China's Silent Army
Page 34
This backward step in terms of civil liberties has even been reflected in China’s state budget, which in 2010 assigned more funds to the country’s internal security ($85 billion) than to its armed forces ($82.7 billion) for the first time. This tendency is only likely to worsen over the coming years in the face of the increase in violent protests in China—around 180,000 in 2010 (double the rate of 2006)—as a result of injustices and the lack of any redress.
Bequelin’s bleak analysis of the situation tallies with another event which took place on July 1, 2011: the ninetieth anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. On this date, Beijing showed further signs that, despite the expectations of the West, it was in no hurry to relax the pressure exerted on a society which enjoys a certain amount of economic autonomy but which is deprived of political rights and liberties. Beijing is in even less of a rush to adopt a system based on liberal values which, according to the most recalcitrant sectors of Chinese society, will only destroy China and make it once again the object of foreign domination. All of these opinions stem from the Chinese authorities and are spread—from the top down—to every level of society. Anyone who has lived in the country and has had daily contact with Chinese academics, journalists, civil servants and activists; who has read the newspapers and watched the television; who has spoken to the Chinese man in the street; and has lived through all the ups and downs of this country knows that there is a widespread belief that the new superpower will be anything but an improved copy of the Western model. What this means is that the Chinese political elites—the CPC itself and the economically privileged—have no incentive at all to change the system, because they benefit from it in every sense, in particular economically. In fact, the so-called “Chinese miracle” has to be understood in the sense that it’s a miracle mainly for those elites, as the system is essentially designed and intended to serve their purposes, which are to remain in power and increase their wealth.
On that July 1, the CPC celebrated its anniversary with a great display of pomp and ceremony, marking the end of its sixty-second year in power. The regime made use of a flood of propaganda which claimed full responsibility for the success of the country, despite the fact that it is really the 1.3 billion Chinese people who have worked so hard to make this happen. They are the ones who have suffered the hardships caused by the CPC and, from the most wretched mingong to the most enterprising businessman in Wenzhou, they are the ones who have rebuilt a country which was on the brink of economic and social collapse at the time of Mao’s death in 1976. It is therefore up to them to make sure that “China’s century” is a historic new phase of justice and respect which will make the world a better place to live in. That is the challenge faced by the Chinese people, and it is one of such great magnitude and importance that the rest of humanity cannot just ignore it.
August 2012
Notes
INTRODUCTION
1. The Chinese authorities had chosen that particular time and date to ensure that the event would begin with as many recurrences of the number 8 as possible: the 8th day of the 8th month of 2008 at 8:08 and 8 seconds. In China the number 8 is a symbol of prosperity.
2. China Global Investment Tracker: 2012, the Heritage Foundation. These figures refer to investments and contracts of various kinds with a value exceeding US$100 million signed by Chinese companies from 2005 to June 2012. Available at: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/01/china-global-investment-tracker-2012.
3. According to the International Energy Agency, China will import 79 percent of its oil supplies by 2030. By this date it is estimated that this will represent around 15 million barrels of oil each day.
4. Source: National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China. Available at: http://www.uschina.org/statistics/tradetable.html.
5. The quality of the “Made in China” infrastructure is a common concern among locals due to the fact that these buildings and roads tend to fall apart after a short period of time. One of the most visible examples was witnessed by the authors in Luanda, Angola’s capital. They tried to visit the Chinese-built General Hospital of Luanda, one of the country’s biggest with 250 beds, but were stopped at its entrance by military police. The hospital had to be evacuated shortly after its opening because of its poor construction and risk of collapse. From the outside, the abandoned flagship hospital had a dilapidated appearance, including cracks in the main buildings. After four years of its being shut down, Beijing and Luanda agreed on a renovation plan to get the hospital open again in 2014.
1 THE MINGONGS TAKE ON THE WORLD
1. The Chinese term mingong is used to refer to migrant workers, a working class made up of between 200 and 300 million people who have fueled the so-called “factory of the world” over the last three decades. The Chinese residency system penalizes these workers for leaving their places of birth in search of better opportunities by stripping them of rights such as the right to healthcare and education for their descendants, or by giving them only limited access to these services. As a result, for many years the children of migrants could not go to school if they traveled with their parents to other provinces in the country. The situation has improved to some extent since the introduction of schools for the children of migrant workers in China’s industrial centers, although these still offer a sub-standard quality of education. In effect, the Chinese legal system has created two distinct classes of citizens with different rights and privileges, a kind of apartheid which punishes the real people behind China’s economic miracle. Opposition to this state of affairs has recently begun to grow within China itself.
2. World Bank website, last accessed February 7, 2011.
3. According to Chinese academics, the privatization or dismantling of Chinese state-owned companies inherited from the Maoist era began at the end of the 1980s. It is difficult to put an exact number on the level of unemployment caused by a move from a state-controlled economy to a mixed economy. The most reliable figures estimate that between 7 and 9 million people became unemployed between 1998 and 2001, although this figure would rise to around 40 million if that time period was extended. A quarter of the total number of jobs lost as a result of the closure of businesses in the textile, military and mining sectors took place in the three provinces in the northeast of China (Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang). Sources: China Economic Weekly, October 27, 2008. Zhang Jun Cai , China Labor Statistical Yearbook, 2005.
4. “An Introduction to the Policy and Situation of Overseas Labor Cooperation in China,” Australian International Trade Association, April 24, 2008, quoted in “Hired on Sufferance: China’s Migrant Workers in Singapore,” Aris Chan, China Labor Bulletin, February 2011. In the words of a former Latin American ambassador in Beijing whom the authors interviewed for this book, “The issue of migration is one of Beijing’s main priorities. No meeting with our Chinese counterpart ever passes without him expressing his objection to policies restricting the migration of Chinese nationals.”
5. One example is seen in Ecuador, where President Rafael Correa announced the elimination of visa requirements for Chinese tourists in June 2008. This policy had to be withdrawn barely six months later after “10,638 Chinese citizens entered the country and only 3,941 left” over the course of one year, according to the newspaper El Comercio. It is believed that a large proportion of these illegal immigrants re-emigrated to the United States or Canada, while others are likely to have traveled to Guayaquil, where a visit to the main market in the economic capital of Ecuador demonstrates the number of Chinese migrants in the country and their capacity to set up businesses.
6. For example, official figures for 2009 indicate that 778,000 Chinese workers in 190 countries contributed currency to China worth $4 billion in that year alone.
7. English language webpage of an Egyptian newspaper: http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/chinese-prostitution-ring-busted-maadi.
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sp; 8. http://www.dooland.com/magazine/article_93455.html and http://news.xkb.com.cn/guoji/2010/0923/92395.html.
9. “Mainland Women Opt to Stay in Congo Vice Trap,” South China Morning Post, January 1, 2011.
10. Mikhail Tersky, of the University of Vladivostok, expanded on this subject for the authors: “In the last two years the Russian government has clamped down hard on regulating Chinese imports because the amount of contraband goods entering the country is enormous. As a result, the volume of business has reduced by over three times.”
11. According to Oleg Lipaev, representative of Russia’s Ministry of Industry and Commerce in the Primorsky region, there are currently 20,000 Chinese businesses in the Russian Far East, most of which are corporations importing Chinese products. As a result, Chinese industry represents around 20 percent of the region’s GDP. “More than 50 percent of agricultural products here in Russia are produced by the Chinese,” Lipaev explains. When asked if he believed that prices would rise if China were to stop exporting agricultural products to Russia, he told the authors that prices would probably triple. “The average salary in Heilongjiang province is 60 to 100 dollars. In the Primorsky region, the average salary is about 600 dollars. How can we compete? … Ten years ago the structure of Chinese imports was mainly food and consumer goods, but now they are increasing their imports of high-tech products, like electrical equipment, machinery, cars or trucks. This is becoming a problem for Russian industry, because we have the same position [in terms of industrial activity] in these sectors. They are completely determining our industry.” When it comes to the future, Lipaev is not optimistic. “In the near future, it is profitable for Russia and Russian regions to trade with China, especially for the people. However, in maybe ten or fifteen years it will become a threat to the Russian economy. In five or six years the employment problem will be much worse than it is now.”
As with Africa, Latin America and Central Asia, the Chinese proposed an economic policy based on “your natural resources for our infrastructure and products,” but the Russians rejected this plan. “Beijing says that if they have to bring the financing [of their state-owned companies], there must be some intergovernmental contract [to exploit the resources] and some strong government guarantees.” However, Lipaev explains, unlike countries in Africa Russia is not interested in Chinese roads and dams in exchange for oil. “Russia doesn’t need this. We have our own money. We can build infrastructure by ourselves.” Instead, according to Lipaev, Russia suggested setting up joint ventures that would operate under Russian law, but the Chinese were not interested in this plan.
12. “Chinese Migrants: Their Views on the Work, Education, and Living Conditions in Russia,” A. G. Larin, 2007, http://www.springerlink.com/content/l57064789p2vl734/.
13. Despite the influx of Chinese emigrants and products entering the country, China is not a major player in Russia in terms of investment as it has no presence in Sakhalin, the Russian Pacific island that harbors enormous quantities of oil and receives most of the foreign investment in Russia. In terms of other industries, such as logging, Chinese companies tend to buy raw materials themselves rather than investing in Russian companies.
14. There are no reliable official figures regarding the number of Chinese emigrants in Russia. Experts and officials estimate that there are between 300,000 and 4 million Chinese living in the country, both legally and illegally. It is estimated that there are around 100,000 Chinese traders and temporary employees in the Russian Far East alone. Russia is currently cracking down hard on Chinese immigration, limiting the number of work visas to 3,000 each year in response to the complete lack of control on immigration prevalent in the 1990s. Russia actively facilitated the flow of Chinese migrants at that time by exempting them from visa requirements between 1992 and 1994. The aim was to encourage the arrival of Chinese traders to replenish Russia’s severe lack of supplies caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a result, thousands of Chinese people entered the country, often illegally, from the regions bordering with Russia, fleeing from the severe unemployment that had struck the industrial regions of northern China. Source: The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas, ed. Lynn Pan (Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 328–31; China Inside Out: Contemporary Chinese Nationalism and Transnationalism, eds. P. Nyíri and Joana Breidenbach (Central European University Press, 2005), pp. 144–6; interviews with experts and civil servants in Vladivostok, Khabarovsk and Moscow.
15. The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas, op. cit., pp. 328–31.
16. China Statistical Yearbook, 2009.
17. The Hungarian academic Pál Nyíri, who has spent the last two decades studying the phenomenon of Chinese migration, defines the expansion of these enterprising migrants across the planet as “the emergence of a global entrepreneuriat, linked by a multifunctioning business network, with high mobility and dense flows of capital, goods and information, while retaining a marginal social status within the local societies.” Source: “Chinese Entrepreneurs in Poor Countries: A Transnational ‘Middleman Minority’ and Its Futures,” paper presented in Hong Kong, reproduced by permission of Pál Nyíri, VU University, Amsterdam.
18. China’s most dominant ethnic group.
19. This represents around 18.3 percent of the world’s migrant population, according to the International Organization for Migration. Source: “2007” [“Report on International Policy and Security 2007”], CASS, multiple authors, 2007.
20. Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405–1433, Edward L. Dreyer (Longman, 2007).
21. The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas, op cit., pp. 48–50.
22. “2007” [“Report on International Policy and Security 2007”], op. cit.
23. The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas, op. cit., pp. 64–5.
24. Venezuela now has a population of over 28 million people, according to the World Bank. It is estimated that there are around 180,000 Chinese people living in the South American country.
25. [History of Overseas Chinese Indentured Labor], ed. Chen Hansheng, 1985.
26. When the Communists came to power in 1949, the state returned to the imperial tradition of prohibiting and punishing migration. However, Beijing was also quick to export human services and resources to third world countries for ideological reasons in the midst of the Cold War. At the beginning of the 1960s, Mao Zedong sent tens of thousands of Chinese citizens to these countries to work as doctors, agricultural engineers and manual laborers, both in an attempt to legitimize the regime of the People’s Republic and to spread the red revolution across the planet. At that time Africa began to grow familiar with the presence of Chinese workers in its territory, where they built railway lines such as the one joining Tanzania and Zambia (the Tanzam or TAZARA Railway), built with the contribution of 25,000 Chinese workers. Chinese workers also helped to increase the productivity of African rice and sugar plantations.
27. Official data suggests that there are at least 750,000 Chinese people living in Africa, after moving there to make better lives for themselves. However, there has been no reliable census—as we saw in the case of the shanta sini in Egypt—and it is thought that the actual figure is much higher.
28. New Asian Emperors, George Haley, Usha Haley and Chin Tiong Tan (John Wiley & Sons, 2009), p. 15.
29. Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World, Joshua Kurlantzick (Yale University Press, 2007), p. 75.
30. This expression was used by Miguel Ángel Calvete, at the time secretary general of the Chamber of Shops and Supermarkets owned by Chinese Residents (Casrech) in Argentina, which represents the owners of 7,000 supermarkets and has become a powerful lobbying group in the country. The activities of this group are explained in more depth in Chapter 2.
31. or “Great China” is the term used to refer to the commercial, cultural and linguistic interaction of Chinese overseas communities.
32. “Chinese Ent
repreneurs in Poor Countries: A Transnational ‘Middleman Minority’ and Its Futures,” op. cit.
33. The first wave of Chinese emigrants to South Africa arrived at the end of the nineteenth century. This first group was made up of between 20,000 and 30,000 people, and between 6,000 and 10,000 of their direct descendants remain in the country today. The second wave took place in the 1980s, when migrants began arriving from Taiwan as a result of the good relations between Taipei and Pretoria’s segregationist regime. Approximately 20,000 Chinese citizens arrived in the African country during this period, around 6,000 of whom remain today. The third and final wave, which was also the biggest, ranged from the 1990s to the present day, with migrants arriving from mainland China. Various estimates place the total number of people of Chinese origin currently living in South Africa at around 400,000.
34. Harry Sun is referring to the disastrous effects that the opium trade, started by the British East India Company in the eighteenth century, had on the Chinese economy and Chinese society. This powerful company—which monopolized trade until 1834—exported the drug produced in colonial India to China in order to make up the balance of business with the Chinese empire, which supplied Great Britain with products such as tea, porcelain and silk at a much greater value than the products that they bought from Great Britain.
The introduction of opium into China caused widespread addiction and decline among the Chinese people. At the same time, the country’s entry into bilateral trade relations with Great Britain caused a decrease in the Qing empire’s silver income. The Qing panicked and intervened, banning the importation and trade of the drug. After various failed attempts at negotiation, this led to the First Opium War (1839–42), which marked the beginning of the period between 1849 and 1949 which is known in China as the “Century of Humiliation.” This period was characterized by a state of general chaos caused by many different factors: the invasion by Western and Japanese forces into some parts of Chinese territory, various unequal post-conflict treaties imposed by several foreign powers, the fall of the empire, and the bloody civil war between Communists and Nationalists. All this to some extent explains why many Chinese people, like Harry Sun, celebrate the Communist victory in 1949 and the subsequent dictatorship of Mao Zedong, whom they see as the man who restored dignity to China after decades of humiliation. Source: China: A New History, John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman (Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 180–206.