Kidnaps highlight urgent task for
China By Mathieu Duchatel and
Bates Gill
The dramatic rise in overseas
travel and expatriate work by Chinese was
punctuated by the recent kidnappings of Chinese
workers in Sudan and Egypt. "Overseas Chinese
protection" (haiwai gongmin baohu) has been
a critical priority since deadly attacks killed 14
Chinese workers in Afghanistan and Pakistan in
2004. Between 2006 and 2010, 6,000 Chinese
citizens were evacuated to China from upheavals in
the Solomon Islands, East Timor, Lebanon, Tonga,
Chad, Thailand, Haiti and Kyrgyzstan.
But
a new urgency has arisen in the past year: in
2011, China evacuated 48,000 citizens from Egypt,
Libya, and Japan; 13 Chinese merchant sailors were
murdered on the Mekong River in northern Thailand
in October 2011; and in late January 2012, some 50
Chinese workers were kidnapped in two incidents by
Sudanese rebels in South
Kordofan province and by Bedouin tribesmen in the
north of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
The
worldwide presence of Chinese citizens - and the
dependencies that generates - will only continue
to grow: in 2012, more than 60 million Chinese
people will travel abroad, a figure up sixfold
from 2000, and likely to reach 100 million in
2020. More than five million Chinese nationals
work abroad, a figure sure to increase
significantly in the years ahead.
'Feeling for stones' For now,
China’s approach to this challenge follows the
time-honored and pragmatic Chinese maxim of
"crossing the river by feeling for stones".
There is little alternative. The central
government lacks an accurate figure of the number
of overseas holders of a People's Republic of
China passport. It is estimated to be 5.5 million
in 2011, dramatically up from 3.5 million in 2005.
State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are said to employ
300,000 Chinese workers abroad but there are no
official statistics.
Moreover, the
coordination amongst the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (MFA), the People’s Liberation Army (PLA),
the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), state-owned
enterprises, and private businesses - problematic
under most circumstances - has yet to be clarified
regarding protecting citizens abroad, especially
at a time when each of them are working separately
to develop crisis management procedures.
The MFA is in charge of implementing
consular protection. A Bureau of Consular
Protection was created in May 2007 under the
Department of Consular Affairs. Greater capacity
will be a priority, as the department only employs
140 diplomats in Beijing and about 600 abroad.
The ministry also plays an increasing role
in prevention. It disseminates security
information through a website (cs.mfa.gov.cn)
launched in November 2011. It has also concluded
an agreement with Chinese mobile phone operators
to ensure that each Chinese national traveling
abroad receives a text message with basic security
information (including the contact of the Chinese
consulate and local police) upon arrival in a
foreign country.
The Libyan operation is
clearly a milestone in using the PLA to protect
Chinese citizens abroad. The dispatch of a
Jiangkai-II class frigate from the Gulf of Aden to
the Libyan coast marked the first participation of
the PLA Navy in a non-combatant evacuation
operation.
Similarly, the PLA Air Force
deployment of four Il-76 transport aircraft to the
south of Libya, to extract Chinese citizens, was
unprecedented. Less noticed was the decisive
involvement of Chinese military attaches from
across Europe and the Middle East who were posted
at key points of evacuation across the Libyan
border to help coordinate the operation.
After the October Mekong murders, the MPS
directly negotiated with Myanmar, Thailand and
Laos to reach the November 2011 agreement on joint
river patrols. Although the MFA was involved in
the negotiations, the fact that the MPS took the
lead is in itself interesting - previously, the
MPS's role in foreign policy was fairly limited -
and part of a larger trend of foreign policy
devolution on many issues away from the MFA.
State-owned enterprises and major private
corporations have important responsibilities, and
not only because they sometimes employ workers in
dangerous spots. Their financial clout and strong
organization potentially can be a major asset in
the government's overseas protection strategy. For
now, most lack standard operation procedures to
prevent incidents and handle crises. Although some
firms have risk assessment units, a chief security
officer position has yet to be established in most
of them. Some concerns have been raised about
the deployment of poorly-trained private Chinese
security forces by some Chinese companies abroad,
echoing similar concerns raised about private
security contractors elsewhere in the world. Some
experts advocate government regulation to compel
SOEs to adopt overseas security budgets
proportionate to the risks, but this is a cost
many companies are unwilling to bear.
Past
practice suggests that coordination across these
actors is not standardized and tends to result
only after political decisions at the highest
level. For individual cases of consular
protection, the MFA is firmly in the driver seat.
In cases of kidnappings, severe attacks and
murders, it consults with the MPS.
Larger
evacuations require political endorsement from the
Standing Committee of the Politburo and the
Central Military Commission. While State Councilor
Dai Bingguo coordinated the Egypt operation, the
scale of the operation in Libya required
coordination at a higher level: a task force
headed by Zhang Dejiang, Politburo member, vice
premier and head of the State Council Production
Safety Commission.
A change for China's
foreign relations? Looking ahead, do these
developments mean big changes in Chinese foreign
policy? Will Beijing further adjust its principles
on sovereignty and non-intervention to take
account for the safety of its citizens abroad?
Will the challenge of protecting Chinese overseas
lead to greater bilateral or multilateral
cooperation with other major governments, such as
in Europe or with the United States? Briefly put,
there already are interesting changes underway,
but as usual with Chinese foreign policies, these
changes will likely unfold in a deliberate way and
take time.
Beijing already seeks Western
cooperation on these issues. For example, China
relied heavily on cooperative relations with
several European countries to carry out the Libyan
operation. Allowing the transit through Greece of
thousands of Chinese workers, some of them without
a valid passport, was sensitive. In the Gulf of
Aden, Western naval vessels escort Chinese
merchant shipping (and Chinese escorts extend
their protection to non-Chinese vessels when
possible).
But additional cooperation is
possible. Beijing has expressed an interest in
exchanges with Europeans and Americans on
evacuation operations and consular protection. The
US, France and the United Kingdom have a long
record of non-combatant military evacuations, and
major Western companies have developed
sophisticated safety policies to operate in risky
locales.
But for the near-term, it is more
likely that China's priorities in this area - as
in many aspects of Chinese foreign policy - will
have Beijing looking inward, not outward. Setting
up effective and standard procedures for
protecting Chinese citizens overseas is to a great
extent an institutional question regarding the
distribution of costs and responsibilities between
different government agencies, SOEs and private
enterprises.
Further institutionalization
is very likely, given leadership commitment and
strong public support for a foreign policy that
delivers concrete benefits "on the ground" for
Chinese nationals and enterprises.
Looking
ahead, the question of protecting its citizens
abroad will no doubt become more pressing and
complicated for Beijing. It is an inevitable risk
for a globalizing China, and one that it will be
grappling with for a long time to come.
Mathieu Duchatel
[duchatel@sipri.org] is Senior Researcher and
Beijing-based China representative for the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
(SIPRI) and Bates Gill is SIPRI
Director.
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