Comment by saturn5k | Hacker News Reader

Comment by saturn5k | Hacker News Reader

We have a very similar situation here in North Macedonia with Chinese built highways and a loan covered by the Chinese Export Import Bank in the amount of ~640 million euros. (Later the cost of the projects increased by ~180 million euros more.)

Corrupted state officials took a 25 million euros cut for giving the contract to the Chinese construction firm Sinohydro. (This was confirmed in tapped phone conversations that were leaked to the public.)

Then prime minister Nikola Gruevski that was involved in the scandal and who negotiated the "cut" is on the run in Hungary, he was granted political asylum by prime minister Viktor Orban. Gruevski was indicted for other shady deals as well and faced a prison sentence here in North Macedonia.

Nearly 10 years after the projects started most of the highway corridors are not completed and they are nowhere near completion.

It is also well known that a lot of the construction workers are Chinese prisoners that were brought in here to work on the highways. I am not sure if their stay in the country is somehow regulated or if they are compensated somehow.

You can read more here: https://chinaobservers.eu/exporting-corruption-the-case-of-a...

What collateral is held by the lenders? I mean at some point you it seems correct to just declare the entire deal off, but that only works if you can tell the lenders to pound sand. If they were okay pissing off China, they could come out okay, but I guess it depends on what other pressures exist.

edit: Missed this comment which essentially answers my question:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27688719

Corruption maybe, the prisoners allegation is most likely to be false. I know some people working in similar projects through photography hobby (a group of amateur photographers, I am mostly interested in landscapes). There are benefits working abroad, such as tax breaks, allowances and so on, it makes no economy sense to have prisoners. And I don't question their compensation as well, most of them work to support their families, that's the only reason they work.

If the state or employer is required or expected to supply additional benefits to people working abroad, the benefit to the state or employer in substituting workers with less ability (legally or otherwise) to claim or obtain those benefits is even larger than it might be in-country. (I'm ignoring the obvious issue of it potentially being less legally or politically easy to handle here as the parent comment does not mention these at all).

It sounds like you have an anecdote about some people you know working on these projects, but the details that seem intended to imply that it's unlikely that _any_ people working these projects are Chinese prisoners actually imply the opposite.

I am talking based on my understanding of the Chinese system, and knowing people working in these construction companies abroad. The point I am making is that if it is a desirable job, it is not easy to pass on jobs to prisoners as the article suggested.

Selling drugs may be more profitable, but you still prefer a developer job. You cannot apply logic that way.

These are state companies, they are responsible for hundreds of thousands employees if not more, those people need jobs. And most jobs require training and expertises. Anyway, we are living in parallel worlds now. I am trying to chip in whenever I can.

I really wanted to see if someone else mentions these allegations and with just a quick google search I found these 2 articles mentioning the exact same thing:

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Chinese-prisoners-used-as-lab...

https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2013/11/111829/morocco-chin...

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