In Conversation with Franziska Plümmer
15 March 2023
9DASHLINE recently had the pleasure of speaking with Dr Franziska Plümmer about her insightful book Rethinking Authority in China’s Border Regime: Regulating the Irregular.
Building on two case studies on the Sino-Myanmar and Sino-North Korean borders, this book presents a comprehensive analysis of the Chinese border regime and how border politics are implemented.
In your book, you write that “the border is more than a security function – it is also a method of social control”. Could you briefly explain what you mean by this?
FP: These days, we accept being stopped and controlled at international borders. Whenever we travel to a different country, security checkpoints and border guards frequently require us to identify ourselves, and we must know which line to take at passport control and when we need to apply for a visa. This has not always been the case. The manifestation of international borders in China — especially towards the southeast of the country — was only a result of twentieth-century developments. Now, the rules and regulations that governments apply at borders, such as redirecting travellers to different lines, permanently or temporarily surveying borders, or automating control, always have a social dimension. In analysing this dimension, part of the literature on borders looks at how different groups of border crossers are labelled, how they are treated, how their mobility is affected by the border, and how this impacts their identities.
For instance, the Myanmar border residents that I researched at the Sino-Myanmar border constitute a special legal category within the Chinese exit-and-entry administration, which allows them to live their life differently from other Myanmar citizens. This is evidenced by border residents receiving preferential treatment at border checkpoints (compared to Myanmar citizens without this special status) and preferential access to Chinese labour markets. However, they must also use specific border checkpoints and provide data on their personal relations to the Chinese administration to legitimise their status. By issuing the border residency cards, the border administration exerts discursive power over these people in terms of deciding whether to allow them to carry the title of border resident or not. Further to this, the government has the ability to facilitate or hinder this specific form of mobility, which ultimately shapes the relations, family, and employment biographies of these residency card holders. This way, the government exerts social control through border policies. In my book, I suggest that this perspective is important in understanding the effects of border politics.
How is China’s border regime meaningfully different from the ones in the West?
FP: In the book, I argue that there are two important differences between the Chinese authoritarian governmentality and liberal governmentality with regard to border security: first, how the government uses (neo-)socialist rationales, and second, how it links pastoral, disciplinary, and sovereign power. On the first point, a socialist rationale is inherent in official Chinese discourse on immigration. This is evident in the ways that the government legitimises its migration management at the border by framing itself as being responsible for managing ‘population quality’ (renkou suzhi). In this way of thinking, the government educates its subjects into self-sufficient citizens that are able to assume what the government wants and autonomously help to achieve these goals, e.g. by volunteering in community services and abiding by the law. To the mind of many cadres, ‘population quality’ can only be achieved by not only educating the local residents but by closing the border to non-Chinese migrants. In this way, ethnicity (‘Chineseness’) is central to the migration regime.
Second, the Chinese regime combines pastoral, disciplinary, and sovereign power in ways that liberal regimes cannot because they face political opposition, critical media, or counter-conduct in general. Pastoral power highlights the ways that the government stands sentinel over its ‘floc’ as the local cadres use propaganda and work to appear as servants of the community (trying to create an image of ‘care’ toward their residents). Pastoral power further builds on a sense of solidarity that incentivises community members to donate their time and resources for the greater good. Liberal regimes also sometimes try to use solidarity tropes in times of crisis, which is, however, much less successful. By combining these ways of utilising the community organisation with a security apparatus that builds on disciplinary power, the Chinese governmentality operates beyond traditional state organisation, well into neighbourhood relations, and even beyond its borders.
What role does the Chinese government’s choice of terminology, in relation to refugees and displaced people, play in balancing its border sovereignty and its obligations to the Refugee Convention?
FP: In the past, the Chinese government has been criticised for its lack of care towards refugees. This especially concerns the treatment of North Koreans in China. While they are internationally recognised as refugees, the Chinese government views them as ‘economic migrants’. By relabelling them as such, it removes the defectors’ rights to protection, security, and family unification. In my research, I found that the government applies a similar method to those who fled the violent conflicts in Myanmar, such as the refugees from Shan State in 2009 and 2015. The Chinese government soon labelled these people ‘border residents’, emphasising the need to speedily return them to Myanmar. However, the local governments organised provisional camps and offered care, some of which still exist today. This leaves the residents of the camps in legal limbo, without an official status and without protection.
As of 2023, China claims to host 340 ‘convention’ refugees. These people originate from Syria and Afghanistan and are officially recognised under UNHCR protocol, but there are no officially recognised refugees from North Korea or Myanmar. Coming back to the question, I would argue that this careful selection of which migrants or refugees can enjoy Chinese welfare does in fact maintain the Chinese government’s sovereignty over the border. The Chinese government further prioritises the norm of sovereignty over international cooperation on refugee protection by not applying the UNHCR protocol (by suspending the deportation of Myanmar refugees and ignoring the international precedence of accepting North Korean defectors as refugees).
How is border security organised and how are responsibilities shared among different state actors, the military, and the police in the China-Myanmar border region? What are the different roles of the military and the police in these areas?
FP: For the longest time, in many countries around the world the separation of work between the police and the military has been organised according to a territorial principle: the police works inside national borders and the military works outside these borders. This separation has increasingly disappeared in the context of a securitisation of migration resulting in — among other effects — the borderless policing of migrants in and outside of national territories. In China, this separation of work is further differentiated into the border area in general and then to specific areas. Generally, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, correspondingly, the People’s Liberation Army are responsible for extraterritorial border controls and transnational cooperation on border security, whereas the Ministry of Public Security (and the People’s Armed Police) is responsible for internal border checks and the repatriation of illegal immigrants.
Until 2018, a Special Border Control Group operated under the People’s Armed Police in those border areas that were considered high risk (the Myanmar border area being one of these). The dissolution of this organisation was part of a larger administrative reform that moved border management under the responsibility of the People’s Liberation Army. This reform further involved professionalising border management. The re-militarisation was quickly visible after the reform took place. In Ruili — a border town that I visited before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2016— the military quickly tried to fence-off the border completely against foreigners during the outbreak of COVID-19. This action would probably not have been possible without the military’s resources. The focus on preventing drug smuggling, trafficking, and illegal trade, however, remains the same. One important action point to prevent drug smuggling transnationally is the joint Mekong River patrols which are coordinated by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and are carried out by the People’s Liberation Army.
In some regions, guest worker programmes and permits for North Korean labour immigrants are in place. How do they tie in with China’s bilateral agreement with the DPRK on the mutual repatriation of defectors in terms of workers outstaying their guest worker status?
FP: The North Korean guest worker programme is organised by the North Korean government. This means that working in China or abroad is considered a privilege that allows participants to earn relatively high wages. Usually, the guest workers stay in company compounds for the entire duration of their contract. This is true for waitresses who work in restaurants all over China and for factory workers working in facilities in industrial parks along the border. It is very difficult for these workers to leave these compounds and their legality is bound by their Chinese employers. Furthermore, they are often not paid directly. Instead, their salary is transferred to North Korea and paid upon their return. If the workers overstayed their visa this would correspond with them leaving their jobs as well. Very few people do this, and the ones who do are in danger of ending up being repatriated by the Chinese authorities. If they manage to avoid Chinese authorities, they must stay hidden as they cannot seek legal assistance, apply for an official status as asylum seekers, or legally travel to other countries. Often, they are forced into marriages with Chinese citizens as the only available option to avoid repatriation.
Reportedly, Chinese authorities maintain camps hosting hundreds of defectors under unclear conditions waiting for their official repatriation to North Korea. This commitment to repatriation can also be seen as a symbolic solidarity with North Korea, and the capture of ‘illegals’ are often mediatised. The Chinese authorities further prosecute and imprison immigrants with South Korean passports who originally emigrated or fled from North Korea showing decisive action in solidarity with the DPRK. In doing so, the Chinese government both honours the bilateral agreements on guest workers as well as on repatriation.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Dr Franziska Plümmer is an Assistant Professor of Europe-China Relations at the Department of European Studies, University of Amsterdam. Previously, she worked at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law & International Law, as well as the Universities of Vienna and Tübingen.