| China in the Pacific: CALL FOR CAUTION |
Cooks warned about China deals.
Jason Brown
A mobile phone rings once, twice and stops. Unconcerned, a Chinese construction official checks the number on his mobile then clicks a number on the laptop screen in front of him.
“Nihao,” he says into a voice-over-internet headset.
| Cooks Islands' courthouse.... a bloody eyesore. |
Cooks Telecom’s main wireless hotspot behind the capital has become a ‘Little China’ in recent weeks as aid and construction workers begin their second major project in the Cook Islands, the latest of several Pacific Islands to fall under the influence of Chinese dollar diplomacy.
Headlines across the region show China accused of corruption, import dumping, illegal immigrants, drugs and organised crime.
In the Cook Islands, their worst suspected crime so far is penny pinching.
Before Telecom’s monopoly internet service was used to avoid expensive Telecom toll calls, Rarotonga residents were bemused to find Chinese workers out with them on the reef, gleaning scarce shellfish.
One fisher said he “felt sorry” for the skinny labourers. Looking positively malnourished by island standards the Chinese accepted some of his catch.
“No money,” said the fisher, shrugging.
China bashing may be an established sport in other parts of the Pacific.
Cook Islanders, however, are still honeymooning with the world’s largest communist dictatorship.
“If there’s a piece of cake dangling in front of you, you take it,” muses Ata Herman, Secretary of Works.
Herman is talking about the two-storey courthouse finished late 2004, with work beginning last month on a similar sized police headquarters.
These projects and others like them across the Pacific are a fraction of the estimated US$2.7 billion China spent in foreign construction last year, most of it state-sponsored.
Projects worth US$4.6 million are peanuts by comparison, maybe, but not for the Cook Islands politicians and their politically appointed officials who welcome China’s aid with open arms.
Police Commissioner Pira Wichman told the daily Cook Islands News he was “very pleased” with the project.
“It was time that work was carried out for improvements so the sooner the better.”
Wichman has made no comment on regional concerns that China’s involvement in the Pacific leaves the islands vulnerable to being exploited as a way for organised crime to get into bigger markets like New Zealand and Australia.
“Cook Islanders are naïve when it comes to China,” Mark Short told ISLANDS BUSINESS.
Short is chief executive of the country’s Development Investment Board. He says he has had valuable first-hand exposure to problems faced by other Pacific islands nations.
“Personally, I feel the Cook Islands needs to be very cautious when dealing with the Chinese because they have different interpretations of what they mean by cooperation, something different from our version.”
Granting of favoured destination status by China—allowing Chinese visitors to officially visit the Cooks—increases pressure on the Cook Islands to define its relations with China. An estimated 100 million Chinese are now part of an affluent middle class in China’s 1.3 billion population, many of them beginning to explore the world as first-time tourists. With Chinese tourism comes Chinese business.
“We need to be very careful of the Chinese,” emphasises Short.
He gives Tonga as an example of a country that began with official aid projects and found itself being taken over by the Chinese businesspeople.
“All the businesses along the main road in the capital of Tonga are owned by the Chinese.”
Short promises that his organistion will take a strong role in enforcing foreign investment regulations, backing up such talks by revoking 12 licences and seeking the deportation of one investor.
“Our ministers are so relaxed about these things, so now we have to say either fix it or get out. A lot of foreigners who have come here under investment deals no longer operate.”
An additional weakness: Cook Islands’ closest trading partner, New Zealand, has said that countries like the Cook Islands could become the back door into New Zealand.
What we've learnt from the Chinese
Public concerns in the Cook Islands about China-funded projects have centred mostly on their design.
“It's a bloody eyesore,” was one comment from a former chamber of commerce head, Brian Baudinet, in 2004.
Residents were annoyed as the courthouse design emerged in all its red brick beauty, complete with Chinese-style lanterns outside.
“It looks like the No. 2 Beijing train station,” said Baudinet at the time.
Concerns about a lack of “Polynesian” themes have flared up again after police unveiled plans for their new headquarters at the same time as Chinese workers arrived to start building it. Words like “monolithic” and “authoritarian” are being bandied about in architect circles.
Police Commissioner Pira Wichman stone-faced his way past criticisms, claiming there had been public consultations. But he was unable to say when those took place.
If China-funded buildings suffer from poor design, their finishing is worse.
“The lighting is rusted away already in less than two years,” says Works Secretary, Ata Herman acknowledging the problems with the courthouse.
He did not respond to additional claims that major rewiring was required almost as soon as construction finished, toilets quickly blocked and air conditioning units failed to work properly.
“Structurally, the building is of good standard. The building won't collapse.”
Part of the problem was that, as well as building materials, equipment and labour coming from China, the donors also imported Chinese sizes.
“Our minimum is 900 but their minimum is 750,” reports building controller Louis Teiti about minimum millimetres for toilet spaces. More seriously, toilets were installed without s-bend pipes.
Justice staff working at the new courthouse say Chinese plumbing stinks. Literally.
At the same time as noses wrinkled, eyebrows were also raised in disbelief at signage-in Chinese characters.
Herman says such misunderstanding could have been avoided if he and other Works officials were exposed to regional experiences of China aid projects.
“I know a lot of our politicians travel to see these projects that are fully funded like the sports stadium in Fiji. But we don't get our officials going to learn from other countries so that we don't repeat these sorts of problems.”
About a dozen officials meet each fortnight to assess progress on China-funded projects.
“We did make these sorts of recommendations but the budget doesn't allow us to travel across.”
Teiti confirms they had problems getting their message across to Chinese officials who claimed to be working under international standards.
“I said to them what are these 'international standards?' Each country has their own building standards, New Zealand and Australia have theirs, America has theirs, and China has their own too.”
Cook Islanders follow New Zealand standards and Teiti is confident they will be adhered to for the police headquarters, which is allegedly based on a floorplan for a suburban police station in Auckland.
“I think they've learnt some lessons,” says Teiti.
Jibes about train stations are closer to the mark than critics imagine.
CCECC is actually one of the 30 subsidiaries of CRCC, the China Railway Construction Company, which describes itself as a “gigantic state-owned enterprise (SOE) group.”
It ranks itself second amongst the 500 biggest construction companies in China, competing aggressively for state construction contracts.
In fact, CRCC is one of the big three of SOE construction companies with US$34 billion in combined contracts for 2005, about US$2.7 billion of that overseas, according to McGraw-Hill Engineering news.
CRCC also claims to operate to international standards including ISO9002. International or not, CCECC's involvement brings uncertain results.
Massive investment of US$529 million in a new train network for Nigeria by the CCECC, for example, made things worse, not better.
In Rarotonga, nailing down almost any part of the China aid project proves difficult.
Listed under the Office of the Prime Minister, for example, is $4 million in aid from China.
On the job for just six weeks, new Chief of Staff, Nandi Glassie says, “I'll be perfectly honest with you, I know almost nothing about this project.”
He says transparency and accountability are important with major aid projects and promises to answer questions from ISLANDS BUSINESS.
Principal Immigration Officer Tutai Toru says contract concerns are not his department.
Employee contracts should be worked out between China aid contractors and the respective governments, he says.
His stance on employee contracts contrasts with that of Labour Division's head, David Greig.
Disputes in 2001 over treatment of Fiji workers led to an agreement with Immigration to forward all work permit applications to Labour to ensure contracts offer enough protection for workers.
“Maybe some applications are sneaking around the back door,” he said, while commenting on a Filipino worker whose application he had not seen.
Toru does not rule out the possibility of workers slipping through the gaps in the system.
“We try and be as rigid as far as we can. But there's always a loophole and people are quick to find these loopholes.”
However, he rejects the idea that China aid projects maybe used to sneak in illegal workers or people connected with organised crime. Nor has any political pressure been put on Immigration to help push through aid projects, he says.
“No, not at this stage. We're happy with it because it came through the Chinese embassy in Wellington. I am sure they would only want to send their good people.”
No independent background checks were carried out on any of the 66 Chinese officials and workers brought in for the police headquarters project.
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