A delegation from the state-owned Chinese company, China Metallurgical Group Corporation, visited the site of a copper mine in Aynak, a former al-Qaeda stronghold southeast of Kabul, in 2007.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Behind an electrified fence, blast-resistant sandbags and 53 National Police outposts, the Afghan surge is well under way.
This is the ninth in a series of articles examining stresses and strains of China’s emergence as a global power.
The Beijing headquarters of the China Metallurgical Group Corporation, known as M.C.C.
Aynak's deposits were known in the time of Alexander the Great.
But the foot soldiers in a bowl-shaped valley about 20 miles southeast of Kabul are not fighting the Taliban, or even carrying guns. They are preparing to extract copper from one of the richest untapped deposits on earth. And they are Chinese, undertaking by far the largest foreign investment project in war-torn Afghanistan.
Two years ago, the China Metallurgical Group Corporation, a Chinese state-owned conglomerate, bid $3.4 billion — $1 billion more than any of its competitors from Canada, Europe, Russia, the United States and Kazakhstan — for the rights to mine deposits near the village of Aynak. Over the next 25 years, it plans to extract about 11 million tons of copper — an amount equal to one-third of all the known copper reserves in China.
While the United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda here, China is securing raw material for its voracious economy. The world’s superpower is focused on security. Its fastest rising competitor concentrates on commerce.
S. Frederick Starr, the chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, an independent research organization in Washington, said that skeptics might wonder whether Washington and NATO had conducted “an unacknowledged preparatory phase for the Chinese economic penetration of Afghanistan.”
“We do the heavy lifting,” he said. “And they pick the fruit.”
The reality is more complicated than that. The Chinese bid far more for the mining rights to the Aynak project and promised to invest hundreds of millions more in associated infrastructure projects than other bidders. It is a risky venture that has not yet proved to be economical, and it has already been dogged by allegations of bribery.
But the Aynak investment underscores how China’s leaders, flush with money and in control of both the government and major industries, meld strategy, business and statecraft into a seamless whole. In a single move, Beijing strengthened its hold on a vital resource, engineered the single largest investment in Afghan history, promised to create thousands of new Afghan jobs and established itself as the Afghan government’s pre-eminent business partner and single largest source of tax payments.
An Odd Global Pairing
Afghanistan is not the only place where the United States and China find themselves so oddly juxtaposed in the post-9/11 world. China is investing more in extracting Iraqi oil than American companies are. It has reached long-term arrangements to buy gas from Iran, even as the government there comes under the threat of Western sanctions for its nuclear program. China has also become a dominant investor in Pakistan and volatile parts of Africa.
But it is in Afghanistan where China’s willingness to take risks for commercial and diplomatic gain are most striking.
China Metallurgical Group, often called M.C.C., will build a 400-megawatt generating plant to power both the copper mine and blackout-prone Kabul. M.C.C. will dig a new coal mine to feed the plant’s generators. It will build a smelter to refine copper ore, and a railroad to carry coal to the power plant and copper back to China. If the terms of its contract are to be believed, M.C.C. will also build schools, roads, even mosques for the Afghans.
The sweeping agreement has some experts rubbing their eyes in disbelief. “It’s almost as if the Chinese promised too much,” said one international expert who, like some others interviewed, refused to be identified for fear of alienating the Afghans or the Chinese.
But even if elements of the agreement fall through, the Chinese have already positioned themselves as generous, eager partners of the Afghan government and long-term players in the country’s future. All without firing a shot.
Nurzaman Stanikzai was a mujahedeen in the 1980s, using American-supplied arms to help drive the Red Army from his homeland. Today he is a contractor for M.C.C., building the Aynak mine’s electric fence, blast wall, workers’ dormitories and a road to Kabul.
“The Chinese are much wiser. When we went to talk to the local people, they wore civilian clothing, and they were very friendly,” he said recently during a long chat in his Kabul apartment. “The Americans — not as good. When they come there, they have their uniforms, their rifles and such, and they are not as friendly.”
American troops do not, in a narrow sense, protect the Chinese. The United States Army stations about 2,000 troops in Logar Province, where Aynak is located. But an Army spokesman said they generally patrolled well south of the mine area and had not provided direct security for Chinese investors or mine workers.
The Afghan National Police, which does protect the mine, was largely built and trained with American money. The 1,500 guards the police have posted in and around Aynak are special recruits not drawn from the main force, according to Maj. Gen. Sayed Kamal, who heads the National Police.
But the conclusion is inescapable: American troops have helped make Afghanistan safe for Chinese investment. And there is no sense that either government objects to that reality. As diplomats and soldiers alike stress, the war in Afghanistan was never motivated by commercial prospects. Had an American company won Aynak, some Afghans noted wryly, critics inevitably would have accused the United States of waging war to seize the country’s mineral wealth. Moreover, if China succeeds in developing Aynak and generating revenue for the Kabul government, that helps achieve an American goal.
“To the extent that the Chinese bring Afghanistan up to speed and start paying a billion dollars a year in royalties,” a Western government official who has followed the Aynak project said, “that would mean that Afghanistan is on a firmer ground to start paying for its own security.”
China Stays Out of War Effort
The Chinese, meanwhile, have rebuffed requests to join the Afghan war effort, saying that national policy forbids military action abroad except as part of a peacekeeping force. Instead, China’s foreign policy is based on commerce. Its state-owned companies have been snapping up energy and mineral resources worldwide for years now, often by overwhelming competitors with lavish offers.
In 2006, for example, another state-owned goliath known as C.M.E.C. swept bidding for one of the world’s largest known iron ore deposits, in Gabon, by offering to build a 360-mile railroad to the nearly inaccessible mine site, two hydroelectric dams to power the mine and a deepwater ocean port to export the mined ore.
Such splurges are both national strategy — China’s goal is to control long-term access to critical commodities — and a matter of necessity if Beijing is to keep its industrial empire running. With 700 to 1,000 steel mills to feed, China is the world’s largest importer of iron ore. Similarly, China already imports 40 percent of the world’s copper.
If the Aynak venture differs from those in the past, both international and Afghan experts say, it is because it appears to be as much a strategic coup as a commercial one.
Opportunity in Southwest Asia
The United States views Southwest Asia mostly as a security threat. China sees it as an opportunity. Decades of military cooperation with Pakistan, which shares India as a rival, have flowered into an economic alliance. A Chinese-built deepwater port in Gwadar, Pakistan, on the Gulf of Oman, is expected eventually to carry Middle Eastern oil and gas over the western Himalayas into China.
Afghanistan, which borders both Iran and Pakistan, drew scant attention from China until the middle of this decade.
Aynak’s riches had been known since Alexander the Great’s armies forged copper there 2,300 years ago. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, its geologists took core samples and mapped the Aynak deposit, but were never able to begin mining.
The Soviets were succeeded by Osama bin Laden, who used Aynak as a training camp while planning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. After the American-led invasion of Afghanistan, Afghan geologists rescued the Soviet surveys of Aynak and hid them until exploration could resume.
That exploration — a detailed overflight of much of the country by American surveyors in middecade — showed Afghanistan to be far richer in oil, natural gas, iron, copper and coal than anyone had imagined. Aynak, in particular, was judged a world-class copper deposit, not just huge but of unusually rich quality, and the government chose it as the first major mineral concession to be auctioned to developers.
To minimize corruption, the Afghan government decided, on the advice of American advisers, to ask the World Bank and a Colorado geological consulting firm to help oversee the bidding. A report last month in The Washington Post quoted an American official as charging that the Chinese swayed the bid with $20 million or more in bribes to the mining minister, Muhammad Ibrahim Adel, who was recently dismissed from the Afghan government in part because of the allegations. Mr. Adel has denied the charge.
Foreign experts say that the possibility of bribery in Afghanistan, one of the world’s most corrupt nations, can hardly be ruled out. But they also say that the Chinese bid was so clearly superior to others that any bribe money may have been incidental to the outcome.
“This was not a backroom deal. This was not Adel, sitting in Beijing, cooking this up,” said one of several international experts interviewed for this article. “This was thoroughly vetted by the governments of the day.”
A. Rahman Ashraf is a veteran geologist and senior adviser on mining to Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai. Mr. Ashraf intervened in 2002 to stop Aynak’s mining rights from being sold under the table to a Korean bidder.
“Our wish was that this process must be very transparent,” he said of Aynak, “because this is the first time. If it is not transparent, then nobody comes to the others.”
China won the bid, he said, for good reason: it offered a package deal, from power plants to railroads to smelters to coal mines, that no other bidder could match. And it promised to staff the entire venture with Afghan laborers and managers — many of whom must be trained from scratch in a country with little mining expertise.
“After five years, it’s only Afghan engineers,” he said. “Only in administration do the Chinese stay.”
Indeed, outside experts here say, the striking aspect of China’s Aynak venture is the degree to which it left competitors in the dust. Increasingly, the world’s richest remaining mineral deposits are in hostile territory — malarial jungles, combat zones, unstable nations that possess mineral riches but no realistic way to get them to market.
With government money and backing behind them, China’s state-run giants take risks in places that even the largest private behemoths will not tolerate, and they can add sweeteners — from railroads to mosques — that ordinary mining firms are ill equipped to provide.
“The Chinese have sort of raised the bar. They’ve taken it beyond the scope of just an extractive operation,” the Western official said. “The Chinese are willing to step up and take a long-term strategic approach. If it takes 5 or 10 years, at least they have a beachhead.”
The wild card, of course, is that no outsiders can know how much of China’s Aynak venture is in fact brilliant strategy, and how much is merely a potentially ruinous business deal by an overzealous corporation. Beijing’s corporate strategy is as opaque as it is overwhelming.
China Metallurgical, a Fortune Global 500 company that has so many subsidiaries that they are mostly identified by numbers, is a signal example. The corporation reports to the top level of the Chinese government. Big foreign investments like the one at Aynak require blessing at an equally high level. M.C.C. has huge and productive investments around the world.
Yet hardly all those ventures are successes. An M.C.C. copper mine in Pakistan is widely said to have serious environmental problems. A Pakistan lead mine has been dogged by conflict, including a suicide bombing that killed 29; residents accuse the company’s Chinese work force of stealing local jobs. In Papua New Guinea, 14 Chinese workers at an M.C.C. nickel mine were injured in May in a pitched battle with local people who rioted over what they called intolerable working conditions.
That bid in 2006 for the iron mine in Gabon? Four years after C.M.E.C. struck its deal, the bargain appears to be unwinding over hints of corruption and global objections to a dam that would destroy Kongou Falls, one of central Africa’s most treasured waterfalls.
Was Too Much Promised?
Not surprisingly, that record leads skeptics to suggest that in Afghanistan, M.C.C. may have overpromised and, later, will underdeliver.
In interviews here, some experts said that M.C.C.’s Aynak bid was so munificent that the company might be forced to renegotiate lavish payments of copper royalties to the Afghan government. Others predicted that the company would be forced to shift parts of the vast project, like the yet-to-be-built railroad, to international donors.
Still others said the company’s initial environmental efforts already badly lagged behind the promise in its winning bid to strictly adhere to the Equator Principles and World Bank benchmarks — the gold standards for environmentally sensitive projects.
China Metallurgical is not talking. Its officials not only refused to be interviewed for this article, but also sought to prohibit a journalist even from photographing the mine site from afar.
But the company clearly is undeterred. The Afghan government is seeking bids for its second great mineral project, a behemoth called Hajigak that is said to contain 60 billion tons of iron ore. There are seven finalists — all companies from India and China. M.C.C. is one of them.
德国之声：去年您在接受德国之声采访时曾说，中国的人权状况已经取得了很大进步，那么在刘晓波被重判之后，您还坚持这一观点吗？
多伊布勒-格梅林：我不认为这一判决会改变我对中国人权状况的整体评价，但我认为这一判决是错误的。它不仅令人无法理解，而且如果它真的得以执行的话，将会阻碍中国走向法制国家的道路。假如我正确理解了中国领导人的观点的话，他们其实是希望继续走法制化道路的。
德国之声：您参与发起实施的德中法制国家对话已经进行十年了，鉴于目前出现的一些倒退情况，您认为这一对话失败了吗？
多伊布勒-格梅林：法制国家对话并没有出现倒退，经过针对刘晓波的这一判决，发生倒退的是中国的法制化进程。我想，必须要明确敦促中国相关法院尽快取消这一判决，这并不是为了德国人的利益，而是符合中国自己对建立法治国家的追求。
德国之声：您认为"法治"在中国得到确立了吗？
多伊布勒-格梅林：我一再表示的是，中国正处在法制化建设的道路上。这就是说，司法程序应该遵循法律，而不是掌权者的意愿。如果中国 人的确做到了这一点，就不可能把一个参与起草了《08宪章》的人判处11年监禁。我在中国也和不少人谈论过这个《08宪章》，我可以想象，不少中国公民对 这一判决也是非常反感的。而严格依据中国的法律，是不可能得出这样的判决的。
德国之声：您刚才说，法制国家对话没有出现倒退，那么您认为它取得的长远成果在哪里呢？
多伊布勒-格梅林：我们不能这么片面地看待这个问题。在两个国家的政府或是国家领导人会谈的时候，他们只能是各自明确表达自己的立 场。假如他们的关系比较友好，彼此比较熟悉了，他们可以指出对方国家所存在的弊端。比如中国人可以向德国表示，他们那里的右翼极端主义发展倾向值得警惕； 德国政府也可以指出，中国的言论自由受到了严重限制，而且通过司法手段对持不同政见者的迫害已经违背了中国的法律。至于对方政府是否会采纳这些意见，做出 相应的改变，单凭这样的一个法制国家对话本身是不能保证的。
德国之声：到目前为止，两国的法制国家对话似乎一直都是双方关起门来交谈，公众对其内容知之甚少，可以说它不够透明。那么您认为仅仅靠两国领导人私底下交换意见能不能保证其有效性呢？
多伊布勒-格梅林：在政府层面的法制国家对话中，进行一些私下的交谈肯定是明智的做法。这并没有什么坏处，因为你不想让对方有一种被 侮辱的感觉或是在公众舆论面前丢面子。但是，您说得也很有道理，仅仅靠关起门来讨论共同的法制理念和价值观是绝对不够的。因此，推动双方在更多层面的交流 是非常非常重要的，比如今年已经举行了不少大学生之间在司法领域的交流，这是非常令人欣慰的发展；比如两国的教授和学者、媒体记者的交流，还有司法界的工 作人员的互相交流，这都属于一个多层面的法制对话，而这样的对话绝对不是关起门来的私下交谈。
德国之声：像德国这样单独与中国对话以促进中国法制国家体系完善的努力是否仍然有意义？或者德国应该更多地与欧盟或美国联合起来？
多伊布勒-格梅林：我们不能说德国是在独自进行这些努力。大家都知道，欧盟、甚至美国都和中国在法制、人权等方面进行了类似的对话。
德国之声：日前，一家阿根廷法院对中国前国家领导人江泽民和罗干提出了起诉，理由是"迫害法轮功学员和反人类罪行"。您怎么看待这样的做法？
多伊布勒-格梅林：那我要先看一看相关的材料，了解事实之后才行，现在我不能作出评判。
德国之声：德国外长韦斯特维勒针对刘晓波的判决结果表示，希望中国政府继续走开放和现代化的道路，并且保障人权。您认为这样的表态足够吗？
多伊布勒-格梅林：不，但是他的表态是正确的。现在最具体的表态应该是，呼吁北京最高人民法院撤销这一判决。
德国之声：但是他的表态足以迫使中国政府做出改变吗？
多伊布勒-格梅林：一个德国外交部长的表态到底能不能促使中国政府做出改变，这还是个问题。当我们双方进行意见交流的时候，比如中国 对德国的现状作出评价，或是德国对中国的人权状况作表态的时候，我们都不能把自己的角色和一个具有发号施令权力的警察身份混淆起来。两国之间的交流不应该 是这样的。问题在于，构成国际社会人权理念共识基础的联合国人权公约中包含一个《公民权利和政治权利国际公约》，中国至今都没有批准这部公约。因此，我们 只能不断地敦促中国批准并执行这一公约。因为我们都知道，公民权利以及政治权利和其他的人权是不可分割的。一个社会，包括中国，如果不能同时保障公民权利 和政治权利，是不可能实现良好的发展的。
德国之声：中国人大没有批准《公民权利和政治权利国际公约》，因此国际社会在针对中国人权的问题上，包括在这次针对刘晓波的判决上，只能是表达意见、发出呼吁？
多伊布勒-格梅林：即使中国批准了《公民权利和政治权利国际公约》，国际社会也不能采取更多的措施。中国毕竟是一个主权国家。人们只能呼吁中国领导层用理性去思考，让他们从自己的利益出发认识到，公民权利和政治权利是建立和谐社会不可或缺的一部分。
德国之声：一方面，西方国家必须要和中国合作，发展经贸关系；另一方面，它们也希望能促进中国人权状况的改善，这是不是一个有些尴尬的局面？
多伊布勒-格梅林：可以这样说，当我们强调人权的含义时，我们会看到，在生存权和发展权方面，中国已经取得了很大的进步；但是在人权 的另一方面，即公民权利和政治权利方面，中国还有很多需要改进的地方。而我们希望促进中国人权的发展，并不是因为我们是西方国家，或者是因为我们不希望中 国发展的好，而是因为我们坚信，只有这两方面的人权都能得到发展，一个社会才真正有前途，中国也不例外。也就是说，我们所说的，其实也是不少中国人心里想 的。
采访记者：雨涵
责编：叶宣
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| 這艘編號CG126的台南艦，航速可達二十四節，兼具靈活性、機動性與安全性，是一艘先進多功能的巡防艦。 （記者張忠義攝） |
〔記者黃旭磊／高雄報導〕海巡署最大艦艇、二千噸的「台南艦」昨在高雄旗津下水，另一艘一千噸的「巡護七號」今將下水，昨一併舉辦儀式。前往主持的署長王進旺說，海巡署成立後堅持國艦國造，明年配合縣市升格，還將舉行三千噸「新北艦」、「高雄艦」造艦標案計畫。
王進旺昨天前往旗津中信造船集團新高船廠主持「台南艦」下水儀式，夫人洪隨敏於船艏擲瓶，瓶身應聲破裂，九十八米船身緩緩進入高雄港，中信造船集團董事長韓碧祥及聯合船舶設計發展中心董事長黃正利等貴賓觀禮。
「台南艦」造價新台幣十五億元，中信集團於前年得標建造，預計明年中啟用，取代現有一千八百噸級「偉星艦」成為旗艦，配屬洋總局南區機動海巡隊，母港為高雄港淺水一號碼頭，隊長敖曼偉昨也到場觀禮。
至於「巡護七號」造價約十億元，啟用後隸屬洋總局直屬船隊，母港為高雄縣興達港海巡基地。
王進旺稱讚中信造船廠承造五百噸級「台北艦」、「南投艦」數十艘海巡艦艇，造船噸位越來越大，技術越精進。他並表示，「台南艦」船速廿四節，續航力達七千 五百浬，巡弋範圍可達海巡署管轄的南沙太平島及東沙島，艦上可載六十八人，配有十噸直升機起降台及二○機砲、四○快砲機座。至於「巡護七號」耐波係數更 強，中信造船指出，最遠可巡弋至美國西岸。
****British anger at China executionChina brushed aside international appeals and executed a British man convicted of drug smuggling and whose relatives say was mentally unstable and unwittingly lured into the crime.
****Akmal Shaikh, 53, of London, had denied any wrongdoing and his family said he was mentally ill.
The execution took place despite repeated calls from his family and the British government for clemency.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was appalled and condemned the execution "in the strongest terms".
Mr Shaikh is the first EU national to be executed in China in 50 years.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Police officers in Iran opened fire into crowds of protesters on Sunday, killing at least 10 people, witnesses and opposition Web sites said, in a day of chaotic street battles that threatened to deepen the country’s civil unrest.
Iranian protesters attacked police officers during clashes on Sunday in Tehran, where five people reportedly were killed. More Photos »
The Lede is tracking news of anti-government protests in Iran. Readers are encouraged to share accounts, videos or pictures.
Protesters in Tehran hurled rocks at the police and set their motorbikes on fire. More Photos >
The protests, during the holiday commemorating the death of Imam Hussein, Shiite Islam’s holiest martyr, were the bloodiest and among the largest since the uprisings that followed the disputed presidential election last June, witnesses said. Hundreds of people were reported wounded in cities across the country, and the Tehran police said they had made 300 arrests.
One of the dead was Ali Moussavi, a 43-year-old nephew of the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi.
The decision by the authorities to use deadly force on the Ashura holiday infuriated many Iranians, and some said the violence appeared to galvanize more traditional religious people who have not been part of the protests so far. Historically, Iranian rulers have honored Ashura’s prohibition of violence, even during wartime.
In Tehran, thick crowds marched down a central avenue in midmorning, defying official warnings of a harsh crackdown on protests as they chanted “death to Khamenei,” referring to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has expressed growing intolerance for political dissent in the country.
They refused to retreat even as the police fired tear gas, charged them with batons and fired warning shots. The police then opened fire directly into the crowd, opposition Web sites said, citing witnesses. At least five people were killed in Tehran, four in the northwestern city of Tabriz, and one in Shiraz in the south, the Web sites reported. Photographs of several victims were circulated widely.
Unlike the other protesters reported killed on Sunday, Ali Moussavi appears to have been assassinated in a political gesture aimed at his uncle, according to Mohsen Makhmalbaf, an opposition figure based in Paris with close ties to the Moussavi family.
Mr. Moussavi was first run over by a sport utility vehicle outside his home, Mr. Makhmalbaf wrote on his Web site. Five men then emerged from the car, and one of them shot Mr. Moussavi. Government officials took the body late Sunday and warned the family not to hold a funeral, Mr. Makhmalbaf wrote.
In some parts of Tehran, protesters pushed the police back, hurling rocks and capturing several police cars and motorcycles, which they set on fire. Videos posted to the Internet showed scenes of mayhem, with trash bins burning and groups of protesters attacking Basij militia volunteers amid a din of screams.
One video showed a group of protesters setting an entire police station aflame in Tehran. Another showed people carrying off the body of a dead protester, chanting, “I’ll kill, I’ll kill the one who killed my brother.”
By late afternoon, coils of black smoke rose over central Tehran from dozens of street fires, and smaller groups of protesters continued to skirmish with police and Basij militia members. In the evening, loudspeakers in Imam Hussein Square, where most of the clashes took place, announced that gatherings of more than three people were banned, witnesses said.
There were scattered reports of police officers surrendering, or refusing to fight. Several videos posted on the Internet show officers holding up their helmets and walking away from the melee, as protesters pat them on the back in appreciation. In one photograph, a police officer can be seen holding his arms up and wearing a bright green headband, the signature color of the opposition movement.
The Tehran police denied firing on protesters and in an official statement late Sunday said five people had been killed “in suspicious ways.”
Ahmadreza Radan, deputy commander of state security forces in Tehran, said dozens of police officers had been injured and “some were killed,” the semiofficial news agency ISNA reported.
Protests and clashes also broke out in the cities of Isfahan, Mashhad, Shiraz, Arak, Tabriz, Najafabad, Babol, Ardebil and Orumieh, opposition Web sites said.
Foreign journalists have been banned from covering the protests, and the reports could not be independently verified.
If the 10 deaths are confirmed, it would be the highest toll since the summer, when huge crowds took to the streets to protest what they said was rampant fraud in the presidential election won by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The White House condemned what it called the “unjust suppression” of civilians by the Iranian government on Sunday.
“Hope and history are on the side of those who peacefully seek their universal rights, and so is the United States,” said Mike Hammer, a spokesman for the National Security Council.
The turmoil revealed an opposition movement that is becoming bolder and more direct in its challenge to Iran’s governing authorities. Protesters deliberately blended their political message with the day’s religious one on Sunday, alternating antigovernment slogans with ancient cries of mourning for Imam Hussein.
“This is the month of blood, Yazid will fall,” the protesters shouted, equating Ayatollah Khamenei with Yazid, the ruler who ordered Imam Hussein’s killing.
The protests may have received a boost from the death last week of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a patriarch of Iran’s Islamic Revolution who became a fierce critic of the country’s leaders, especially in recent months. His memorials have brought out not only the young activists and students who have dominated the protests in recent months, but also older and more conservative people, who revered him for reasons of faith as well as politics.
Sunday was the seventh day since his death, an important marker in Shiite mourning rituals. Late Sunday, the authorities declared martial law in the city of Najafabad, Ayatollah Montazeri’s hometown, the Jaras Web site reported.
The government crackdowns on mourning ceremonies in the past week provoked many people in the more traditional neighborhoods of south Tehran as earlier clashes did not, some residents said.
“People in my neighborhood have been going to the Ashura rituals every night with green fabric for the first time,” said Hamid, 33, a laborer who lives in the southern Tehran neighborhood of Shahreh-Ray and declined to give his last name. “They have been politicized recently, because of the suppression this month.”
Yet few protesters expected the scale of the bloodshed that broke out on Sunday. The memory of Imam Hussein is so potent among Shiites that killing for any reason is strictly forbidden on Ashura, and Iranian leaders have always tried to avoid violence or even state executions during a two-month period surrounding the holiday.
“Ashura is a very symbolic day in our culture, and it revives the notion that the innocents were killed by a villain,” said Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former member of the Iranian Parliament who is a visiting scholar at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. “Killing people on Ashura shows how far Khamenei is willing to go to suppress the protests.”
In another sign of the breadth of the crackdown, security forces on Sunday raided the offices of a clerical association in the holy city of Qum that has supported the opposition since the June election, the Jaras Web site reported. Guards surrounded the house, and members of the association and their families — who had gathered inside the association’s headquarters for an Ashura mourning ceremony — were not allowed to leave, the site reported.
Mr. Radan, the police deputy commander, said that only one of the protesters killed in Tehran had been shot. Two were run over by cars and one was thrown from a bridge, he said.
But a doctor working at Najmieh Hospital in Tehran said Sunday night that the hospital had performed 17 operations on people with gunshot wounds. They were treating 60 people with serious head injuries, including three who were in critical condition, said the doctor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions.
自6月份總統大選以來伊朗抗議示威活動此起彼伏。
繼四名反政府示威者在周日（12月27日）的抗議行動中喪生之後，伊朗示威民眾和警方在首都德黑蘭再次爆發衝突。
報道說，警察周日夜間至周一凌晨在德黑蘭多處地區釋放催淚彈，試圖驅散抗議民眾。
美國和法國都譴責了周日的暴力行為，這是自6月份總統大選後發生在示威者和警方之間最嚴重的暴力衝突。
周日的四名死者中包括反對派領導人穆薩維的侄子。
據穆薩維的網站說，他的侄子是在保安人員向示威者開槍時背部中彈死亡的。
但警方強烈否認與這些死亡事件有關。
警方說，這四名死者中有一人是從橋上掉下來摔死，另外兩人死於交通事故，一人被開槍打死，但開槍者不是警察。
當局表示正對開槍事件展開調查。
警方說，在周日的抗議示威後有大約300人被捕。
官員說，數十名保安人員受傷，其中包括德黑蘭警方首腦。
由於外國媒體在伊朗被禁，報道無法得到證實。但目擊者說，一些示威者攻擊了警察。
反對派消息來源說，作為回應，警察向示威者開槍。但伊朗當局對此予以否認。
衝突從周日晚間一直持續到周一。反對派消息來源說，大批民眾聚集在由國家控制的廣播和電視大樓前。並說，警察釋放催淚彈驅散人群。
美國譴責說，民眾走上街頭是為了要求更多的自由和民主，警方採取的鎮壓行為令人無法接受，是「毫無道理的」。
文章写道：
"《零八宪章》起草人刘晓波被重判入狱11年的前夕是平安夜，那天，在东京有一名《零八宪章》的首批联署人，亦在等待命运的宣判。他叫冯正虎，是内 地知名维权人士，自4月离开中国到日本后，八度回国被拒，一怒之下决定死守成田机场禁区抗争，拒绝入境日本或接受联合国的难民身分，只靠旅客与朋友接济， 至今撑了54天，为的是争取返回国家的公民权利。
刘晓波被重判后，未有改变冯正虎捍卫维权的心，「从前判刑哪有这麽多人出来支持？现在人民不怕死，一个刘晓波倒了，街上还有千千万万个刘晓波；只要我能回国，要坐牢就坐，我也不怕！」
故事要由冯正虎到北京探望其他维权人士说起。今年2月15日他在北京街头，突然给人抓上一辆货车，送到上海海军招待所关了40天，「三个警察和我住一间房，每天你盯着我，我盯着你，都成朋友了，就是不放我，说领导说不行。」
3月底，当局同意释放他，但劝他离国避开六四20周年，4月1日他到日本投靠在当地生活的妹妹，6月7日尝试乘中国国航回国，但抵达浦东机场后被拒入境，第二天被强迫送上回程航班。
第二次尝试时，他被国航拒载；第三次他学精了，改乘美国西北航空成功抵上海，但也避不过遣返命运；第四次，美国西北航空要求他购买回程机票才搭载， 他拒绝，结果又被拒上机；第五、第六次买了来回机票，美国西北航空一样不载；第七次与第八次，他改乘全日空，成功到达上海，但仍被拒入境。
「第八次是11月3日到上海，第二天被押上飞机，因为机舱很窄，我顶住两边拚命挣扎，警察很难用力，拉扯了两个小时。」被拒入境8次，冯怒火中烧，不肯入境日本，躺在入境大堂的长椅上以示抗议。"
《明报》在另一篇文章中关注了对南京学者郭泉的二审宣判以及《零八宪章》签署者杨立要求陪刘晓波坐牢一事，文章写道：
"中国着名异见人士刘晓波被宣判的同日，南京学者郭泉「煽动颠覆国家政权」桉二审亦悄悄宣判，法院维持原判10年有期徒刑。
博讯网消息指出，郭泉桉二审在11月2日已审结，按中国法例规定，必须在一个月内宣判，但当局直至前日下午才宣布对郭泉维持原判，没有开庭。
现年41岁的郭泉为南京师范大学文学院副教授，也中国新民党创始人及代理主席。他在2007年曾发表公开信，提出建立多党竞选民主机制、军队国家化等建议。郭泉后来被大学解除教职，2008年11月被当局以「涉嫌颠覆国家政权罪」逮捕。
另外，前日刘晓波桉宣判时，《零八宪章》签署者杨立才在法院外向警察投桉，要求陪刘晓波坐牢。警方把杨立才带到其居住地所属的北京朝阳区酒仙桥派出所，做完笔录后放其回家。
统筹为刘晓波辩护的北京律师莫少平昨日则表示，刘晓波虽已表明上诉，但根据内地法律，上诉只需由当事人直接提出，故暂时未知刘晓波是否已正式上诉。上诉期结束前，刘晓波只可与代表律师见面，两名代表律师将择期与其会面。"
摘编：叶宣
责编：达扬
Guttenberg told the Sunday mass-circulation newspaper Bild am Sonntag that Afghanistan's history and character have long convinced him that Afghanistan will never be a model western democracy.
Lasting peace in the war-ravaged country could only be achieved, he added, if moderate Taliban members were allowed to participate in Afghanistan's democracy.
"Because we are in a country with such regional diversity," Guttenberg told the paper, "we can't just leave out an entire ethnic group like the Pashtuns if we want sustainable solutions for the future."
Certain conditions would need to be fulfilled, however, and it would be unacceptable for the Afghan government to ignore universal human rights.
"We must ask ourselves who from the insurgents poses a serious threat to the international community and who is more concerned with the conditions in Afghanistan itself," he said. "This issue of human rights must also be taken into account, without ignoring the existing cultures and traditions in Afghanistan."
Guttenberg has in the past week indicated a willingness to engage in peace talks with non-terrorist Taliban members, marking a change in German policy.
hf/AFP/dpa/Reuters
Editor: Andreas Illmer
 Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Taipei |
Thousands of opposition supporters have taken to the streets in Taiwan to protest against President Ma Ying-jeou's policy of engagement with China.
Nationalist critics argue the policies threaten to undermine the island's self-rule.
Democratic Progressive Party Chairman Tsai Ing-wen led marching protesters to the president's office in Taipei.
The demonstration came ahead of the first anniversary on Wednesday of the president's coming to power.
He has also said he will abandon his predecessor's anti-Chinese policies, a position which the opposition says weakens Taiwan's sovereignty.
After Sunday's march, participants were expected to hold a sit-in protest for another 24 hours to mark their opposition to government policies.
Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan, which split from the mainland at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.
Relations between the two have improved since Mr Ma's election last year.
许多女孩在海啸灾难中失去了父母。遭遇这样的命运打击，女孩子受到的影响通常比男孩子更大。很少有人愿意收养女孩，所以斯里兰卡的女孩孤儿 院比男孩孤儿院要多。斯里兰卡的萨尔乌达耶(Sarvodaya)慈善组织的瓦桑塔.休维基在旅游胜地加勒(Galle)附近负责照料二十几名女孤儿，她 说：
"当然了，很多女孩都常常表现出很严重的抑郁行为。没人关爱和保护她们，这是很大的精神负担。"
让人惊奇的是，这些女孩们为了将来有一个更好的前途而坚强地奋斗着。她们心目中的理想职业是教师、医生和护士。这些女孩也知道，她们必须比别的女孩在学校中付出更多的努力，才能有一个好的前途。
今年30岁的辛迪卡是一位有四个孩子的年轻妈妈。海啸发生后，辛迪卡一度对自己和孩子的前途感到绝望，但是她选择了奋斗。她离开了常年失业的丈夫，她的这一做法在村子里不能被人们接受，她被人指责和排斥。她说：
"我男人总是打骂我。我的公公婆婆也不会帮助我。没人会支持我和孩子。现在，我的三个孩子都在上学，我自己也有些工作收入。我想至少让我的孩子们能过得好一点。"
在萨尔乌达耶慈善组织的帮助下，辛迪卡认识到她可以不依赖家庭，可以独立作出决定。传统上，女性在东南亚地位比男性低，因为女人出嫁时必须要从家里 带走一份丰厚的嫁妆，而男孩则是留在自己的家里，能养家和为父母养老。印度的斯内哈(SNEHA)女性救助网络组织就尝试打破这一传统思维禁锢。该组织的 杰罗姆说：
"我们决定将各种救济援助只提供给女性海啸难民。男人只会喝酒、打牌，挥霍救济资金。在我们的女性自助组织里，女人们每月节约储蓄大约100卢比 (相当于1.8欧元)，她们会得到利息。村子里的女性地位得到了改变。她们现在融入到决策过程中，有时村委会甚至也向她们请教。"
根据各种不同的调研报告，女性偿还微型贷款的比率高达99％。微型贷款规模大约在5000到10000万卢比，相当于80到160欧元。女人们用这 些钱买鸡、羊或者原材料来搞些副业。海啸灾难后，妇女自助组织得到了加强。一个自助小组通常有10到20名女性，她们内部有分工，例如有的人负责卖鱼，有 的人负责卖牛奶。这些女性聚在一起不仅仅是谈怎么挣钱，而是还讨论洁净水和卫生等问题。今年39岁的商迪是印度南部城市纳格伯蒂讷姆 (Nagapattinam)附近的一个妇女自助组织的成员。她说：
"我学会了很多，例如要经常洗手。我也学会了如何给孩子洗澡，如何保存食品才不让它变坏。现在，我的家人很少得病了。"
作者：Priya Esselborn/潇阳
责编：乐然
TAICHUNG, Taiwan (Reuters) - Thousands of people marched in Taiwan on Sunday to protest against warming ties with political rival China, a day before Beijing's top negotiator arrives on the island for talks on a landmark free trade pact.
Noisy marchers distrustful of communist China's intentions for Taiwan walked for hours along roads in Taichung in the center of the export-reliant, self-ruled island China claims as its own.
Taiwan negotiator P.K. Chiang and China's Chen Yunlin will meet in Taichung on Tuesday for more talks on the proposed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), a pact aimed at slashing import tariffs and opening the banking sector that should be signed next year.
Tuesday's talks will be the fourth round since China-friendly Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou took office last year.
"We're opposed to the secret meeting, the non-transparent meeting between China and Taiwan, because it could bring steep losses to Taiwan," said protester Ho Shih-sen, 59, a retiree in Taichung. "We could take a big hit."
Organizers said 100,000 people attended the march. Local police put the figure at 10,000.
The march, organized by the anti-China opposition Democratic Progressive Party, is expected to be followed by more protests this week, including at the airport when Chen arrives on Monday.
Protests during China-Taiwan talks in Taipei last year sparked rioting in which police and demonstrators were injured.
Among the protesters were hardliners who want Taiwan to declare formal independence from China. Some waved banners advocating "one side, one country."
Some feared the ECFA would lead to a flood of competing goods from China, calling for open talks and for Ma to step down.
"Ma Ying-jeou, our president, wants to sign ECFA but hasn't received public approval for it," said protester Charles Lee, president of an environmental group in southern Taiwan.
"We're worried he will sell us out."
Protesters also feared the ECFA would allow Chinese competition for professional qualifications and jobs in Taiwan.
The government has pledged to exclude any labor deal from the trade pact.
Also on Tuesday's agenda is a deal to avoid double taxation while lowering both corporate and personal income taxes, and incentives for Taiwan investors in China as well as foreign firms based on one side but active on the other.
China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since 1949, when Mao Zedong's forces won the Chinese civil war and Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists fled to the island. Beijing has vowed to bring Taiwan under its rule, by force if necessary.
(Editing by Paul Tait)
TAICHUNG, TAIWAN — Tens of thousands of opposition demonstrators marched in the central city of Taichung on Sunday, a day before the arrival of a senior mainland Chinese envoy, Chen Yunlin.
The protesters chanted pro-independence slogans and waved anti-China banners to protest the visit by Mr. Chen, whom they view as a stalking horse for Beijing’s proclaimed policy of bringing Taiwan back into its fold. The two sides split in a civil war in 1949.
Mr. Chen was scheduled to arrive in Taichung on Monday. He is set to sign four commercial accords with Taiwanese officials, adding to the 10 pre-existing ones.
Hsu Wen, a protester and businessman from the southern city of Kaohsiung, said Mr. Chen’s visit would help pave the way for a loss of Taiwan’s democratic freedoms and its de facto independence.
Buoyed by a strong showing in local elections this month, the Democratic Progressive Party sponsored the protest Sunday to press its message that President Ma Ying-jeou’s signature policy of increasing economic links with Beijing is threatening the well-being of Taiwan and paving the way for a Chinese takeover.
Since assuming office in May 2008, Mr. Ma has eased cross-strait tensions to their lowest level in 60 years, turning his back on his predecessor’s pro-independence policies. Mr. Ma’s business-bolstering initiatives include starting regular air and sea links between the sides and ending across-the-board restrictions on Chinese investment in Taiwan.
The police put the crowd in Taichung at 20,000 to 30,000, considerably fewer than the D.P.P.’s estimated 100,000.
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| 清泉崗機場周圍，有抗議民眾拿著要求撤除飛彈的海報向陳雲林嗆聲。（記者廖耀東攝） |
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| 儘管寒冷的夜風陣陣吹襲，前往裕元花園酒店抗議的民眾仍不願離去。（記者叢昌瑾攝） |
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| 陳雲林第二次來台，綠營民眾於台中中清路對面高舉抗議布條嗆聲。（記者廖耀東攝） |
〔記 者黃鐘山、張瑞楨、陳建志、蔡智銘、李欣芳、陳品竹／台中報導〕去年來台曾聲明要「開大門走大路」的中國海協會長陳雲林，為避開嗆聲群眾，昨天抵台後竟未 走航站大門，而是搭車經機場道路從漢翔公司沙鹿廠區離開。不過，他雖然因此躲過前去「接機」抗議的群眾，但稍後行程仍難逃「如影隨形」的各方嗆聲。
民眾譏不敢面對台灣人
為保護陳雲林不被嗆聲，警方昨天一早在清泉崗機場部署重兵，約兩千名警力拉起兩層封鎖線，把航站圍得像鐵桶一般，同時封鎖中清路長達一公里，三步一崗、五步一哨，甚至租借至少卅戶民宅監控，屋頂到處可見搜證人員，持望遠鏡「盯著看」，令人宛如置身戰地或重返戒嚴。
雖然警力以超高規格周延戒備，但陳雲林昨天中午十二時廿三分抵台後並未走航站大門，警方刻意不斷調動警力，營造「陳將從大廳出來的假象」，陳的車隊則經由漢翔公司沙鹿廠門口離去，約十多分鐘車程後抵達裕元花園酒店。
得 知陳雲林車隊「兔脫」，一早就前往準備嗆聲的民眾錯愕不已，有人諷刺陳雲林「不敢面對台灣人」。民進黨台北市議員莊瑞雄等人說，陳雲林真是膽小鬼，不敢走 大門，從後門落跑，對前去嗆聲的民眾而言，也是勝利了。民進黨應變中心發言人林佳龍也質疑，陳雲林未依去年所聲明「開大門走大路」，不由大門出入而走小 門，不願面對真正的台灣民意，顯示其心虛、不真誠。
陳雲林昨天除了在機場走後門，接著在台中市區的行程，台中市府也使出「聲東擊西」的安排，包括萬和宮、科博館兩項行程都在最後一刻取消，讓嗆聲民眾撲空，採訪媒體甚至為此一度怒嗆台中市長胡志強。
雖 然警方和台中市府無所不用其極，盼阻絕民眾嗆聲機會，但陳雲林昨天仍難逃如影隨形的嗆聲群眾，不但參觀中台灣房價最高豪宅「聯聚信義大廈」時，有抗議民眾 揮舞著「我是台灣郎」的Ｔ恤並高喊「台灣、中國，一邊一國」，陳下榻的裕元花園酒店更成為各路人馬「圍攻」的標的，民進黨市議員推出「一中一台」的氣球、 台聯議員施放高空煙火、「海洋之聲」電台出動計程車、救台灣行動聯盟升台灣國旗，各出奇招向陳雲林嗆聲；法輪功成員和在台藏人也在酒店周邊持標語表達抗 議。
大陆海协会会长陈云林爲「第四次江陈会谈」二度访台，在机场和下榻的酒店附近，遭遇了如影随形的抗议。其中有民进党号召的群众、有法轮功学 员、还有支持藏独的人士。不过，也有支持统一的团体高举红布条，表达欢迎。面对抗议与欢迎的两种待遇，陈云林表示，对表达不同意见的人绝对尊重，对欢迎他 的乡亲，他非常感谢。
「第四次江陈会谈」在22日举行，海基会董事长江丙坤与陈云林将签署四项协议，包括「农产品检疫检验合作」、「避免双重课税及加强税务合作」、「标 准计量检验认证合作」、「渔船船员劳务合作」。双方也将针对ECFA的原则性议题进行意见交换，如果达成共识，ECFA将列为第五次江陈会的协商议题。
海基会表示，这对于台湾人民的权益将进一步提供保障。然而，民进党批评这是为了签署两岸经济合作架构协议(ECFA)后的一中市场铺路。在第四次江 陈会前夕，民进党发起的「破黑箱、顾饭碗大游行」廿日下午顶着寒风，在党主席蔡英文带领下，走上街头抗议。群众高举飞弹、标语，连神明都出动，民进党宣称 游行人数超过十万人，最后平和落幕。
马英九总统说：“这些都是对台湾有利的，包括今天开始进行的江陈会谈都是如此。而且我们每个步骤都尽量做到透明化，没有黑箱作业，因为所有东西都是可以公开。只是有的东西要等签了以后才全部公开，事前可以公开它的要点，让大家知道政府在做什麽。”
由于去年陈云林首次访台，曾引发警方与抗议群众激烈冲突，此次警方在饭店周边戒备相当森严，丝毫不敢大意。但也因为过于谨慎，陈云林行程未完全公开，媒体採访也受到限制，引起各方质疑和不满。在马英九一声令下，陆委会与海基会立即公佈陈云林21日至25日的大致行程。
除了将参访工业区、科学园区外，也将拜访中台禅寺，陈云林还将前往南投县莫拉克风灾灾区探视灾民，并游览日月潭。
A Chinese worker at a dorm near the Haiphong Thermal Power Plant construction site in Trung Son, Vietnam. More Photos >
TRUNG SON, Vietnam — It seemed as if this village in northern Vietnam had struck gold when a Chinese and a Japanese company arrived to jointly build a coal-fired power plant. Thousands of jobs would start flowing in, or so the residents hoped.
This is the eighth in a series of articles examining stresses and strains of China’s emergence as a global power.
A Chinese worker at a power plant construction site in Vietnam. China, famous for its export of cheap goods, is increasingly known around the world for shipping out cheap labor. More Photos »
Chinese workers at a thermal power plant construction site in Trung Son, Vietnam. More Photos >
Four years later, the Haiphong Thermal Power Plant is nearing completion. But only a few hundred Vietnamese ever got jobs. Most of the workers were Chinese, about 1,500 at the peak. Hundreds of them are still here, toiling by day on the dusty construction site and cloistered at night in dingy dormitories.
“The Chinese workers overwhelm the Vietnamese workers here,” said Nguyen Thai Bang, 29, a Vietnamese electrician.
China, famous for its export of cheap goods, is increasingly known for shipping out cheap labor. These global migrants often work in factories or on Chinese-run construction and engineering projects, though the range of jobs is astonishing: from planting flowers in the Netherlands to doing secretarial tasks in Singapore to herding cows in Mongolia — even delivering newspapers in the Middle East.
But a backlash against them has grown. Across Asia and Africa, episodes of protest and violence against Chinese workers have flared. Vietnam and India are among the nations that have moved to impose new labor rules for foreign companies and restrict the number of Chinese workers allowed to enter, straining relations with Beijing.
In Vietnam, dissidents and intellectuals are using the issue of Chinese labor to challenge the ruling Communist Party. A lawyer sued Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung over his approval of a Chinese bauxite mining project, and the National Assembly is questioning top officials over Chinese contracts, unusual moves in this authoritarian state.
Chinese workers continue to follow China’s state-owned construction companies as they win bids abroad to build power plants, factories, railroads, highways, subway lines and stadiums. From January to October 2009, Chinese companies completed $58 billion of projects, a 33 percent increase over the same period in 2008, according to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.
From Angola to Uzbekistan, Iran to Indonesia, some 740,000 Chinese workers were abroad at the end of 2008, with 58 percent sent out last year alone, the Commerce Ministry said. The number going abroad this year is on track to roughly match that rate. The workers are hired in China, either directly by Chinese enterprises or by Chinese labor agencies that place the workers; there are 500 operational licensed agencies and many illegal ones.
Chinese executives say that Chinese workers are not always less expensive, but that they tend to be more skilled and easier to manage than local workers. “Whether you’re talking about the social benefits or economic benefits to the countries receiving the workers, the countries have had very good things to say about the Chinese workers and their skills,” said Diao Chunhe, director of the China International Contractors Association, a government organization in Beijing.
But in some countries, local residents accuse the Chinese of stealing jobs, staying on illegally and isolating themselves by building bubble worlds that replicate life in China.
“There are entire Chinese villages now,” said Pham Chi Lan, former executive vice president of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “We’ve never seen such a practice on projects done by companies from other countries.”
At this construction site northeast of the port city of Haiphong, an entire Chinese world has sprung up: four walled dormitory compounds, restaurants with Chinese signs advertising dumplings and fried rice, currency exchanges, so-called massage parlors — even a sign on the site itself that says “Guangxi Road,” referring to the province that most of the workers call home.
One night, eight workers in blue uniforms sat in a cramped restaurant that had been opened by a man from Guangxi at the request of the project’s main subcontractor, Guangxi Power Construction Company. Their faces were flushed from drinking Chinese rice wine. “I was sent here, and I’m fulfilling my patriotic duty,” said Lin Dengji, 52.
Such scenes can set off anxieties in Vietnam, which prides itself on resisting Chinese domination, starting with its break from Chinese rule in the 10th century. The countries fought a border war in 1979 and are still engaged in a sovereignty dispute in the South China Sea.
Vietnamese are all too aware of the economic juggernaut to their north. Vietnam had a $10 billion trade deficit with China last year. In July, a senior official in Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security said that 35,000 Chinese workers were in Vietnam, according to Tuoi Tre, a progressive newspaper. The announcement shocked many Vietnamese.
“The Chinese economic presence in Vietnam is deeper, more far-reaching and progressing faster than people realize,” said Le Dang Doanh, an economist in Hanoi who advised the preceding prime minister.
Conflict has broken out between Vietnamese and Chinese laborers. In Thanh Hoa Province in June, a drunk Chinese worker from a cement plant traded blows with the husband of a Vietnamese shopkeeper. The Chinese man then returned with 200 co-workers, igniting a brawl, according to Vietnamese news reports.
One reason for the tensions, economists say, is that there are plenty of unemployed or underemployed people in this country of 87 million. Vietnam itself exports cheap labor; a half-million Vietnamese are working abroad, according to a newspaper published by the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor.
Populist anger erupted this year over a contract given by the Vietnamese government to the Aluminum Corporation of China to mine bauxite, one of Vietnam’s most valuable natural resources, using Chinese workers. Dissidents, intellectuals and environmental advocates protested. Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the 98-year-old retired military leader, wrote three open letters criticizing the Chinese presence to Vietnamese party leaders.
No other government in the world so closely resembles that of China as Vietnam’s, from the structure of the Communist Party to economic policies and media controls. Vietnamese leaders make great efforts to ensure that China-Vietnam relations appear smooth. So over the summer, the central government shut down critical blogs, detained dissidents and ordered Vietnamese newspapers to cease reporting on Chinese labor and the bauxite issue.
But in a nod to public pressure, the government also tightened visa and work permit requirements for Chinese and deported 182 Chinese laborers from a cement plant in June, saying they were working illegally.
Vietnam generally bans the import of unskilled workers from abroad and requires foreign contractors to hire its citizens to do civil works, though that rule is sometimes violated by Chinese companies — bribes can persuade officials to look the other way, Chinese executives say.
At the Haiphong power plant, the Vietnamese company that owns the project grew anxious this year about the slow pace of work. It sided with the Chinese managers in pushing government officials to allow the import of more unskilled workers.
The Chinese here are sequestered in ramshackle dorm rooms and segregated by profession: welders and electricians and crane operators.
A poem written on a wooden door testifies to the rootless nature of their lives: “We’re all people floating around in the world. We meet each other, but we never really get to know each other.”
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