China Imports Workers to Build Embassy in U.S., Sparking Anger

[Joanne98]

July 28 (Bloomberg) -- 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 U.S. 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 U.S. is in a recession and Chinese imports are flooding into the U.S., 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 U.S. assistant defense secretary.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=axwuvvbl4u5g&refer=home

[Sal Minella]

1. IIRC the U.S. imported workers into Iraq to build Cheney's Royal Palace (aka "U.S. Embassy")

in Baghdad -- the world's biggest embassy, built with workers imported from southeast Asia for the purpose -- hundreds of foreign workers imported into a country with astronomical unemployment.

The "You can't trust the locals" idea wasn't invented by the Chinese. Wasn't it the U.S. Embassy in Russia that had to be abandoned because so many bugging devices had been included in the construction that there was no hope of finding them all.

[Joanne98]

2. That's in The Shock Doctrine. How Bremer fired Iraqi's then brought in foreign workers

They had to sit there and watch other people rebuild their country. That's a bring reason for the insurgency. But the corporate media never reports the truth.