Affiliated Scholar Aaron Halegua contributed to a ChinaFile Conversation on how China will impact global governance by offering some reflections on China's growling role at the ILO. Below are Aaron’s comments:
Read the entire article here.
China’s evolving role at the International Labor Organization (ILO) shares many similarities with its expanding influence at other United Nations agencies. While initially hesitant to recognize the legitimacy of the organization, even declaring itself a “non-active member” in the 1970s, China has increasingly come to engage with the ILO in ways that promote its own national interests. Generally, this means less focus on enforcing core labor rights, and greater emphasis on training and capacity-building programs, particularly in ways that highlight China’s own accomplishments or promote its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
China is not exactly a champion of the basic labor rights that the ILO was ostensibly created to protect—or, at least not all of them. The ILO has declared a handful of its hundreds of conventions on labor standards to be “fundamental,” several of which China has never ratified, including those on freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining, and prohibiting forced labor. In fact, at least seven complaints against China have been filed with the ILO’s Freedom of Association Committee, starting with its arrest of worker leaders during the 1989 crackdown and, more recently, concerning China’s detention of NGO labor activists in Guangdong in 2015. Unsurprisingly, China has not used its growing influence to support greater enforcement of the ILO’s core labor standards through such quasi-legal mechanisms, but rather argued that many ILO standards are “excessive” for the “limited capabilities” of many member countries.
This has not stopped China from engaging with the ILO in other ways, however. The focus of these efforts is well-demonstrated by the multiple MOUs it concluded with the ILO in 2019 in order to “share [its] experience and expertise to the benefit of other developing nations,” as well as through the ILO development programs that China has funded. These MOUs and programs all address less-controversial topics, such as workplace safety or skills development, and focus on what China can teach other countries.
The MOUs and development assistance funds are also used by China to promote the BRI. The phrase “Belt and Road Initiative” is widely broadcast on ILO webpages and is in the title of two MOUs (i.e. “South-South Cooperation on Work Safety Under the Framework of the Belt and Road Initiative”), although the contents of these documents remain confidential. The beneficiaries of the Chinese-funded development programs are BRI allies such as Laos, Cambodia, and Pakistan.
This is not to suggest that China’s participation in the ILO is entirely nefarious or that these capacity-building programs may not bring some real benefits. However, the increased focus on these activities must not result in marginalizing those labor rights that China finds more distasteful, or compromise the ILO’s role as a forum to criticize and evaluate adherence to core labor standards by China—or any country—regardless of its financial contribution to the organization. This will be the challenge in coming years.