Russian scholar says Chinese are paid to marry Russians

Recently I gave a talk in Paris and met Olga Alexeeva, who is doing her PhD at Paris VII and has written a few articles on Chinese businesses in Russia. In one of these papers, which she kindly sent me, she quotes Vilya Gelbras, the top authority on Chinese migration in Russia, as claiming that Chinese migrants who marry Russian women receive a bonus payment from the Chinese government.

Naturally, I thought this must be a mistake, so I checked the source. It is a 2005 interview with Gelbras in Novaya Gazeta, Russia´s premier independent (anti-Putin) newspaper, authored by none other than Anna Politkovskaya, the woman who was Russia´s best-known investigative journalist before she was assassinated.

In the interview, Gelbras indeed claims that he has seen a plan, which “has been discussed by” the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, to “organise the settlement of Chinese migrants all over Russia through Amur Province in order to control merchandise by concentrating it in their own hands in the hubs of the Transsiberian Railway” (чтобы через Амурскую область организовать вселение китайцев по всей территории России и таким образом, держа в своих руках товарную массу, сосредотачивая ее в своих руках в узловых пунктах Транссиба вплоть до Москвы, излучать свое влияние). Further on, Gelbras claims that now there is a second ” infiltration plan”. And, no kidding, he does say that Chinese men who marry Russian women get paid by the government. Then he goes on to talk about how the Chinese have cut down all the forests along the Transsiberian railroad and are poaching frogs.

Gelbras says that he wrote a special report for the UN on this issue. I have not come across it. The whole thing perplexes me. To be clear, I cannot imagine that these claims are true. What I can imagine is that Chinese companies, including state-owned ones, have plans for expanding their business in Russia, much of which has to do with timber and other primary resources. But Gelbras is a reasonably serious researcher, who has criticised Yellow Peril fearmongering in the past, and even in this interview the main target of his criticism is Russian corruption.

I have come across a number of articles written by Chinese academics on Russians’ fears of Chinese immigration, one of them by Li Lifan of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, who is a senior figure in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (the one that comprises Russia, China, and the Central Asian republics). These articles tend to deal with the fears as xenophobic responses to social instability and other factors, and in my view they are largely right. I wonder how Li would respond to the Gelbras interview.

Exporting China’s Development: panel at ICAS

Several of this blog’s contributors are involved in the panel “Exporting China’s Development to Africa and Southeast Asia: Aid, Investment, Migration” at the upcoming International Convention of Asia Scholars in Daejeon, Korea, on 6 August. The aim of the panel is to bring together people who have done grounded research on the subject in these two regions.

The preliminary programme of the conference is now available here. Scroll down to find the panel.

“Timor-Leste: The Dragon’s Newest Friend”

A report on China’s relations with East Timor, by Loro Horta, has been published by the French institute IRASEC
 as Discussion Paper no. 4 (May 2009). It seems to be a standard “realist” IR kind of text, about foreign policy influence. What makes it interesting is the biography of the author:

Loro Horta is a graduate of Peoples Liberation Army National Defense University (PLANDU). Previous to his Chinese education he was educated in Australia, the United States and Singapore. His [...writings] on the Chinese military and other China related topics have been published by the Military Review, Australian Army Journal, Strategic Analysis the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington D.C, and Yale Magazine.

Controversy over Chinese investment in Vietnam mining

The Wall Street Journal reported on 1 May (James Hookway, “Once Enemies, Vietnam Now Fights for China Funds”) that a controversy had erupted over the plan for a state company to create a $460 million venture with the Aluminium Corporation of China to extract bauxite in the Central Highlands. 97-year-old General Vo Nguyen Giap, a hero of the French and American wars, has “written open letters to the government warning of growing Chinese influence” and environmental damage, a point also made by a “chorus” of scientists and economists who question the project’s feasibility. “In comparison, there has been little outcry against a unit of U.S.-based Alcoa Inc., which is conducting a feasibility study for a possible alumina refinery in southern Vietnam.”

The Central Highlands is, of course, not only an area of relatively untouched nature but also one where the “Montagnard” ethnic groups, with their often conflictual relationship with the central government, are located. In this regard, the story is very similar to the Lao and Cambodian cases, but in a very different political environment — one where there is political alliance but also a strong sense of opposition to China (and the Chinese), both among the elite and the population, but where the state is governed to a way very similar to China’s.

Call for papers: Chinese in Africa/Africans in China, Johannesburg, 26-29 August 2009

Shortly after the International Convention of Asia Scholars in Taejon in early August, at which some of us will host a panel on ethnographic approaches to China’s development export, the Chinese in Africa/Africans in China International Research Working Group will organise its second mini-conference. Here is an excerpt from the call for papers:

Chinese people have become targets of increasing anti-Chinese sentiment, especially led by opposition political parties and civil society groups for different ends. In South Africa, perceptions that those who look Chinese carry on them large sums of cash appear to have resulted in a sort of racial profiling by South Africa’s criminal element as well as state patrols, exposing these individuals to robbery, blackmail, and personal violence. In spite of events and statistics being disclosed by researchers in the field, newspapers in Namibia, Zambia, and South Africa continue to under-report such political and social tensions while they remain critical of China’s seemingly unequal engagement with African nations and over-report the numbers of Chinese in these countries.

Simultaneously, African traders and other entrepreneurial business people have been making their way to China in increasing numbers over the last few years.  They are bypassing Chinese traders acting as middlemen in Africa and going directly to wholesalers as well as producers/manufacturers in China.  Over the years, some of these Africans have settled in Guangdong and other coastal provinces, and their numbers continue to grow. However, very little is also known about these transient and settler communities that are bridging the continents through exchange of goods and money, but also through dispersal of cultural knowledge.  

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 1 June 2009. Full papers must be received by 31 July 2009. Abstracts and queries should be directed to Yoon Jung Park at yoon@tiscali.co.za or +27 83 348 9241.

New China in Africa book launch

Less than three months after the  last China-in-Africa book launch, Washington, D.C., is hosting another, this one at the Jamestown Foundation. This China in Africa, released  last December, is edited by the respected China historian Arthur Waldron,  and the launch event features other well-known participants who are new to this debate, including the veteran Hong Kong journalist Willy Lam, the political scientists Edward Friedman and Yitzhak Shichor, two U.S. military analysts, and the keynote speaker, Victor Gao, Director of the China National Association of International Studies and former vice president at the China National Oil Corporation (interesting combination!)

Le Monde on Chinese casinos in Burma

Le Monde on 5 May ran a short article on the Chinese-run casinos in Pangwa, a town across the Chinese border controlled by the New Democratic Kachin Army. Pangwa is not one of the “special regions” but, like those, seems to be run by a combination of an ethnic Chinese civil elite and an armed faction. 

Referring mostly to reports in Chinese media, the article writes about the closure of bigger casinos to the south in the zone controlled by the Independent Kachin Army, where Chinese police has intervened. In Pangwa, rumours have it that some Chinese customers who have threatened to denounce the owners to Chinese authorities have been killed.

The article is far from being well-researched, but it does point to interesting questions about the different ways in which local elites in various “special regions” articulate with interests and powers inside China. It also suggests that in at least some cases, greater influence of Chinese authorities may be preferable to local ones. (I was reminded of Russia’s withdrawal from Chechnya: there is little doubt that now the local despot, anointed by Russia, is alone with his subjects, it will be so much the worse for them. Obviously, there are many parallels from the history of Western colonialism too.)

China plans $10 billion ASEAN investment fund

Several agencies have reported that the Chinese foreign ministry issued a statement that it was planning to create a $10 billion “investment cooperation fund” for ASEAN, plus offer $15 billion in creadig. The investmet fund will promote infrastructural development linking China with the ASEAN countries. In addition, it was planning to offer 270 million yuan ($40 million) in aid to Cambodia, Laos and Burma. (Some  reports specify that this is “new aid,” but from past experience I suspect that the statement is probably ambiguous on this.)

In some of the countries, this puts China into competition with the IMF, which as usual has negotiated loans conditional on strict monetary criteria.

International Crisis Group report on Chinese peacekeeping

The International Crisis Group has released a report called China’s Growing Role in UN Peacekeeping. The report is largely positive and recommends that China develop a peacekeeping policy and that other countries actively encourage China to contribute more troops to peacekeeping. It also notes that

China’s relationships with problem regimes in the developing world have fed suspicions that its peacekeeping is motivated by economic interests. In fact, China’s economic and peacekeeping decision-making tracks operate separately, and tensions between the foreign affairs ministry, military and economic actors mean there is no overall strategic approach to peacekeeping.

Undercurrents issue on rubber boom in northeast Burma

The current issue of Undercurrents, the bulletin of the Lahu National Development Organisation, deals with changes in the economy of northeastern Burma, largely as a result of contacts with Yunnan.

The issue can be downloaded here. The editors write that Chinese agents have been handing out traps, poison, and skinning tools in Lahu and Akha villages in Shan State while contracting trappers to look for various wild animals. “These days in every village either the headman of an agent of a Chinese boss keeps a certain amount of cash” to buy animals and forest products, as well as gemstones from villagers (p. 4). This is reminiscent of the networks of Chinese tax farms in remote villages in the colonial era, when they served as both collectors of primary products, providers of consumer goods and of cash loans (as well as collectors of taxes and suppliers of opium). Souchou Yao writes about this in his ethnography of Chinese shopkeepers in North Borneo, but the situation was similar in the Russian Far East at the turn of the 20th century. Incidentally, today, similar accusations of poaching of endangered species, ginseng, trepang etc. are again being made against Chinese in the Russian Far East.

According to a report by the Yunnan Hongyu Group to the Yunnan Province Narcotics Control Commission, the group plans to plant 100,000 ha of rubber in Shan State (notably in the ethnic Chinese-run Special Region No. 2) in 2004-2014 under the Chinese government’s opium eradication provisions (p. 9). Much as in Laos, these large plantations coexist with smaller ones owned by various army and militia commanders, as well as with villagers planting rubber trees under contract to Chinese entrepreneurs, who provide seedlings and some cash (3 Thai baht per tree planted). As in Laos, Akha villagers in particular see rubber as a lucrative crops because they associate it with the higher incomes of Akha in China.

What is different from Laos is that both the Burmese army and the various former rebel armies have used a mixture of paid and corvee labour to clear the forest for their own as well as Hongyu’s plantations, according to the report. Also, because of the lack of a civilian administration, land confiscation is far more arbitrary. The United Wa State Army, which controls the essentially ethnic Chinese-run Special Region No. 4 in Mong La, has promoted rubber as an opium substitution crop and has benefited from Chinese policies supporting this. The commander of the region, Lin Ming Xian (like his colleague in the No. 2 region, a former drug lord), ordered his officials to grow rubber but was later disappointed with the production. Some Wa commanders have forbidden villagers to cut forest for rice fields but allow it for rubber plantations. The report points to the dangers of rubber monoculture for food security, especially in the short term, before the rubber trees mature.

Finally, the report mentions the opening of new mines, usually as cooperative ventures between local armies, Chinese, Thai and/or Japanese investors, and individuals linked to the ruling elites (such as family members of the Burmese junta and of the former Shan drug lord, Khun Sa). Some of these mines employ some Chinese workers. There are also freelance Chinese miners, poor farmers who cross the border to prospect for ore on their own.

One effect of Chinese involvement, then, appears to be the strengthening of local military elites who can now command more resources, and the relative further marginalisation of powerless highland groups, a situation similar to Laos and Cambodia. Yet, clearly, individual Akha and Lahu do benefit, or hope to benefit in the future. China has become a more attractive market not just for endangered wildlife but also for other things, such as water buffaloes, which fetch higher prices there.

The Lahu National Development Organisations seems to have a partnership with the Burma Rivers Network. I don’t know what kind of organisation it is, but it writes in the language and with the imagery of professional Western environmental activists. On the other hand, there are Wa and Shan groups that write in Chinese, in a language very close to that of the Chinese state. I suppose that in Burma’s border areas, there are all sorts of client groups/client polities, or simply groups that espouse varying development agendas. Perhaps it is lowland groups, which stand to benefit more from the export of Chinese development, that embrace Chinese models, while highland groups remain under the protection of Western NGO patrons. If so, this would create interesting political tensions over time (not unlike those that played out in Laos and Vietnam during the Vietnam War).