LONDON - The release of Chinese workers
held hostage in Sudan this month will not be the
last tense times to end for families back home in
China if Beijing does not find better ways to
protect the safety of its citizens and investments
overseas. With many similar cases through the
continent, kidnapping in Africa is an
unprecedented challenge for Beijing.
The
29 workers for the Sinohydro Corporation were
released by rebels on February 7 after mediation
efforts involving the United Nations, the
governments of Sudan, South Sudan and Kenya, and
the International Committee of the Red Cross. The
Chinese government had rushed to the rescue a
special team of staff from China's Foreign
Ministry, the state-owned Assets Supervision and
Administration Commission (SASAC) and Sinohydro
Corp to Sudan.
The workers' ordeal began
on January 28 when they were taken
by the Sudan's People's
Liberation Movement-North, an armed rebel group
based in South Sudan, the new republic that broke
away from Sudan last year. The rebels attacked a
road construction site in volatile South Kordofan,
kidnapping the 29 workers. One worker was shot
dead while trying to escape and17 workers
succeeded in evading capture.
This hostage
crisis in South Sudan is by no means an isolated
case. In the past five years, over 100 Chinese
citizens have been kidnapped or attacked, with 14
killed, in 10 countries such as Afghanistan,
Cameron, Columbia, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Pakistan,
Nigeria, Thailand and Yemen. Still it shocked
Chinese people as it happened during the Lunar New
Year - a holiday for family reunion, arousing
public concern about the safety of Chinese
citizens overseas, especially in Africa.
Although most of China's citizens have
never set their feet on foreign soil and may not
even know where Sudan is, the number of Chinese -
from private business people to state-owned
enterprises' workers, engineers and managers -
working in Africa is dramatically rising. It's
estimated that now there are over one million
Chinese working in Africa. Needless to say, with
more Chinese rushing into Africa, the probability
of Chinese being kidnapped or attacked grows,
especially in some countries where political and
social instability prevails.
In the past
decade, Western enterprises have gradually pulled
out from African countries where civil conflicts
or political instability are the norm, and China
as a country with huge appetite for resources has
moved in. This shows that China as a rising power
is bound to enter these "minefields" in order to
sustain economic growth because Western businesses
have virtually monopolized relatively "safe"
regions. And generally, Chinese companies in
Africa are focusing on labor-intensive projects,
in which Western firms are less interested.
Due to lack of experience in managing
businesses in foreign countries and in a
multi-cultural situation, most Chinese companies,
regardless of state-owned or private, are inclined
to employ as many Chinese workers as possible,
though more and more are moving to hire local
labor. By comparison, Western enterprises with
rich experience of investing overseas tend to hire
local people as their agents, brokers or
representatives.
The way Beijing deals
with its relations with African countries may also
make Chinese citizens more vulnerable as targets.
On the one hand, the Chinese government is not
only familiar with but also fond of developing
relations, including economic relations, with
ruling parties, but somehow neglects to foster
ties with the opposition forces or rebel groups in
countries with civil conflict. Accordingly, once
an opposition force or rebelling group in an
African country decides to put pressure on the
ruling authority by kidnapping foreigners, unarmed
Chinese people can fall easy prey.
On the
other hand, where China also fails to develop
strong relations with civil society in an African
country this often leads to some misunderstanding.
Potential conflict is easily made use of by rebels
as an excuse to kidnap Chinese as hostage. As a
result, Chinese workers in Africa are also victim
to civil conflicts in Africa or less sophisticated
relations between China and African countries.
It may be wrong to say that Chinese have
become favorite targets for kidnappers in Africa.
It is true to say however that there are more and
more cases of Chinese being taken as hostages in
Africa, South America and Asia, but that has
happened because more and more Chinese are working
abroad. Many citizens of other foreign countries
have also been kidnapped or killed in Africa by
armed groups. For instance, five Turks serving in
one Turkish company were kidnapped in Darfur,
Sudan on September 8, 2011. Western people in
Africa are also targets of being kidnapped.
To be sure, it should not be asserted that
the recent kidnapping will have a negative impact
on China's relations with either Sudan or South
Sudan. Firstly, China has huge investments in
Sudan, especially through state-owned
corporations, and the regime in Khartoum needs
China's economic aid for domestic reasons as well
as for a show of political support
internationally.
Beijing has kept good
relations with South Sudan since before the
founding of the republic, and while the
administration on the South's capital, Juba, could
argue it had a hand in the workers' release,
Khartoum also did its best to work with Beijing on
the rescue. Thus finally, under a
Beijing-Khartoum-Juba triangular endeavor, as well
as international help, the kidnapped Chinese got
to go home alive. So this incident will not
jeopardize Beijing's relations with either
Khartoum or Juba, although the scheduled road
construction project has to be suspended.
Nevertheless, the kidnapping in Sudan may
prompt Beijing into a greater sense of urgency in
safeguarding overseas Chinese people and property.
The increase in the number of cases of threats
either to Chinese workers or projects being forced
into suspension implies that the Chinese
government has yet to enhance efforts to protect
its overseas interests.
In this field, at
the turn of the century the Chinese Foreign
Ministry initiated guidelines in its Directory for
Consular Protection and Services Outside China,
then in 2004, a central government-level
institution, the Inter-Ministerial Joint
Conference on Overseas Chinese Citizens and
Institutions' Safety and Protection, was
established, and in 2007, the Consular Protection
Center was set up in the foreign ministry.
Although a fledging consular protection
system is taking shape, it's a particularly tall
order to deal with the growing demand for
protection in times of peace, nevermind
successfully coping with those serious, urgent and
large-scale incidents that threaten the safety of
Chinese abroad or harm China's interests.
Beijing's "Go Global" policy, started in 1990s,
stimulated China's outbound investment, and the
consequent rush of Chinese citizens into foreign
countries should be supported by stronger and more
sophisticated approaches toward protection.
Economically, it is necessary for China to
institutionalize its relations with developing
countries to protect Chinese interests. In this
regard, signing bilateral trade and investment
agreements is indispensable. This is also a common
international practice to protect a country's
national interests in bilateral economic
relations. However, such a mechanism at the best
only works in normal and conventional
circumstances.
If an emergency situation
occurs in an investment-recipient country, such as
the outbreak of a civil war or serious political
unrest, how should the investing country act? In
general, according to the adopted practice of many
Western countries - especially the US - military
actions should be considered, and in this regard
the United States is helped by having a network of
military bases all over the world.
But for
China, military interference - either as one-off
action or setting up a permanent military base -
is not an option, since non-interference is the
basic diplomatic principle of Beijing. And now
Beijing also cares very much about so-called
"peaceful rising" and "harmonious development".
That is, taking military or political interference
in other countries as a policy to protect its
interest is not a pragmatic tactic at present,
although it seems Beijing sometime will "borrow"
it for some specific aims, as it did in Libya by
using military aircrafts to evacuate Chinese
citizens.
As a rising power with growing
global interests, China has to develop a flexible
involvement strategy to protect its overseas
interests. This does not mean Beijing should take
an opportunistic approach but it rather should
develop a strand that is complimentary to its
non-interference policy. This should be based on
the principles of UN Charter, and win the respect
of foreign countries. Peking University professor
Wang Yizhou characterized such an approach as
"creative involvement" in his recently published
book, Creative Involvement: A New Direction in
China's Diplomacy.
Beijing may also
need to consider cooperating with Western
countries, particularly the United States. Since
they could join hands in the fight against
terrorism, they should also be able to help each
other to protect their interests overseas.
Anyway, China has to develop a
comprehensive policy that can embody action to
protect overseas interest both in times of peace
and in conflict situations. For over a dozen
years, Chinese policy-makers carefully keep to
Deng Xiaoping's advice of "Keeping a Low Profile",
but they should also remember his words about
"doing something positive". Now is the time for
action.
Dr Jian Junbo, an
assistant professor of the Institute of
International Studies at Fudan University,
Shanghai, China, is currently an academic visitor
at London School of Economics and Political
Science, United Kingdom.
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