies who carry out intensive logging, destroying everything in their path. These companies can count on the support of corrupt civil servants because they pay a lot of tax. State-owned companies are also awarded concessions in the hope that they will protect those areas, but what they actually do is fell trees for commercial aims, even in vetoed areas.” This whole system is fueled by opshack, a system of corruption which infects every level of Russian society, from the figures at the top of the power pyramid to the minor officials at its base. It is similar in some ways to the “revolutionary tax” levied by guerrillas and mafia gangs, but in this case the “tax” is extorted by state bodies: the police, forestry agents, guards, customs officers and officials. Businessmen, thugs and oligarchs also demand their share. The briefcases full of money even get as far as the Kremlin itself. “If you don’t pay your bribe you’re out of the business,” Lebedev assures us.
Corruption and bribery help to “legalize” the criminal behavior which is now threatening to wipe out a unique ecosystem within the next two or three decades. Although wood is obtained illegally, under-the-counter payments make it possible to get hold of the documents needed for this wood to enter the legal circuit: certificates of origin, species and quantity, as well as felling and export licenses. Everything, in fact; nothing is impossible if you name the right price, Lebedev tells us. “In a completely corrupt country, there is no control whatsoever; control is just impossible. Any agent is potentially corruptible. Corruption is part of the system. When the inspector on duty catches somebody trafficking or felling wood illegally, that person simply offers him 100 dollars and everything is resolved. The forestry guards earn barely 10,000 rubles per month, or around 300 dollars. They earn so little that if you bribe them just once they earn more than they would in a whole month. How are they not going to be corrupt?” As he describes this drama, which goes far beyond environmental issues, Anatoly Lebedev’s voice begins to crack. He opens his eyes wide and talks bluntly about the current situation. He seems to feel a certain amount of nostalgia for the past. Sometimes he mixes his own personal story with that of deforestation, as if to show that the environmental degradation in the region is a direct consequence of the moral impoverishment of Russian society.
1998: THE CHINA FACTOR, YEAR ZERO
While the anarchic privatization of the assets of the former Soviet Union has clearly played an important role in the drama of the Siberian forests, one specific year stands out for the particularly damaging effect it had on the forests and their native species: 1998. “Several things happened at once that year. On the one hand, the Russian economy collapsed and the financial system went into crisis, dragged down by the Asian crash of 1997 which led to the devaluation of the ruble. At the same time, fast-growing China banned logging across much of its own territory as a result of flooding. All this had a great impact on events,” Lebedev recalls.
After banning national logging,2 China faced the challenge of substituting its enormous domestic wood supplies with imported resources. It was Russia that took up the challenge. The neighboring country, which exported just half a million cubic meters of wood to China in 1996, had increased its rate of supply several times over by 2004. China is now Russia’s biggest customer, importing almost 18 million cubic meters of wood each year, with a particular demand for rare hardwoods such as oak or various varieties of Siberian pine.3 The same Russian forests that had previously taken on the reconstruction of post-war Japan and the industrialization of South Korea now faced the challenge of supplying China’s enormous demand. But the reconstruction of Japanese cities destroyed by Allied bombs in the Second World War—several decades before China’s arrival in Siberia—pales in comparison to the challenge posed by the Asian giant, a country of 1.3 billion people which has transformed itself into a mass exporter of goods and is currently undergoing a fierce process of urbanization.
The effects of this drama can be clearly seen in Dalnerechensk, the capital of eastern Siber
ia’s timber industry. This small rural town is dotted with houses which are home to 30,000 tough and wary-looking inhabitants. These resilient people live through terrible winters where vodka is the habitual means of survival, while dancing to 1980s music in clubs that seem frozen in time. The town’s dynamic railway station stands out powerfully against this background of decay. This station is the point of departure for Siberian forestry resources on their way to China. Several bulging forty-wagon trains are lined up on the tracks, waiting for the green light to set off towards Suifenhe, the vibrant Chinese city on the other side of the border.
Each day, a dozen locomotives with up to sixty wagons loaded with 3,000 cubic meters of wood pass into the neighboring country at this border post alone, the major gateway of Russian wood into China. This represents an annual supply of 10 million cubic meters of precious wood, covering a surface area roughly equivalent to the size of Iceland or Portugal.4 The train station at Dalnerechensk smells of freshly cut wood: the trains transport unprocessed trunks of pine and oak, many of them with the remains of fresh resin still on the bark. At the base of each trunk, an inscription in chalk indicates the wood’s origin, quality and, most importantly, the telephone number of the relevant middleman or merchant. These are dominated by Chinese characters because, as Lebedev explains, “the Chinese have taken everything. Unlike the Japanese, who used to buy their wood supplies in the market, the Chinese have come to Russia to buy the wood directly. They are present in every village in the region.”
The Chinese enter the business as soon as the tree has been felled, but they do not participate in the logging process itself. “All the logging is carried out by the Russians. The Russian companies obtain a concession and they exploit it, especially in the winter when the snow is solid and the roads are accessible. The Chinese take part in the wholesale selling and the wood processing. They’re shareholders, employers and workers. They take on the whole range of activities. They also act as intermediaries: they buy and resell wood.” In other words, they control the entire process from top to bottom. An example can be seen at the processing plant run by Shi Wei Hua—or “Natasha” as she calls herself locally—on the outskirts of Dalnerechensk. This was the only plant which welcomed us into its premises, which consist of two wooden huts and a small processing facility. As we traveled along the road which runs parallel to the railway line, we approached several of the many sawmills and timber warehouses in the area, some of them veritable fortresses with their own security systems and bad-tempered Siberian dogs. One by one, each of them refused us access to their site, as they are clearly conscious that deforestation in Russian Siberia is a delicate issue.