China's Silent Army
Page 28
An analysis of China’s treatment of the other countries with which it shares transboundary rivers clearly demonstrates that the situation on the Mekong is not unique.29 With the exception of North Korea, the other countries which share important water resources with China (India, Russia and Kazakhstan) condemn Beijing’s unilateral approach. In the case of New Delhi, some sources even warn of the possibility of a future war over water supplies; however, these disputes seem to be more closely linked to the general climate of tension which characterizes relations between the two countries.30 While the issue of the Mekong river is no doubt the most important and controversial of these water-related disputes, the place where Beijing most forcefully imposes its own will on others is on the border with Central Asia. Here China has diverted water from the Irtysh and Ili rivers for its own agricultural use in Xinjiang province, and particularly in order to benefit the region’s oil industry.31 Although relations between China and Kazakhstan have grown stronger in recent years, this has not led to a greater degree of co-operation on an issue as important as water resources. Astana has warned its Chinese associates that by diverting the course of the rivers they are threatening the survival of Lake Blakhash, an area which is currently endangered despite being one of the most important freshwater sources in the region and home to one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. However, these warnings have fallen on deaf ears as China continues to dodge the issue.
Water—an issue of national security for Beijing—is non-negotiable. Apart from the needs of a country of over 1.3 billion inhabitants, the main reason for this is found in China’s orography, as the Himalayan mountain range plays a key geographical role in terms of water resources. China is what is known as an “upstream” country; in other words, it is a nation where rivers begin. This means that the country has access to an independent freshwater supply, and also that it is able to control other countries’ resources (with all the power and potential for conflict that this entails).32 This situation has led Beijing—officially a staunch champion of “win-win co-operation” in terms of its diplomatic relations with other countries—to show “very little interest” in its neighbors’ priorities.33 In fact, China was one of only three countries, along with Turkey and Burundi, to vote against the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, a text which took twenty-seven years to produce in order to reach a majority consensus.34 What would happen if China had to battle with a powerful neighbor who was damaging a river which flowed through Chinese territory and represented an essential life source for millions of Chinese people? What would happen if, for instance, the Yangtze river began in Siberia and Moscow turned its back on the environmental and socioeconomic disaster taking place in Chinese territory? How would the Chinese government react then?
THE ENVIRONMENT: A CONSTANT CAUSE FOR CONCERN
Following the trail of the Russian and Mozambican hardwood which provides fuel for China’s industries, or learning about the Asian giant’s plans on the Mekong and other transboundary rivers, serves to show that protecting the environment is not one of China’s current priorities. As a result, environmental damage caused by China’s bad practices, demand and investments is a constant cause for concern in most—if not all—of the twenty-five countries visited as part of this investigation. We have witnessed the outrages committed by Chinese companies—many of them state owned—along with the complicity or negligence of the countries in question, in places as different and distant as Burma and Ecuador, Peru and Sudan, or the heart of Africa’s Copperbelt. In all these settings, the urgent need to fuel the factory of the world and a country that is home to one-fifth of the Earth’s population is combined with a lack of sensibility or respect for the environment on the part of China’s small, medium and large investors. The general rule is: don’t let environmental damage interfere with good business.
The fierce competition, the desire to maximize profits, the demands of Beijing’s political strategies and China’s longing for economic prosperity are all contributing factors which lead corporations such as Shougang or Zijin in Peru, Sinohydro in Burma or CNPC in Sudan to pay very little attention to their impact on the environment. The behavior of these and other Chinese companies abroad can once again be understood within the framework of domestic affairs: China is following a pattern of behavior outside its own borders which has been the common denominator inside the country for the last three decades.35 We have seen examples of this at the Irrawady river basin in Burma, where businessmen are savagely exploiting the region’s gold mines, and in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, where bauxite mines threaten the survival of ethnic minorities who have lived off coffee and tea plantations in the region for hundreds of years.
Likewise, this same pattern—which lacks any sense of environmental ethics—governs the behavior of tiger poachers in Russia and Burma, who illegally sell bones, skins and organs to the lucrative and increasingly demanding traditional Chinese medicine industry. The same pattern is followed by Ethiopian hunters and their Chinese associates who, along with other international buyers, endanger the survival of the African elephant in order to make a fortune by ripping off their ivory tusks, a valuable material in China where it is made into signature stamps. “The skin of a rare feline costs 150 dollars in Addis Ababa and can be sold for 15,000 dollars on the black market in Wenzhou, the home of Chinese entrepreneurs,” said a Chinese resident in Africa who once trafficked in this type of merchandise without following any code other than the code of fat profits.
This lack of scruples whenever juicy dividends are involved reveals one of the “strengths” of Chinese investments over their Western and local competitors: the lack of a Chinese civil society which could put the brakes on the supremacy of profit over the environment. Without NGOs that can act independently and condemn these actions without fear; without a free press; without a civil society in the wider sense of the phrase which could painstakingly examine the conduct of China’s economic and political actors (which today are tied more strongly than ever to the Chinese version of “state capitalism”), China runs the risk of continuously producing the same mistakes abroad which have endangered the environment in its own country, thanks to this sense of impunity.36 The pyramid system used by the current Communist regime—in which a few people give orders while the others obey and execute them—is clearly far more effective than public consultation and collective participation, as Professor Jiangwen Qu explained in justification of China’s stance on the Mekong issue. However, the long-term benefits of this system are questionable, to say the least.
It is precisely this lack of any real counterweight which has led Chinese companies to take on projects that have been abandoned by other corporations which, while their own environmental records may not be exactly spotless, do at least consider some investments to be unviable because of their high social and ecological cost. Many cases of this can be seen in Peru,37 where the quintessential example is the behavior of the Chinese mining company Zijin in the so-called Rio Blanco project. In 2007 the company took over a fabulous copper concession which had previously been held by the London-based mining company Monterrico Metals in the northern region of Piura, on the border with Ecuador. The British company had abandoned the project after years of violence and death caused by clashes with organized opposition from around 2,200 local families. These rural families live in an area spanning 6,500 hectares where the purity of the water and the area’s unique microclimate enable them to make a living by exporting certified ecological products like coffee, bananas, mango and other fruits to the attractive American and European markets. Water pollution as a result of mining activity would be the downfall and death of this community. However, when the British company pulled out, Zijin—whose environmental record in China leaves much to be desired38—stepped into the breach. The community has been in an uproar ever since. In his office in Lima, Javier Jahncke, the head of the Ecumenical Foundation for Development and Peace (Fedepaz), an org
anization which has been following the case, hit the nail on the head with just one phrase: “They have no problem with getting involved in such a conflictive situation, even though this was why the British company ended up leaving.” This case is very similar to that of the Chinese state-owned company Erdos Hongjun Investment Corp., which took over a project in the Cambodian province of Mondulkiri in 2010, shortly after it had been rejected by the Australian group BHP because of its impact on the local environment.39
There is no shortage of examples like these. As can be deduced from China’s involvement in the controversial Merowe Dam project (see Chapter 5), Chinese investors will move mountains whenever there is profit involved. Of course, this attitude is not unique to Chinese companies: the West has a long and sad history of using harmful practices across the world. However, the irresponsible behavior of Western companies comes under much greater scrutiny and the price of its excesses, both in terms of economic costs and public image, leads them to be much more cautious—at least in theory. As things stand, the problem posed by China’s sheer size and its huge number of inhabitants is perhaps one of the greatest challenges facing the planet today.
8
The Pax Sinica of the Middle Kingdom
“There is only room for one tiger on a mountain.”
Chinese proverb
The sun is just breaking through the peaks of the Himalayas as the eagles begin their distinctive daily dance. It always happens at dawn, when the light is just starting to flood into the Indian village of McLeod Ganj close to the town of Dharamsala. They spread their wings and glide in circles as if following some kind of ritual, silhouetted against a clear sky of the purest blue, like something out of a child’s drawing. From time to time, one of them turns to face the ground and suddenly drops before taking flight again, fast and playful, to cleave once more through the skies of this place at the foot of the roof of the world. With the first light of dawn the streets begin to burst colorfully into life. Monks’ saffron robes fill the main streets, which are also invaded by noisy motor-taxis that sound their horns as they make their way through the crowd. The aim is apparently to honk as much as possible even when it isn’t necessary—the unspoken law of Indian roads.
The cafés and souvenir shops begin to open their doors, all of them presided over by an image of His Holiness, as the Dalai Lama is known in the area. Meanwhile tourists and faithful followers drawn here from every corner of the world by the charisma of the Buddhist leader swarm into an enclave which was seen purely as a holiday destination during the British colonial era. This status changed dramatically in 1959, when Tenzin Gyatso, the current Dalai Lama, escaped from Tibet and settled here with New Delhi’s blessing, establishing the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile.1 Since then, Dharamsala’s political significance has made it the biggest thorn in the side of the always difficult Sino-Indian relations. The tragic destiny of the Tibetan people is very evident in this remote area of the Himalayas, which is home to 12,000 Tibetan refugees.2
Migmar Tsering knows that anybody watching him climb the stairs leading up to the highest part of the village is going to suffer. That is why he makes sure to keep a smile on his face, as if trying to calm his companions by reassuring them that his artificial legs are not going to break and that there is no need to worry: other times of his life have been much harder. Once he reaches the top of the hill which rises up behind the main monastery, where there is a large pagoda and a tangle of colored flags flying in the wind, he goes straight to the Tibetan prayer wheels and spins them, one by one. After a while, this forty-nine-year-old monk who is the embodiment of Buddhist faith and the fight against Chinese repression in Tibet says a brief prayer and begins to tell us his story.
“In 1993 the Chinese police came looking for me to make me sign a declaration against His Holiness. I refused. They arrested and tortured me. I decided to escape.” This marked the beginning of an odyssey to reach the other side of the Himalayas, a sad journey of exile along one of the most dangerous routes on the planet. “I left Lhasa with two other Tibetans. We took nothing with us apart from blankets and some food. When we were halfway there we found ourselves in the middle of a great snowstorm. We couldn’t see anything. We got lost and my legs became frozen,” he recalls. Close to death with gangrene setting into his limbs, Tsering was finally rescued by a group of nomads who took him over the border. He was transported to New Delhi. “Both my legs were amputated there, as well as four fingers from one hand.” When he had barely recovered, he was hit by the full force of Indian law because of his lack of documentation: six months in prison. “That wasn’t the worst of it. After prison they took me back to the border with China.” His dramatic journey had all been for nothing.
However, like many of the other Buddhists who set out on impossible journeys of escape, his faith was stronger than his suffering and the prospect of his own death. Dragging himself along on his stumps, suffering even more hardships and risking his life, Tsering finally managed to arrive in Dharamsala, where the Tibetan government takes in all the refugees. “When I was in hospital recovering from the amputations, I kept asking myself why I had to run away, why I did it. But when I arrived in Dharamsala and met His Holiness the Dalai Lama and was able to study Buddhism, I was happy. I had finally achieved what I had dreamed about for so long,” he tells us, full of emotion. As in so many other cases, Migmar Tsering’s determination faithfully reflects the unshakable loyalty that the Tibetan people feel towards their leader and their religion.
It takes approximately one month to cross the Himalayas by foot to Nepal, an obligatory journey for any Tibetan who wants to gain access to India. The journey is fraught with dangers, from extreme weather conditions and hunger to wild dogs, altitude sickness and, worst of all, Chinese soldiers. The Tibetans insist that the soldiers shoot to kill if they find refugees and they disobey the warnings. Despite the dangers, each year many people like Migmar Tsering flee from repression in Tibet for the sake of freedom and the ability to practice their own beliefs in India. Only a small proportion of those who leave ever return to Tibet. Faced by the prospect of life under the iron rule of the Chinese government, the rest choose to leave behind their family, property and the land where they were born.3
Tempa Tsering knows this suffering only too well. He meets us at the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile in New Delhi, where he has been the senior representative since 2005. Under a Tibetan flag and a portrait of the spiritual leader which are hanging in his office, he serves us tea and tells us that he too crossed the mountain range on foot in the middle of winter. “It was the end of 1959, months after the Dalai Lama left Tibet. We went by foot. I was around twelve years old. Having to leave your country and your dear ones is not easy; there was a lot of trauma. To that you have to add physical exhaustion: we’re talking about walking at 17,000 to 19,000 feet above sea level, in the middle of winter. When we arrived in India we were a family of five, but in a few months only two of us were left,” says this man with perfect manners who is married to the sister of the current Dalai Lama. Half a century later, Tibet’s 5 million people—most of them living in poverty—are still an obsession for China.
An outbreak of bloody and often fatal violence against China’s presence in the region inevitably takes place every ten or fifteen years in Tibet, calling into question China’s legitimacy in the region and showing that Beijing’s policies are not having the desired effect. The sense of not having complete control over the territory and of being unable to assimilate all of the Tibetan people, and the conflict’s international dimension, are making China feel very vulnerable, according to various Indian academics whom we spoke to in New Delhi. In order to strengthen its authority, Beijing is therefore taking action both inside and outside its own borders—with relative success—to stem the flow of refugees, in the belief that this dissidence represents a potential militant danger to stability in Tibet.
Before the 2008 uprising in Lhasa4 between 2,500 and 3,500 peopl
e annually escaped from repression by traveling over the Himalayan mountain range, according to Tempa Tsering. However, since then barely 700 refugees make the same journey each year. “The Tibetan side of the border has become very tightly controlled. On the Nepalese side, [China is] training and equipping border guards. When the guards arrest Tibetans and repatriate them back to Tibet, they receive incentives,” says the representative of His Holiness in the Indian capital. At the same time, Kathmandu’s policy towards Tibetan refugees has become much stricter, including repatriation, a closer surveillance of the border, the closure of the Dalai Lama’s office and the outrageously severe behavior of the police towards new arrivals in the Tibetan community. All this started happening just when China was becoming Nepal’s biggest investor. India’s traditional ally is now under Beijing’s control, and that places it firmly in the Chinese camp in the battle against the Tibetan movement in exile.