In an online article released on the GATESTONE INSTITUTE Website it was reported that the Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure deal being brokered by China with many nations are using forced labour as their workers. The atrocities and the working conditions from the workers are made to work up to 12 hours a day, 7 days a week and policed by Security Guards. Many of these workers were injured during work with no access to medical treatment. According to the report China Labour Watch spoke to approximately 100 Chinese BRI workers in Indonesia, Algeria, Singapore, Jordan, Pakistan and Serbia. Many shared similar stories.
According to the report it stated; “They were promised a job with good pay to support their families back in China. Upon arriving in the host countries, however, Chinese employers confiscated their passports, and told them that if they wanted to leave early, they had to pay a penalty for breach of contract, which is often equivalent to several months’ worth of their salary” they stated. “The Chinese embassy also seems to have actively worked to suppress complaints. Several workers said they tried to call the Chinese Embassy to report that their passports were detained by their employing company. The embassy’s reply was that it had no right to intervene and the workers were told to file a report at the local police station.
However, these workers could not even get out of the gate of the work site, and they also faced language barriers. It is quite unrealistic for them to call the local police. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) forms a crucial part of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) foreign policy and is a key tool in China’s ambition to become a global superpower. These facts were published in “A new report titled, “Silent Victims of Labour Trafficking: China’s Belt and Road workers stranded overseas amid Covid-19 pandemic” by China Labour Watch, published on April 30 this year. The GATESTONE article also reported, “Intimidation and threats are common for controlling Chinese workers in forced labour at some BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) projects.
The most commonly used threats include deportation, reprisal after returning home, high fines and penalties. It is also common to force workers to sign a waiver of rights to sue the employer and to force workers to delete evidence of labour rights violations on their phones.” If the report is true then those nations whose leaders hitch up to the BRI have to conveniently ignore these facts.
When you consider the history of Chinese Communism and Mao Zedong’s ‘policies’ towards the Chinese people it is no surprise if in fact the BRI programme uses slave labour in many instances. According to the authoritative “Black Book of Communism,” an estimated 65 million Chinese died as a result of Mao’s repeated, merciless attempts to create a new “socialist” China. Anyone who got in his way was done away with — by execution, imprisonment or forced famine. For Mao, the No. 1 enemy was the intellectual. The so-called Great Helmsman revealed in his blood-letting, boasting, “What’s so unusual about Emperor Shih Huang of the China Dynasty? He had buried alive 460 scholars only, but we have buried alive 46,000 scholars.”
Mao was referring to a major “accomplishment” of the Great Cultural Revolution, which from 1966-1976 transformed China into a great House of Fear. The most inhumane example of Mao’s contempt for human life came when he ordered the collectivization of China’s agriculture under the ironic slogan, the “Great Leap Forward.” A deadly combination of lies about grain production, disastrous farming methods (profitable tea plantations, for example, were turned into rice fields), and misdistribution of food produced the worse famine in human history. Deaths from hunger reached more than 50 percent in some Chinese villages. The total number of dead from 1959 to 1961 was between 30 million and 40 million.
Now China has been targeting the small Pacific Island nations located to the north of Australia offering these pacific nations the BRI. The Chinese Communist party of course has in view a centralised form of control as the CCP know these nations are up against it where their economy and finances are concerned. According to a report earlier this year on the 60 Minutes programme, in years gone by the Australian Government has provided financial aid to these pacific island nations, but in recent years have not followed through on their financial commitments. Hence the CCP have taken the liberty to approach these small democracies with a financial offer they cannot refuse if they will allow China to implement the BRI.
Recently, closer to home, Daniel Andrews the State Premier of Victoria Australia entered into a contract with Xi Jinping and the CCP to have them implement the BRI in Victoria. The Victorian State Premier signed a new deal with the Chinese Government to deepen the state’s engagement with the controversial Belt and Road initiative. The deal angered some in the Morrison Government who were worried about Chinese influence in Australia, but the Victorian Premier, who is a frequent visitor to China, said the deal was designed “to boost the Victorian economy and jobs.”
While Australia has long had economic ties with China things have now changed with China’s obvious expansionist policies being brokered through the BRI and spreading through the South pacific island nations and undoubtedly with Australia on the agenda. Fortunately, to his credit, Scott Morrison the Prime Minster of Australia ‘tore up’ the proposed BRI deal with China on the grounds of national security putting himself and Australia on the wrong side of Xi Jinping and the CCP. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Victorian Labor Government is riddled with socialistic and left-wing policies which include forcing on all Victorians a form of governmental control.
The extreme lockdowns in Victoria are becoming legendary, not only in every other state in Australia but also internationally. The COVID-19 scenario has provided the perfect opportunity for manipulation of people through fear-mongering, a centralised form of control and by controlling the main-line media in their reporting. These days one has to go to the independent news media for accurate and real news such as Sky News Australia whose reporters are all ‘top-guns’ where reporting true news is concerned and that backed by facts.
When you consider Mao’s policies in China and the fact that he is still revered today in China it is no wonder that Xi Jinping seeks to emulate Chairman Mao. With the outbreak of the virus from the Wuhan laboratory where it is reported they experiment with biological weapons it is no wonder that China have covered things up. It is doubtful whether the real truth will ever come to light. It seems that no nation wants to bring China to take accountability for what has happened globally with the Wuhan biological virus.
Right now Australia is in a precarious situation with China. The next Australian federal election will be held in or before 2022 to elect members of the 47th Parliament of Australia. All 151 seats in the House of Representatives (lower house) and 40 of the 76 seats in the Senate (upper house) will be up for election. If it should be that Labour gets in then it may well be that Daniel Andrews, if he is still the State Premier after the disasterous COVID-19 fiasco, that the BRI might well be brokered that will not only bring the state of Victoria under the sovereignty of China, if the real truth be known, but see Australia renamed “the New China” and become a socialist country where everyone and everything is brought under a centralised form of government.
In all of these matters we need to keep these two Biblical truths in view.
Firstly, it is God who controls kings and leaders of nations and enthrones them and dethrones them. He uses them for His sovereign purposes but still has everything under control and in the end will have His way. As the prophet Daniel writes; “Let the name of God be blessed forever and ever, For wisdom and power belong to Him. “It is He who changes the times and the epochs; He removes kings and establishes kings; He gives wisdom to wise men And knowledge to men of understanding. “It is He who reveals the profound and hidden things; He knows what is in the darkness, And the light dwells with Him.” (Daniel 2:20-22)
Secondly; As believers in our Lord Jesus “we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28) God Himself sees what is really happening and we know from God’s Word that these things like COVID-19 are coming upon the world. This is why our future must be rooted in the Coming Messianic Kingdom on earth. Our Lord Jesus is coming back and the time has come to fix our eyes on the coming kingdom and not to put our hope in this world which is rapidly “coming apart at the seams.” (Luke 21:25-28)
It may well be that in Australia we will see a socialist government established in the future and may God forbid we would see a Labor Government in Canberra subservient to China. Not that this will happen, but if it does, we need to keep in view that God still has everything under control, and He does you know! In these uncertain times humanly speaking “It is always safe to trust the Lord!”
See links below:
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17403/china-belt-road-forced-labor
https://www.heritage.org/asia/commentary/the-legacy-mao-zedong-mass-murder
