To the touchy, tense relationship between global superpowers, add this gritty irritant: As Washington's unemployment rate rose, China brought over hundreds of laborers to build its US embassy.
China has been using an aging motel in Washington for three years to house the army of workers who built the $250 million granite and glass embassy, which at 345,500 square feet is one of the city's largest.
Now, with the embassy scheduled to open tomorrow, some labor officials and lawmakers are being less than diplomatic in their criticism.
“This is outrageous,” says Mark Levinson, chief economist at Unite Here!, a union representing 450,000 industrial, textile and hotel employees nationwide. “When the US is in a recession and Chinese imports are flooding into the US, the Chinese should be using American workers.”
China's tight control over the construction of its embassy, about four miles from the White House, may be spurred by a history of espionage between geopolitical rivals, says Ashton Carter, a former US assistant defense secretary.
The US stopped construction of an embassy building in Moscow in 1985 after American officials found eavesdropping devices lodged in its walls. And the US itself was accused of tunneling under Russia's Washington embassy in the 1980s. China may be wary of such subterfuge. “They think our workers will implant bugs,” says Carter. And if China isn't careful “we probably will.”
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Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy, says China followed international practices in the construction of the building. “It's not unique to use only your own workers,” he says.
Very Unusual: Still, China's refusal to use US workers is unusual, says Robert McInturff, a US State Department spokesperson.
“Every country does it differently, but what the Chinese are doing really is not common,” McInturff says. “You don't have a lot of foreign missions exclusively using workers from their own country.”
The US is employing hundreds of Chinese laborers to help build the new American Embassy in Beijing set to open Aug 8.
Two American contractors, Texas-based Zachry Construction Corp and Alabama-based Caddell Construction Co., are building the US embassy in China.
They hired Chinese subcontractors, which recruited local Chinese to work on non-secure areas. At one point, there were hundreds of Chinese workers building the embassy, says Terry Willis, a marketing director at Caddell.
Classified Areas
The only time American workers are mandated for US embassy construction is in building classified areas, State Department spokesperson Nancy Beck says.
Embassies often have built-in precautions against espionage, Carter says. Some even have rooms built on springs that vibrate, drowning out sound with their hum and thwarting electronic eavesdropping. Such rooms are used for classified conversations, and if the Chinese have one like it, they may not have wanted US workers to know, Carter says.
They may also want to shield rooms or equipment used to gather information, he says.
The Chinese, Carter says, may use the embassy as a “perch” for espionage.
Wang says the idea that China would use the embassy to spy on the US is “ridiculous” and “absolutely untrue.” “The Chinese embassy has been and will always be a function for promoting friendly relations between the two countries,” he says.
Lawmakers Annoyed
China's decision to use its own workers has exasperated some American lawmakers already annoyed by the US's trade deficit with China — a record $256 billion last year — and what they see as the country's grudging cooperation on trade issues.
Especially aggravating is that the District of Columbia's unemployment rate rose to 6.4 per cent in June from 5.9 per cent in 2006, both above the national rate.
At the same time, 5,000 construction jobs have been lost in the US capital region since 2005.
“It's time we stand up to the Chinese and start fighting for the interests of our workers” says Representative Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who unsuccessfully sought the presidential nomination this year.
Barbed-Wire Fences
Since 2005 the Chinese workers have lived in a barracks across the street from the construction site and at a motel on the other side of town.
The motel's check-in counter is lined with dust, and old mattresses are piled up in the lobby of the former Days Inn. A barbed-wire fence lines the perimeter of the parking lot.
That's in contrast to the tree-lined streets and manicured lawns of International Place, where China's glittering facility will sit alongside ministry buildings from nations such as Singapore, Bangladesh and Ghana.
The embassy was designed by C C Pei of Pei Partnership Architects with the help of his father, architect I M Pei. The younger Pei says the embassy marks the “beginning of a new era between the US and China.”
While it may begin a new era, the rivalry will remain, Carter says.
“It will be one side's cleverness against the other,” he says. “There aren't that many friends when it comes to espionage.”