Exclusive: Inside a Beijing-linked Chinese help center in Tanzania
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Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photos: Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian/Axios
This story is part of a series supported by the Pulitzer Center.
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — A rare glimpse inside a Chinese service center in Dar es Salaam reveals a dual strategy for Beijing: helping citizens abroad while replicating the tools China uses elsewhere to keep tabs on them.
Why it matters: The center and dozens of others around the world illustrate the long arm of Beijing's influence. They operate under the auspices of a Chinese Communist Party bureau tasked with amplifying political support for the party and marginalizing dissent, raising concerns about the CCP's authoritarian reach into overseas Chinese communities, analysts say.
Background: Hundreds of thousands of Chinese traders, business owners and workers moved abroad over the past two decades to find new opportunities in emerging markets, spurred by Beijing's push to deepen its economic reach. The Chinese government has responded by establishing help centers for Chinese citizens across North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.
How it works: Members of Tanzania's Chinese communities come to the service center in Dar es Salaam for assistance with domestic disagreements, immigration issues, short-term unemployment and other household emergencies, and trade and legal disputes — much-needed services in a country where it's often difficult for Chinese-speaking residents to navigate local bureaucracies.
- But the Dar es Salaam center also shares the same leadership — and even the same office — as the local chapter of the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification, a CCP-affiliated organization that has faced scrutiny in the U.S. for alleged complicity in Beijing's efforts to repress Chinese people beyond China's borders.
Driving the news: Axios met with the Tanzania center's director, Zhu Jinfeng, in the first extensive media interview with a service center leader and received a rare look into the center's services and operation. Zhu denied the center had any relationship with the Chinese Embassy or government.
- "Our main purpose is to serve as a bridge between Chinese people and Tanzanian people," Zhu told Axios in an interview conducted at the center's offices.
- But Chinese-language information posted to the embassy's website states the embassy in Tanzania and the Chinese government in Beijing founded and continue to oversee the center's operations.
- The Chinese government is the world's largest perpetrator of transnational repression, which is when a government harasses, intimidates, or interferes in the rights and freedoms of people beyond its own borders.
What they're saying: It's a "very high-functioning authoritarian state. It takes very seriously the idea of solving its citizens' problems. But at the same time, it takes the idea of absolute political control very seriously as well, and it uses the provision of services as a lever of control," Matt Schrader, adviser on Chinese affairs at the International Republican Institute and the author of several reports about overseas Chinese centers, told Axios.
"To put that in plainer language, if I give you something, I can take it away."
Go deeper: Read the full version of this story.
