For more than two decades, scholars and government officials alike have come to a stable

consensus: the nine traditional industries in China (“steel, cement, plate glass, electrolytic

aluminum, coal, shipbuilding, solar energy, wind energy, and petrochemical”) were “severely

exposed to the excess capacity problem” (Hart-Landsberg, 2021). China’s economy began to see

a sharp decline because of limitations to domestic construction. The consequence, of which,

triggered the widespread default of borrowers (e.g., Evergrande Group, Modern Land, and

Fantasia Holdings Group) and threatened the stability of China’s financial sector

(Hart-Landsberg, 2021; Kwok & Galbraith, 2021). To mitigate the damage caused by these

limitations and to stave off “growing labor activism” in retaliation to dangerous working

conditions and low salaries, CCP leadership chose, “a new strategy, one that seeks to maintain

the existing growth process by expanding it beyond China’s national borders: its One Belt and

One Road Initiative” (Hart-Landsberg, 2021).

In 1999, the CCP initiated the “‘Go-out Policy’... to promote Chinese investments abroad”

(Benli, 2021). As the new century commenced, Chinese external investments steadily rose. The

One Belt One Road project, based on the English translation of the initiative's Chinese name “Yi

Dai, Yi Lu’” and now known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), was first mentioned in 2013

by Xi Jinping “during his visits to Kazakhstan in September (the Silk Road Economic Belt) and

Indonesia in October (the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road) (Salamatin, 2020; Benli, 2021).

Although later claimed as part of the BRI, several major projects were negotiated or started

before the BRI’s official announcement such as “the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor... [and]

the construction of Gwadar Port... signed as early as 2001... [with] phase one of construction...

completed in 2006” (Benli, 2021). In late 2013, the BRI was officially announced as one of the

largest, most ambitious infrastructure projects in known history (Benli, 2021; Chatzky et al.,

2023). As President Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy initiative and the Chinese Community

Party’s (CCP) “primary mechanism of economic statecraft”, Xi Jinping stances the BRI as

China’s means of completing its “‘historic mission’ to bring about China’s ‘national

rejuvenation’ ... [and to develop] ‘political civilization’ writ large... [following] ‘Chinese wisdom

and a Chinese approach’” (Lindley, 2022; Greer, 2018). This objective and project were so

important to President Xi Jinping that the BRI was written directly into the CCP’s constitution

(Greer, 2018). The BRI appears to, “represent nothing less than an attempt to solve China’s

problems of overcapacity and surplus capital, declining trade opportunities, growing debt, and

falling rates of profit through a geographic expansion of China’s economic activity and

processes” (Hart-Landsberg, 2021).

The name One Belt One Road and its subsequent name, the Belt and Road Initiative

(BRI), is literal. The BRI separates into two main segments: the Belt that recreates the land route

of the historic Silk Road and the Road that paths through a series of ports to create a maritime

trade route spanning several oceans (Rashid et al., 2023). With trillions of dollars of

infrastructure development and economic integration strategy, the BRI was designed to link East

Asia and Europe through physical infrastructure and has since expanded further into Africa,

Oceania, Southeast Asia, and Latin America (Chatzky et al., 2023). By 2023, China claims that

147 countries, “accounting for two-thirds of the world’s population and 40 percent of the global

GDP— have signed on to projects or indicated an interest in doing so” (Chatzky et al.).

Beyond the grandeur promised by CCP leadership, the BRI is, like a great deal of

Chinese political initiatives, opaque and constantly evolving. It is not a “unified, coherent

strategy, but rather... a fragmented collection of bilateral arrangements made on different terms”

(Jie & Wallace, 2021). China’s central government cannot produce a list of “what projects are

part of the BRI, and which are not” (Jie & Wallace, 2021). By design, “the BRI [is] fully

culturally, politically and economically amorphous: it could shape-shift to meet the form of

whatever country it entered, blending smoothly into the existing economic and political

landscape, serving whatever regime that welcomed it” (Shepard, 2021). This means that the BRI

can stake claim to a diverse set of events and segments of infrastructure including large-scale

energy pipelines, highways, railways, ports, border crossings, special economic zones (“designed

to create jobs”), “financial integration, cooperation in science and technology, cultural and

academic exchanges, and the establishment of cooperation mechanisms” (Chatzky et. al., 2023;

Hart-Landsberg, 2021). Previously complete projects have been retroactively labeled under the

overarching BRI flag and unsuccessful projects have been “re-branded as ‘local’” when they are

viewed unfavorably by the public (Shepard, 2021a).

As one would expect from a long-term investment, the BRI has caused “the state [to lose]

money rather than [bring] back profits” (Benli, 2021). Despite the BRI’s economic origins, the

project has repeatedly prioritized political positioning over these economic losses. In congruence

with Sinocentrism, the CCP views China as the “only central, superior and sovereign entity...

[that is] entitled to shape the policy of the countries in its neighborhood” (Kaczmarski, 2016, p.

24). Often BRI projects are driven by a need to secure, “intelligence and [amass] political,

military, and economic leverage over participating countries through the accrual and

manipulation of debt” (USC US-China Institute, 2022). Many railroad routes created under the

BRI were, “economically pointless, unlikely to operate at a profit, and driven far more by

political need than market demand” (Hart-Landsberg, 2021). Through the BRI via aid, trade, and

strategic foreign direct investment, China can, “build up durable influence in [external] states...

independent of potential domestic changes... to create a regional order based on Chinese

leadership” (Manuel, 2017; Kaczmarski, 2016, p. 26).

China funds BRI projects in collaboration with foreign countries through, “loans, not

grants, and Chinese state-owned enterprises will also be encouraged to invest” (Manuel, 2017).

These agreements are neither assistance nor truly commercial (as “repayments are often backed

by collateral commitments (e.g., lease rights, minerals, or commodities) made to the PRC

government”) (Congressional Research Service, 2023). Often these payments bypass the host

country (“approximately 90% of [BRI] projects are being built by Chinese companies”), going

directly to a PRC firm that works on the project as the host government pays for it

(Hart-Landsberg, 2021). Sometimes recipients of collateral commits include state firms

designated by the PRC that are not party to the original transaction (Congressional Research

Service, 2023). At a minimum, China can “make many smaller countries feel economically

beholden to China” (Manuel, 2017). In a 2021 study of BRI debt financing contracts, contracts

were found to include, “clauses that restrict restructuring with the group of twenty-two major

creditor nations known as the Paris Club.’ China also frequently retains the right to demand

repayment at any time, giving Beijing the ability to use funding as a tool to enforce Chinese hot

button issues” (Chatzky et al., 2023). At its worst, if a country cannot pay back a loan, China,

through the BRI agreement, can claim the project that it helped fund including “coal mines, oil

pipelines, and power plants, and this have enormous leverage over the [foreign] government”

(Manuel, 2017). Historically, China has seized strategic ports through this strategy, including the

port of Hambantota in Sri Lankan which its government was forced to lease to China after “it

could not repay its more than $8 billion in loans from Chinese firms” and Djibouti who, after

defaulting on a loan, allowed for China to build a Chinese military base on its soil

(Hart-Landsberg, 2021; Salamatin, 2020). This practice, known as “debt trap diplomacy,” allows

for China, as an economically powerful country, to make deals with less powerful country that

promise “long-term detrimental investment deals” that appear to be good for the country on a

short-term basis (Salamatin, 2020). These investments, for many desperate countries, are a kind

of poor man’s poison; the offer and development process are “very methodical” and includes a

set of “diplomatic visits followed by written agreements” (Salamatin, 2020). Once these

countries are lured into these deals, China “leverages the imbalance of power to ‘either acquire

the project altogether or to acquire political leverage in that country’” (Salamatin, 2020). Even

BRI MOUs are steeped in manipulation tactics, sitting within a grey area of enforce-ability. These

memorandums allow China to exercise indirect influence over partners by claiming that the

agreements “are nonbinding while simultaneously attaching them to other legally binding

agreements through the quotation of existing and legally binding bilateral investment treaties and

other trade agreements” (Salamatin, 2020).

To continue down the path created by China’s controversial agreement practices, the PRC

is also known for BRI projects within countries that others ostracize such as those that are, “run

by dictators, don’t respect human rights, and are corrupt—such as Zimbabwe, North Korea,

Niger, Angola, and Burma (Manuel, 2017). With refreshing honesty, Ugandan President Yoweri

Museveni noted that “he likes Chinese investment because they ‘don’t ask too many questions,’

and ‘come with … big money, not small money’” (Manuel, 2017). Frankly, China is willing to

work with dictators who do not respect human rights and behave corruptly because its country

faces the same issues. In the same year that the BRI action plan was originally published, China

began massive crackdowns on labor activism. Over time, the PRC continued to detain and crack

down on worker activists and students who support worker organizing efforts (Hart-Landsberg,

2021).

Internationally, China is well known for covering up its government-funded genocide,

detainment, and “re-education” of Uighurs (whose home sits at a key location for the BRI at the

entry to Eurasia) and for its “violating established norms of treaty and customary environmental

law” (Salamatin, 2020). The Chinese government fails to protect victims by facilitating forced

labor domestically, perpetuating genocide, and utilizing forced labor internment camps for

minority populations, using “emerging technologies to carry out discriminatory surveillance and

ethno-racial profiling” (USC US-China Institute, 2022). As a country actively participating in the

human trafficking of minority groups, China’s track record of human rights abuses does not paint

a pretty picture: “A total of 679 allegations of human rights abuses involving Chinese companies

operating abroad were recorded between 2013 and 2020” (Lo, 2021). Out of these allegations,

“1,690 human rights related issues were identified, ranging from land rights, pollution... labor

rights, health threats, and losses of livelihood [for indigenous peoples]” (Lo, 2021). For ordinary

people, BRI countries seem to worsen over time with heavy debts, unregulated multinational

corporations often funded by Chinese investors, “backdoor deals, exploitation of resources and

the environment, displacement of local communities, [increased domestic] corruption, domestic

financial deficiency, [and] the rise of xenophobia” (Benli, 2021).

While ignoring previous human recommendations of the Human Rights Council, China

has repeatedly attempted to undermine human rights at an international level by promoting the

reframing of “the right to development” as a human right equal to or more important than other

human rights. In theory, China is pushing for the conflation of development and security. By

linking the right of development to “technical assistance and capacity building, China has created

links between development and security that it can rely upon to justify its actions under the BRI”

(Salamatin, 2020). If passed, China’s views and resolutions support, “China’s view that human

rights issues should ultimately be handled at the domestic level” (Salamatin, 2020). As China

increases its soft power internationally, concerns have arisen that the CCP may “leverage its

position to encourage other states to emulate its own human rights practices [such as] attempting

to delegitimize human rights defenders... weakening state obligations to cooperate with UN

Human Rights Council mechanisms” (Salamatin, 2020).

Through its BRI project, human rights have continued to deteriorate in Eurasia. Due to

the prevalence of corruption within China and its partners, the displacement of indigenous

groups along the BRI, and as a consequence of globalization, it was natural for the Belt and Road

Initiative to inspire organized human trafficking. The evidence of this practice extends across

continents from newsworthy Cambodia and Myanmar to the silent victims of bride trafficking

and forced labor. Beyond its borders, China’s One Belt One Road project enables international

human trafficking.

For the BRI, China specifically exploits countries that other world powers— namely the

United States— will not assist including authoritarian regimes and countries with high rates of

human rights abuses and poverty. With the appearance of a savior to those left behind, China,

“presents poorer states with an offer the West never had for them: to provide them with

infrastructure and technology” (Kaczmarski, 2016, p. 27). In many of the countries that the BRI

“aims to connect, corruption is endemic” (Hillman, 2019). Because the Chinese government does

not oversee these projects, conditions “are ripe for inefficiency since many countries involved in

the BRI exhibit high levels of internal corruption” (Lindley, 2022). Functionally, the BRI’s

decentralized project-management system and concessional loans are a “recipe for cost

escalation and corruption” (Greer, 2018). In smaller or authoritarian countries “there is little

chance that leaders will be held accountable for lining their pockets (or, more rarely, the coffers

of their local communities) at the entire nation’s expense” (Greer, 2018). Within these

“systemically corrupt business and regulatory environments,” bribery may be a natural way for

construction companies to garner necessary local support (Benli, 2021). This corrupt

environment encourages “terrible governance, environmental, and human rights standards” and

plays a vital role “in facilitating trafficking in persons and perpetuating impunity for traffickers”

(Manuel, 2017; US Department of State, 2022).

Alternatively, the abuse of laborers and “undesirables” is almost implicitly sanctioned by

the Chinese government. China’s Justice system does little to prevent or counter organized

criminal activity or the abuse of BRI workers. Since the 1990s and earlier, China has faced a

history rife with bribery, prostitution, and international organized crime syndicates. After a

century of poverty, “Chinese people became increasingly aware of the superiority of capitalism,”

and the belief that, “money is everything” became a social norm (Wing et al., 2019). From this

mentality grew strong social divisions and disparities “between the rich and the poor, the urban

and rural populations, and the inland and coastal provinces” (Wing et al., 2019). This

discrimination eventually matured into a “get-rich-quick mentality [that promoted] extreme

forms [of capitalistic behavior] including illegal, iniquitous, and immoral activities” (Wing et al.,

2019). As a result, the Justice system within China covers its eyes when the strong prey upon the

weak. Chinese judicial systems “handle most cases with indicators of forced labor as

administrative issues... and seldom... under anti-trafficking statutes... [preferring instead to

prosecute under laws with lesser penalties such as] domestic violence, labor contract violations,

and child abuse” (USC US-China Institute, 2022). Many corrupt officials accept and expect

bribes to obstruct, “the reporting and gathering of evidence, influencing witnesses, tipping off

traffickers of pending raids and investigations, or otherwise interfering with the prosecution of

perpetrators of illegal activities” (US Department of State, 2022). Courts were more likely to

“prosecute human rights advocates and organizations drawing attention to forced labor” than

companies that broke labor laws (USC US-China Institute, 2022). In neighboring countries, law

enforcement personnel found PRC agents mostly unresponsive to requests for cooperation on

cross-border trafficking cases and others found Chinese bureaucracy to “hinder joint operations”

(USC US-China Institute, 2022). Within special economic zones operated by PRC

national-owned companies, foreign officials were blocked or slowed by jurisdictional issues

while pursuing trafficking investigations (USC US-China Institute, 2022). Legislation often

ignores those they view as weak or undesirable by limiting the scope of victim identification and

ignoring those among key victim demographics such as men or boys older than the age of

fourteen (USC US-China Institute, 2022). For adult men trafficked and forced to labor, Chinese

Criminal Law is incredibly restrictive, requiring ample evidence of illegal detention and

intentional injury from employers. For those outside of the country, where BRI construction

projects are mostly located, Chinese overseas workers have found it nearly impossible to collect

evidence and file lawsuits. If found collecting evidence or “even [talking] to other workers about

labor rights violations, they will be warned by their employers,” leaving workers without

effective protection (Zhang, 2022). Despite existing policies, law enforcement officials have

historically detained foreign women on “suspicions of ‘prostitution’... without screening them for

indicators of sex trafficking—...for as long as eight months—before deporting them for

immigration violations... [or sending them to] ‘rehabilitation camps’ [with] forced labor

conditions” (USC US-China Institute, 2022). In some cases, authorities detained victims of sex

trafficking who sought help for months before giving them the “‘choice’ to return to their PRC

‘husbands’ or be repatriated to their country of origin. If victims chose repatriation, authorities

did not allow them to take their children with them” (US Department of State, 2023).

Human trafficking and corruption, “are closely linked criminal activities, whose

interrelation is frequently referred to in international fora” (US Department of State, 2022).

Certainly, as a result of these overlapping factors it is no wonder that over the years the

international community has received continuous reports of law enforcement agents “benefiting

from, permitting, or directly facilitating sex trafficking and forced labor” with zero “legal

investigations, prosecutions, convictions, or administrative fines or demotions of law

enforcement officials allegedly involved in the crime” (USC US-China Institute, 2022). Instead,

in some cases the Chinese government officials would “obstruct meaningful access for

international observers to sites... that would... facilitate investigations into credible allegations of

forced labor” (USC US-China Institute, 2022). Trafficking-related corruption can reach every

level of the CCP hierarchy from junior law enforcement officers to senior officials at the highest

levels. Corrupt Chinese officials assist “unscrupulous or unlicensed recruitment agencies...

[recruit] workers for overseas employment, [provide] false documentation, [enable] illegal

movements across borders... facilitate or turn a blind eye to ongoing illicit activities... [and]

facilitate the acquisition, sale, or border crossing of goods that may have been produced by

forced labor” (US Department of State, 2022). The CCP has publicly displayed a willingness to

work directly with Chinese organized crime in Hong Kong if said groups, “support... Beijing’s

[or the country’s] objectives” from as early as 1984 (Staff, 2022). After supplying CCP officials

with protection overseas, a former CCP head once remarked, that these Chinese triads “contained

‘patriotic elements’... ‘there are many good guys among them’ (Staff, 2022). Although there is

no evidence of direct collusion between the CCP and organized crime groups, China has

repeatedly displayed a willingness to ignore the harm caused by transnational criminal

enterprises if those actions support CCP objectives or provide opportunities that the CCP can

leverage (Staff, 2022). In some cases, government officials and construction heads generate

demand for human trafficking, asking for sex or cheap (forced) labor from local communities in

exchange for “food, medicine, education, or other benefits or goods” (US Department of State,

2022). All these practices embolden human traffickers and incentivize organized crime

syndicates to expand their operations and victimize more people.

The economic disparity, displacement, and debt caused by the BRI also enable human

trafficking. For China, these conditions help fill a need for cheap labor and bride and sex

trafficking generated by a decreased working population and gender imbalance caused by its

one-child policy (Oxford Analytica, 2019). With the development of cross-border links and

increased travel under the implementation of the BRI, opportunities, and demand for trafficked

women “from surrounding developing countries for forced marriage to men in China who are

unable to find local brides” has increased (Oxford Analytica, 2019). Most human trafficking

abuses occur and are “more likely to take place” in countries with “weaker governance and

where Chinese investments are dominant” such as Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Peru,

Ecuador, and many other African and Latin American countries (Al Jazeera, 2021).

The target demographic of BRI projects, countries with resource-rich economies that are

seeking foreign investment, face low commodity values, straining “government revenues and

precipitated exchange rate crises—both of which constrain a government’s ability to repay

external borrowing” (Hart-Landsberg, 2021). Since 2013, overall debt to China has steadily

increased, “surpassing 20 percent of GDP in some countries” (Chatzky et al., 2023). Because

countries are required to pay back loans even if the infrastructure does not generate economic

benefits, smaller or debt-ridden countries, which may “lack the institutional capacity to assess

agreements (such as risks associated with currency fluctuation)” are particularly vulnerable to

loan default (Hart-Landsberg, 2021). Chinese loans slowly increased their interest rates as years

passed, making loans harder to repay for countries signing on to new BRI projects and leading

such countries to, as one source describes, “[mortgage] their futures” (Manuel, 2017). While the

traditional aid that China supplies to foreign countries does aid local economies, most of the BRI

agreements come from loans. These investments have historically harmed economic growth;

“Chinese imports often displace African local firms, and thus hurt employment in small

enterprises” (Manuel, 2017). Construction projects are built by CCP companies, employ mostly

CCP nationals and materials, and are paid for with a loan that the host country must pay back

(with interest) (Hart-Landsberg, 2021). For Laos, the BRI’s railway brought extraordinarily little

economic contribution compared to its accrued debts of around 60% of its GDP (Lim, 2023). In

Pakistan, “imports required “to build CPEC infrastructure contributed to a widening budget

deficit, ultimately resulting in a bailout from the International Monetary Fund” (Chatzky et al.,

2023). In Ghana and Zambia, “high debt loads that partly consisted of BRI loans led to sovereign

default” (Chatzky et al., 2023). In Montenegro, the Bar-Boljare plunged the country into further

debt, endangering the country with unsustainable debt (Hart-Landsberg, 2021).

In function, China is generating from these countries a supply of potential trafficking

victims to fulfill its labor, sex, and marriage needs. While damaging national economies, the BRI

also physically causes damage in these countries, “[displacing] or [disrupting] existing

communities or sensitive ecological areas” (Hart-Landsberg, 2021). Labeled a human rights

disaster, a China-financed hydroelectric dam in Cambodia displaced “nearly 5,000 people from

ethnic minorities... [permanently] flooding [their homes and] former communities” (Al Jazeera,

2021). Later when the dam was completed it flooded large areas upstream displacing thousands

more, including several Indigenous communities (Al Jazeera, 2021). While consulting affected

communities, concerns were “largely ignored” (Al Jazeera, 2021). Making no attempt to obtain,

“free, prior, and informed consent” some were coerced into “accepting inadequate compensation

for lost property and income, provided with poor housing and services at resettlement sites, and

given no training or assistance to secure new livelihoods” (Al Jazeera, 2021). Once ordered to

move, objectors were ignored, dismissed, threatened, or jailed (Al Jazeera, 2021). All these

conditions including increased economic instability, displacement, and increases in crime caused

by instability generate asylum-seekers, IDPs, and refugees who are at a “very high risk of

trafficking due to their lack of legal, financial, and food security. Limited access to legal

protections such as identity documents and citizenship rights [as we see in small countries that

lack instructional protections] exacerbate displaced populations’ vulnerabilities to traffickers”

(US Department of State, 2022). Economic disparities within these regions and between Chinese

officials and construction leads and local communities generate “both a demand for and supply

of cheap labor driving growth in human trafficking and the smuggling of migrants as people seek

opportunity” (UNODC, 2019). For women and children in countries with limited work options,

countries see an increase in sex, familial, and trafficking. This is especially a problem in rural

and low-income countries with systemic inequalities, such as a lack of access to education (US

Department of State, 2022). Women, racial and ethnic minority groups, indigenous populations,

and those within the LGBT community are extremely vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation

due to “social, legal, and cultural marginalization” that can lead to homelessness, lacking

education, and social exile (US Department of State, 2022).

The underlying concept behind this international victimization is connectivity. With access,

human traffickers can easily find, move, and supply victims to meet rising demands for Chinese

demand for cheap labor, sex, and brides. There is a deep “relationship between cross-border

crime and economic integration” (Sprick, 2017). Globalization, the connection between countries

through infrastructure, trade, and collaboration, streamlines and facilitates human trafficking for

organized crime syndicates, increasing accessibility to a supply and demand of human beings

and conveniently allowing human trafficking organizations to expand their business (Sprick,

2017). Depictions of Northern wealth and privilege alongside China’s transition to a developed

market economy hang over the populaces of these small countries, making them aware of their

deprivation and leaving an exploitable sense of desperation and hope that human traffickers use

to recruit and find customers for their “services” (Sprick, 2017). While “mapping and overlaying

illicit flows with the physical locality of [BRI] infrastructure,” researchers found that big

infrastructure changes trafficking routes (Shaw, 2023). Along the global highways of commerce,

human traffickers often overtly utilize containers through established ports and along famous

railroads to transport their “inventory” (Shaw, 2023). As Eurasia integrates through the BRI, it

becomes increasingly convenient for criminals to “recruit additional members, acquire new

clients, diversify their portfolios, and outsource their operations to less-developed areas with

laxer laws” (Dubow, 2017). The BRI, much like that of legal commercial activities, has an

“enormous impact on traffic,” joining “relatively vulnerable areas in Southeast Asia, East Africa,

and the like” with the industrialized Chinese world of organized crime (Shaw, 2023). Many of

the BRI’s projects coincide with or elongate existing trafficking routes such as through

Myanmar’s “Golden Triangle” (Dubow, 2017). With the “removal and reduction of barriers for

international trade and financial transactions,” the renovation of old highways through regions

with high rates of organized crime and government corruption makes crime and monopolization,

“easier” (Dubow, 2017). Alongside the new “Silk Road of organized crime,” increased flow of

labor and goods across national borders exposes isolated areas and workers in exploitable or

vulnerable environments previously too remote to reach criminal control and allows for

organized crime groups to widen the scale of the problem and grow “their footprint in Southeast

Asia” alongside their profits (Zhang, 2022; City University of Hong Kong, 2017; Sprick, 2017;

Shaw, 2023; Lim, 2023). With just a small portion of BRI countries signing onto a mutual

judicial assistance agreement or extradition treaty with China, deficits in domestic and

international criminal law frameworks and cooperation and inconsistencies in border

management open the door to increasingly illegitimate commercial flows of people and goods

across regions hidden within a mass of legitimate transactions (Sim et al., 2019; Sprick, 2017).

Increasingly “liberal border regimes that promote cross-border trade” and deregulated economies

lead, reasonably, to more permeable borders and opportunities for multi-regional crime (Sprick,

2017).

In reference to the practices of China’s capitalization on corruption, the supply of

trafficking victims through BRI displacement, and the convenience of globalization, there are

many well-known examples of large-scale organized human trafficking organizations. At its

baseline, the BRI can enable human trafficking due to the PRC’s indifference and lack of

significant effort to prevent it (USC US-China Institute, 2022; Dubow, 2017). Outside of

government control, the BRI’s opaque nature has allowed for “Chinese investors—including

some linked to organized crime—[to] claim an association with the signature program” (Tower

& Staats, 2022). Despite China’s “rigorous oversight of investments in fragile states,” protections

ironically do not extend to the BRI (Tower & Staats, 2022). This means that organized crime

syndicates, often funded with Chinese investments, can metaphorically piggy-back on the

reputation of the BRI— “coopting Chinese government and Communist Party agencies [and]

giving contracts to state-owned enterprises and hiring government think tanks to [plan]— to lure

in victims for human trafficking, mask criminal behavior, and disincentivize CCP retaliation

(Tower & Staats, 2022). Within China’s special economic zones, where economic activity is less

regulated and taxation is lessened, countries have seen a startling increase in scams, fraud,

human trafficking, and modern-day slavery compounds (Shaw, 2023).

In 2010, Cambodia signed a 12.5 billion U.S. dollar agreement with the CCP to invest in

the Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone (SSEZ) to “develop textile and garment, hardware,

and machinery industries” (China Labor Watch, 2022). Chinese capital linked the BRI first

developed “Sihanoukville and its attached port,” creating an area meant to inspire free trade and

international cooperation (Desai et al., 2022). Through the BRI, Chinese investment in Cambodia

“skyrocketed,” accounting for, “43 percent of foreign direct investment in the country in 2019”

(Desai et al., 2022). Companies entering this zone would enjoy various, “incentives including

waivers on export tax and import tax for crude material involved in production,” promoting

foreign investment and business within its walls (China Labor Watch, 2022). This special

economic zone, however, did not fulfill these grand promises. Sihanoukville did not play, “a

positive role [in the local economy], because it is mostly about gambling, and the clients aren't

local” (Desai et al., 2022). Cambodia, as “an extremely corrupt country... [where] authorities

treat the country as private property and run the nation like a private enterprise” capitalized on

the BRI and Chinese investments in its way (Hong, 2022). Banned within China and Cambodia,

Chinese investors and triad groups found that they could take advantage of lax rules of law in

Cambodia and house online gambling operations conveniently in Cambodia while attracting,

“millions of Chinese gamblers, tourists and workers to capture shares of the $145 billion a year

market in China for illegal online gaming” (China Labor Watch, 2022; Tower & Clapp, 2022b).

Instead of manufacturers, Chinese investors, like Dong Le-Cheng and Xu Aimin, with previous

track records of illegal gambling and corruption transferred their businesses to Cambodia (Lam,

2022). Under the “legacy of China’s ‘Belt and Road’ initiative,” in 2021, after Chinese workers

were forced to return to China due to COVID restrictions and youth from other Asian countries

began seeking jobs outside of their own countries for similar reasons, gangs began, “large-scale

trafficking of alternative labor into the zones and developing new tools for international

investment or crypto-currency-fraud schemes that rely on large numbers of scammers building

personal contacts with potential victims on social media” (Hong, 2022; Tower & Clapp, 2022b;

China Labor Watch, 2022). Via “job scams” individuals who could speak Chinese began to be

targeted (lured and in some cases kidnapped) from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Macau

for forced labor (Lam, 2022). As a simple form of forced, coercive labor, at first foreigners were,

“introduced to Cambodia by intermediaries/labor brokers who generally ask the jobseekers a

deposit upfront, and had their passports confiscated upon arrival [to limit their freedom]. If

workers [wish to quit], they usually need to compensate their company for “damages” ...–usually

a few thousand dollars–before they can go home” (China Labor Watch, 2022). With

ever-increasing immigration discourse of ethnic conflicts, environmental pollution, crimes,

gentrification, and displacement of local and indigenous populations (China Labor Watch, 2022).

Although this problem is common in BRI countries even for Chinese nationals working under

PRC companies, Cambodia’s workforce and criminal underworld continued to mature their

human trafficking to optimize gambling and scam profits (China Labor Watch, 2022).

Sihanoukville was a strategic position along China’s BRI that allowed for a large inflow

of, “Chinese capital, labor, and construction” and the creation of a “hub for crime syndicates...

[and] Chinese-funded enterprises and casinos in just a few years” (Hong, 2022). Even after such

practices built huge fortunes for Chinese investors, they continued to adapt their workforce and

business strategies; their impunity was driven by their strong, “corrupt relationships with police,

local officials, overseas Chinese associations and Chinese government and party organizations”

(Hong, 2022; Tower & Clapp, 2022b). Instead of generic forced labor, these organized crime

syndicates force their workers to victimize and defraud others via “Pig Butchering,” an online

scam that uses social engineering to steal from victims by gradually luring them to increase their

investments into a form of cryptocurrency or other seemingly sound investment before suddenly

disappearing (Hong, 2022). Some victims were reportedly “forced to ask their families for

money... or [to] scam... their friends and families [by bringing them] to Cambodia [to replace

themselves with others]” (China Labor Watch, 2022). By 2020, cyber scamming operations were

already beginning to replace Chinese casinos. Like the previous scam, most of these human

trafficking victims (from China or smaller countries) are lured via “snakeheads,” or smugglers,

through false job advertisements, love cons, and false cheap of free trips abroad, finding

themselves trapped once they reach Cambodia (China Labor Watch, 2022). Inside dozens of

these operation centers scattered all over Cambodia (mostly across the border of Thailand and

Laos), victims are then forced into massive Chinese-run scamming compounds and treated as

indentured servants. The entire process is streamlined: the victim’s passport is taken, the

individual is threatened, and then taken away to an assignment group before being trained on

how to commit fraud, illegal online gambling, and online romance scams (Hong, 2022). They are

taught, “about various online scams involving employment, romance, crypto investment, making

targets take nude photos, and intimidation” before being equipped with a “mobile phone, two

computers, and seven or eight fake accounts, scripts of their deceptive lines, [and other

materials]" (Hong, 2022). Victims are forced to buy their way out of slavery and face slavery-era

conditions including restrictions of freedom, imprisonment, beatings, electrocution, sexual

assault, forced prostitution, organ harvesting, death, and being “‘resold’ to other scam

operations’” (China Labor Watch, 2022; Hong, 2022; Lam, 2022). Uncooperative workers may

be sold to other scam operators for higher costs, increasing the amount of money that they must

repay to be free. By 2021, “thousands of victims were involved and new victims from different

countries [were] reported almost daily” (China Labor Watch, 2022). Victims are sold for ten to

thirty thousand U.S. dollars per person; the price for which the victim is asked to pay back to

their “bosses” before they can leave. For those who escape, the organizations organize bounties

and cooperate to find those who are missing on online forums (Podkul & Liu, 2022). By 2022, it

was estimated that in Cambodia alone crime networks have lured “50,000 to 100,000 people into

slave-like conditions beyond the reach of law enforcement” (Tower & Clapp, 2022b).

While running illegal and legal businesses, these groups mask their behaviors through

denial— declaring that others are impersonating their group— while claiming “to be operating

under the umbrella of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)” in public addresses (Tower &

Clapp, 2022a). The Prince Group, for example, publicly masquerades as a group of real estate

developers while raking in money from fraudulent businesses built on fraud, human trafficking,

prostitution, and drugs, and well-established money laundering systems (Hong, 2022). With their

power, owners, and bosses — mainly mainland Chinese and Malaysians— “enjoy nepotism and

connections at the highest level of the Cambodian government” (Hong, 2022). Another example

of corrupt ties to government is the Arc de Triomphe in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, which is “led

[under] Rithy Raksmei, brother of the... son-in-law to ruling party senator Kok An, whose

business empire includes properties that have faced allegations of forced scam labor” (Podkul &

Liu, 2022).

As a devoted ally of China, Chinese forces seem hesitant to demand harsh crackdowns on

Cambodia that would, “upset the Cambodian elites profiting from their association with the

Mafias” (Pierson, 2022). Despite Chinese and Cambodian police action in 2019, the movement

of Chinese investments and illegal casino activities seems to have benefited these organizations,

uniting groups and leading to the creation of the Yatai New City Project (Shwekoko)” (Tower &

Clapp, 2022a). For trafficking victims, the involvement of law enforcement was meaningless or

caused further harm. Chinese and Cambodian officials would prosecute those involved in cyber

scams “regardless of their status as victims of human trafficking” (China Labor Watch, 2022). If

these parties were to escape or avoid prosecution, victims would instead be charged as illegal

immigrants without any legally recognized status and be sent to detention centers, “sleeping on

the floor in tight quarters without any air conditioning, according to images shared by a detainee”

(Podkul & Liu, 2022).

In public statements, China and Cambodia condemn human trafficking and the

companies involved in such practices if public sentiment requires it. In Chinese-written papers

on the subject, authors repeatedly noted that Chinese labor markets were better than foreign ones

even in cases of forced labor, implying that victims should be grateful to their traffickers (Loc,

2022). Victims, one source noted, will not be useful, proper members of society because “the one

who has working skills can easily get a good job” (Loc, 2022).

Within press releases, media sources focus on Myanmar as a secondary hub for organized

human trafficking and scam operations. For most of the same reasons as Cambodia and via all

the same means, Myanmar’s Special Economic Zone, civil war, and stop-and-go BRI projects

have allowed criminal activity to flourish into a billion-dollar business (Lim, 2023). In 2023, the

United Nations estimated that there were 120,000 human trafficking victims in Myanmar

(Rebane et al.). Disproportionate to the number of headlines in each country, Myanmar’s

human trafficking problem could be “two to three times [larger than Cambodia] most of them

enticed through social media ads promising lucrative office jobs in Thailand” (Tower & Clapp,

2022b).

Many of the victims are gathered from across the border in Thailand “with promises of

white-collar jobs” before being transported into Myanmar “where they are held against their will

and forced to steal millions in cryptocurrency” (Rebane et al., 2023). As globalization and to

some degree the BRI continues to connect countries across continental divides, Indians,

Indonesians, Taiwanese, Kenyans, and Ukrainians alike are trafficked into Southeast Asia to

work under Chinese slavery scam factories enabled by the special economic zones created under

the BRI and funded by investment companies who claim to fall under the BRI’s umbrella (Tower

& Clapp, 2022b). As modern-day slaves under one of the largest collections of human trafficking

victims in recent history, victims are expected to impersonate generic personalities— often

young women— to conduct a pig butchering scam or love scam, stealing from anyone that they

can (Rebane et al., 2023). Hosted inside city-like enclaves with the appearance of penal colonies

and full of living spaces and offices, each victim is assigned to a group, room, and boss based

upon their nationality (Sipalan & Jones, 2022). Many accounts claim that workers are tortured or

“threatened with having their organs harvested” if they do not “generate adequate revenue from

operating scams” (Tower & Clapp, 2022b).

Criminal activity continues to expand in this region as syndicates, addicted to the amount

of money made from these operations, relocate to other countries when they are kicked out by

law enforcement in another country (Sipalan & Jones, 2022). The Saixigang Industrial Zone

Project (“Saixigang” translates roughly to “Surpass Sihanoukville”) is one of the larger bases of

operations for these organizations (Tower & Clapp, 2022a). The leaders of these groups are often

triad leaders such as Wan Kuok-kui who formerly ran the 14k mafia to engage in criminal

activities on a global scale and who are now running businesses that “claim to be operating under

the umbrella of China’s [BRI]” (Tower & Clapp, 2022a). Around 157 square kilometers Burmese

territory fell under the control of Chinese groups tied to illegal activities by 2022 (Tower &

Clapp, 2022a).

Despite the size of these factories and the fact that many of the victims of these scams

and human trafficking in these regions are Chinese, the CCP has mostly remained silent on

“ethnic-Chinese criminal organizations that purport to represent Beijing’s strategic interest”

(Staff, 2022). Beijing will step up to deny these connections only when projects generate strong

social or international backlash. For example, due to protests from local communities, media

reports, and pressure from the local parliament in Myanmar, China firmly disavowed the

Saixigang Industrial Zone Project in a formal statement (Tower & Staats, 2022). Due to

international pressure from the United States Treasury, China denied the connections between

Chinese politicians and organized crime syndicates (Staff, 2022). The CCP’s “strong public

concern over the rise in crime” is limited to just that: concern. Historically, Chinese efforts to

crack down on organized crime in Myanmar have, “done more to increase Chinese security

influence... than [to] thwart the powerful Chinese crime syndicates not deeply embedded in the

country... [and] the lawlessness... and its global consequences... that [have] spread throughout the

regions [surrounding Myanmar]” (Tower, 2023). These criminal zones continue to expand

despite China’s attempts to appear “tough on crime” (Tower, 2023).

Although more inter-regional, bride trafficking and forced marriages have also increased

along the BRI. Human traffickers use the PRC as a “transit point to subject foreign individuals to

trafficking in other countries throughout Asia and in international maritime industries” (USC

US-China Institute, 2022). Along the BRI where construction projects occur, “Sex trafficking...

and exploitative marriages featuring elements of sex trafficking and forced labor have reportedly

increased” (USC US-China Institute, 2022). Because the BRI displaces local communities

rapidly with minimal or no compensation “for those who lose their homes,” vulnerabilities are

compounded, and many fall victim to trafficking or exploitation (USC US-China Institute, 2022).

Women and girls internationally, “from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and several countries in

Africa [have experienced] forced labor in domestic service, forced concubinage leading to forced

childbearing, and sex trafficking via forced and fraudulent marriage to PRC men” (USC

US-China Institute, 2022).

With the access granted by BRI transit systems, local gangs, and highly organized crime

syndicates recruit women and girls from rural areas before taking them to urban centers, “using a

combination of fraudulent job offers and coercion by imposing large travel fees, confiscating

passports, confining victims, or physically and financially threatening victims” and compel them

to engage in commercial sex (USC US-China Institute, 2022). Inside of the same large-scale

PRC-affiliated infrastructure and investment projects that sit within China’s special economic

zones, PRC human traffickers subject women and girls from Asian countries to sex trafficking.

Major segments of the BRI including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor have shown signs

of increased human trafficking and sexual exploitation as an “influx of migrant workers [has led

to an] increase in demand for commercial sex services” (Rashid et al., 2023). Although this

practice traditionally appeared in nations such as Vietnam and Myanmar, the practice expanded

alongside the BRI into new parts of Eurasia and Africa (Carvalho, 2023).

More and more women have been sold to Chinese men as Chinese men in rural areas

have found it easier and cheaper to buy wives than to marry Chinese women. Instead of paying

for dowries and going through the process of dating, customers of this form of trafficking prefer

to pay a small amount of money for smuggled women and girls from foreign countries

(Chandran, 2018). Under a price tag of around twelve thousand U.S. dollars, by 2012 there were

more than 1,280 foreign women and girls were rescued and repatriated to Vietnam, Laos, and

Myanmar” (Loc, 2022). As China’s one-child policy and regional access through the BRI have

exacerbated this problem, the number has exponentially increased (Barr, 2020). In a 2018 study,

it was found that more than, “7,500 women mostly from Kachin and Shan State had entered

forced marriages with Chinese men in the previous five years, and most were coerced into

bearing children” (Carvalho, 2023). Women in Myanmar, Cambodia, Pakistan, Vietnam,

Indonesia, Laos, Nepal, and other countries that are committed to the BRI are “typically tricked

by brokers who promise well-paid employment across the border in China” before being sold to

Chinese families for three thousand to thirty thousand U.S. dollars (Barr, 2020; USC US-China

Institute, 2022; Carvalho, 2023). Once purchased, the women become prisoners. Men, often in

partnership with their parents, sometimes, “incur large debts to cover these fees, which they

attempt to recover by subjecting the women and girls to forced labor or sex trafficking” (USC

US-China Institute, 2022).

Many of the women who are trafficked share a similar story: a broker convinces a

desperate victim that there are business opportunities in China before being transported across

countries to China and being thrown in front of a man who would “size” the victim up and

decide if she is worth the money (Carvalho, 2023). The woman is coerced to accept the marriage

and promises a small dowry (Carvalho, 2023). In some cases, it is the parents of the women or

girls who promote them to sell themselves to Chinese men, claiming that it will make their

family’s life better (Carvalho, 2023). Whether it is for prostitution, sexual material, marriage, or

cybersex trafficking, most survivors of human trafficking know their trafficker whether it is their

boyfriend, a relative, an online friend, or a neighbor (Carvalho, 2023; Admin, 2021). Those aged

thirteen to twenty-five are especially vulnerable; “Of the 1,248 detected victims of trafficking for

sexual exploitation during the 2014- 2017 period, almost 70 percent were girls [children]”

(Admin, 2021).

This form of crime is without risk for those trafficking the women. Women and girls are a

low priority for the home governments of these victims (Barr, 2020). Once the women find

themselves in China, many are not considered legally married or even legal residents of the

country. Treated as a slave, and physically and sexually abused, these women have nowhere to

go for help (Carvalho, 2023). Authorities from their home countries and China refuse to

investigate, acquit traffickers, and pressure women to not share their stories in fear that legal or

social action will harm BRI cooperation between China and these poorer countries (Carvalho,

2023).

According to Chinese public perception, these women are not victimized but rather

rescued by Chinese men. This pattern of trafficking “has become normalized” and synonymous

with “migrating for job opportunities” (Carvalho, 2023). Within Chinese government-funded

publications, Myanmar women experience a “happy and pleasant road” to marrying into China

(Barr, 2020). Chinese professors claim that the only problem with this kind of trafficking is that

“‘Myanmar women don’t know Chinese culture. Once they learn the Chinese language and

culture, their marriages are fine’” (Barr, 2020).

Although forced labor was a staple of Cambodia and Myanmar’s special economic zones,

it also continues along the entire BRI. To begin with, PRC authorities perpetuate human

trafficking crimes by forcing minorities, namely those living in the Xinjiang Uyghur

Autonomous Region, a frontier and hub of the BRI, into camps where they are “re-educated,”

displaced from their homes (so that the BRI can be built), and forced to work on domestic

products due to “incidents of violence and terrorism” alleged by the CCP and Chinese-allied

countries (Benli, 2021; Bifolchi, 2018).

Well-acquainted with forced labor from years of forced labor and mass arbitrary

detention of Uyghurs in China, the PRC has repeatedly been reported for forced labor in

countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe working on BRI projects or unlabeled

PRC-affiliated infrastructure projects (US Department of State, 2023). Even for Chinese citizens

working on the BRI, PRC authorities provide, “insufficient oversight of relevant recruitment

channels, contracts, and labor conditions, and... routinely failed to identify or assist those

exploited” (US Department of State, 2023).

Inside China, rural communities are lured by false job advertisements or forced or

coerced through other means, to move into a city where the PRC’s national household registry

system allows for criminals to legally restrict their victim’s freedom by legally changing his or

her residence. Under the control of criminals, this places the PRC’s “internal migrant

population—estimated to exceed 169 million people—at high risk of forced labor in brick kilns,

coal mines, and factories. Some of these businesses operate illegally and take advantage of lax

government enforcement” while others are legally owned, managed, operated, and sanctioned

under the PRC as BRI worksites funded by PRC companies, nationals, or the government (USC

US-China Institute, 2022).

As one source aptly succinctly remarked, “The entire Belt and Road initiative is based on

forced labor... the competitive advantage China is exporting is its low regard for human rights”

(Kuo & Chen, 2021). Despite the numerous safeguard policies and regulations designed to

protect overseas workers and to comply with local labor laws, PRC-owned companies working

on the BRI ignore these rules and exploit workers, exporting the same labor practices found

inside China (Halegua, 2020). Human rights— especially in opposition to forced labor—

deteriorate in BRI countries (Mihr et al., 2022). Outside of China, crime syndicates headed by

PRC nationals assist traffickers in Southeast Asian countries that are connected to China by the

BRI to “produce counterfeit travel documents to facilitate trans-border trafficking” and cooperate

with companies “operating under the auspices of the BRI” to supply migrant workers who—

forced to labor— manufacture necessary supplies for BRI projects (USC US-China Institute,

2022). Within more than eighty countries, PRC-owned and managed construction companies

force victims to work (USC US-China Institute, 2022).

Because the BRI requires a “substantial workforce,” laborers are often imported from

various external countries (Rashid et al., 2023). These workers are vulnerable to exploitation due

to inadequate working conditions, limited legal protections, and a general lack of oversight

(Rashid et al., 2023). Increased movement of people creates opportunities for human trafficking

and allows PRC companies to compel victims to work against their will using force, fraud, or

coercion (Rashid et al., 2023). Traffickers have targeted an estimated 6.4 million individuals in

migrant countries who are orphaned or have “developmental disabilities... and subject them to

forced labor and forced begging” (US Department of State, 2023). In some cases, workers have

had their human rights violated, are subjected to enforced disappearances, and are killed

extrajudicially (Rashid et al., 2023). Workers employed at large-scale BRI or PRC-affiliated

“construction projects, mining operations, and factories in African; European; Middle Eastern;

Asian and Pacific; and Latin American and Caribbean countries experience conditions indicative

of forced labor” (USC US-China Institute, 2022). Conditions include wage withholding, forcible

drug intake, harsh punishment for resistance or protest of work, absence of contracts, torture,

excessive work hours, restricted freedom of movement and external communication, deceptive

recruitment into debt bondage, physical and sexual abuse, retaliatory firings, resignation

penalties, denial of access to urgent medical care, confiscation of passports and identification

documents, and false promises of return-flight payments that allow for a company to retain a

laborer beyond the length of an original contract (USC US-China Institute, 2022; Zhang, 2022;

US Department of State, 2023). During the Pandemic, many of these conditions worsened due to

travel restrictions that allowed PRC nationals to confine workers to BRI worksites beyond the

term of their contract, “under the pretext of public health restrictions” (USC US-China Institute,

2022).

Those who are brave enough to attempt an escape, “often find themselves at the mercy of

local immigration authorities who are not always trained to receive or care for trafficking

victims” (USC US-China Institute, 2022). In one case, a man attempted to escape forced work

conditions by paying a PRC national broker to help them leave the country. The broker took his

money and dropped him off at another PRC-affiliated industrial park where they were forced to

work under the same set of abusive conditions. Saving money once again to escape, the next

smuggler dumped them into the water off the coast of Malaysia where, when they swam to shore,

authorities shot, arrested, and detained them (US Department of State, 2022). Overseas workers

are often given tourist visas for their work in other countries; with their short expiration dates

these visas allow for companies to threaten workers with deportation and indirectly pressure

workers to avoid speaking about labor rights abuses” (Zhang, 2022).

Chinese workers abroad “fall through the cracks of national labor law” (Kuo & Chen,

2021). Historically, the PRC has exercised little to no oversight over BRI contracts, recruitment

channels, and labor conditions (USC US-China Institute, 2022). Because China’s abroad labor

protection laws leave overseas worker’s cases under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of

Commerce (which is responsible for the economy and trade and not labor protection), Chinese

citizens are left with little to no means of legal assistance and BRI companies that illegally force

Chinese citizens to work are often left unpunished (Zhang, 2022). Even Chinese embassies lack

the jurisdictional power to help victims; one staffer noted, “We can of course speak with the

company, but whether the company listens to us is another matter” (Yasa, 2022). In one case,

workers were mocked and told that they should go back to China and sue the company; workers

noted that they lacked the money to sue and that doing so could threaten both their livelihood

and their families (Yasa, 2022). The countries in which they work hold little promise of justice;

many do not have protective anti-trafficking laws due to, “historical, cultural, and colonial

factors” or may even lack an effective justice system that can aid or protect victims (Zhang,

2022).

China has repeatedly and customarily enabled human trafficking within its borders and

outside of them. Just as the BRI began with the genocide, detention, and trafficking of Uighurs in

Northern China so has the PRC continued to engage in and allow human trafficking to be used in

ways that benefit China’s objectives and overall access to conveniences including workers, sex

work, wives, and money. As the BRI connects wealthy nations and worsens debt and living

standards in poor nations through false promises of prosperity and the long-term benefits of BRI

infrastructure projects, the world will likely see continued or expanded organized human

trafficking operations across Eurasia, Africa, and any other continents that the BRI touches. As

standards worsen and PRC and Chinese investors pillage and abuse these small countries in

collaboration with corrupt and ambitious foreign government officials, China’s demand for

human trafficking will continue to be supplied by its victims. Large-scale hubs of human

trafficking such as in Cambodia and Myanmar and small-scale bubbles of crime in the form of

bride, sex, and force labor trafficking via BRI construction projects and along BRI routes that are

built upon the corruption and predatory capitalization of individuals desperate for the projected

glory and success of China will not cease so long as countries allow for the PRC to feed off of

their people, worsen national debt, and make misleading deals that exchange the well being of the

public for the benefit of China and officials who tow the CCP’s political line. Within the

countries that China claims success in, the BRI has led to China’s seizure of assets, the

development of railways that enhance debt and have negligible impacts on trade, and the

development of crime dens created and managed by Chinese investors and criminals. With

consistent reports of human trafficking, local displacement, and shamelessly predatory practices

it is overtly clear that China is directly seeking out countries that are so desperate for critical

infrastructure and funding that they are willing to ignore China’s predatory and harmful practices

and intentions. For so long as the BRI project expands and the CCP maintains its apathy towards

large- and small-scale organized crime perpetuated by Chinese groups with impunity, it is likely

that human trafficking will affect any country that traffickers can easily and readily access

through the BRI.

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