Foreigners pose risk to stability, says academic
A leading Communist Party-sponsored publication has sounded an alarm about the rise of foreign interest groups on the mainland, saying they pose severe threats to economic security and social stability.
In a strongly worded article published by Xinhua's weekly news magazine, Outlook, foreign businesses and investment groups came under attack for their alleged heavy intervention in the mainland's policymaking process and negative influence on the country's development.
The article by Jiang Yong, director of the Centre for Economic Security Studies at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, raised grave accusations about the role of foreign businesses in China in the past three decades - claims rarely seen in official publications.
But mainland analysts criticised the article - which echoed the recent nationalist sentiment on the mainland after a spate of protests in Tibet and around the world - for failing to present a full picture of China's economic and social problems.
Professor Jiang said: 'Due to the lack of effective restrictions and countermeasures, all sorts of overseas interest groups have become ever more deeply involved in the country's major affairs through various channels, with complicated implications.'
He lashed out at a large number of foreign interest groups, saying their intense lobbying - or even bribery - of government officials, their relatives, think-tanks, business leaders and the mainland press had eroded China's economic sovereignty.
He was critical of overseas listings of the mainland's leading enterprises, including many state monopolies such as PetroChina, Sinopec and China Unicom, which had led to a loss of public resources, seepage of profits overseas and, in some cases, a loss of local control.
His long list of foreign businesses' 'bad behaviour' in China also included their denial of mainland workers' rights to set up labour unions, rampant tax evasion and their growing involvement in other economic crimes.
He also accused mainland officials, government-backed experts and the media of helping foreigners at the expense of social and public interests. 'Under the protection of local government departments, some multinational companies have long ignored the lawful rights of Chinese labourers ... which resulted in the soaring number of mass incidents among their workers,' he said.
In another rare, daring move for a mainland academic, he singled out the children and relatives of top-level officials who had become lobbyists for foreign business interests.
Professor Jiang published a similar article two years ago in the same magazine, lambasting 'special interest groups' inside and outside the country.
Liu Junning , a political analyst based in Beijing, said the Outlook article missed the real culprit of the economic and social woes that Professor Jiang listed.
'It is a fact that foreign interest groups have a presence in China. But they should not be blamed first and foremost for the problems in the country,' Professor Liu said.
He said conflicting interests within the ruling party and the mainland's political system allowed the rise of powerful domestic interest groups in the first place, and created the problems. 'It is not fair to say that foreigners have made the water here murky, because it was dirty already.'
