Opinion: The forgotten victims of China’s Belt and Road Initiative
Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks in Qingdao, China, on Tuesday. By Aaron Halegua and Jerome A. Cohen April 23 at 3:00 PM Aaron Halegua is a practicing lawyer and consultant, and a research fellow at New York University School of Law’s US-Asia Law Institute. Jerome A. Cohen is faculty director of the US-Asia Law Institute.
The International Labor Organization reports that there are 14.2 million people in forced-labor situations worldwide and that indebted migrant workers are particularly vulnerable. Overseas Chinese workers are no exception. Incurring significant debts to pay large recruitment fees based on inaccurate job information is quite common. Federal authorities found that each of 2,400 migrant workers hired by Chinese firms to build a casino in Saipan, part of the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, paid recruiters, on average, $6,000 in fees, and that they were cheated out of millions of dollars in wages.
So why should China care? Aside from a duty to protect its citizens, these conditions frustrate China’s broader objectives for the Belt and Road Initiative, such as building “win-win” projects, “people-to-people” connections and soft power. If Chinese executives are eventually jailed and projects stalled, companies and lenders will lose money.
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