In early December, Xiao Yonghong spent his 48th birthday alone, stranded in a hotel in a foreign country, blocked by his employer from returning home. Xiao, a Chinese electrician, said that his employer made him “quarantine” in a hotel in Indonesia for over fourth months under the excuse that his COVID-19 antibody test results did not meet the employer’s requirement. However, the real reason, according to Xiao, was that he had reported his employer to local police for ongoing negligence, violence, and exploitation. Xiao is one of the thousands of Chinese working overseas in massive state-sponsored infrastructure projects, part of Beijing’s “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI). BRI is a massive infrastructure investment project aimed at bolstering Beijing’s economic and political clout around the world. As part of the initiative, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) contracts legions of manual laborers to send abroad for construction projects. Though, some, like Xiao, have …
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