New Chinese Embassy: Fortress or Not?

I'm channeling my inner Dr. Jane Loeffler as I look at photos of the new Chinese embassy in Washington, and I'm getting a very Fortress-y vibe.

The front face of the embassy certainly doesn't seem to express openness. Not friendly or welcoming at all. I see a fence, gates, vehicle barriers (those low posts, or 'bollards,' that are placed in front of the gates), no windows, just a dark forbidding hole of an entrance and an oppressive stone wall. Heavens! Who would want to go to that place for a visa?

A long view of the exterior isn't any better. There's a perimeter fence and more barriers, and the facade looks more guarded than diplomatic. Are the Chinese expressing fear with that architecture, or just inscrutability?

New Chinese Embassy in Washington DC is Open

The new Chinese embassy in Washington DC has officially opened, something that I, as an amateur critic of embassy architecture, have been happily anticipating. Today's Washington Post story has the details.

In a symbol of its growing stature, China inaugurated its new Washington embassy this week, a fortress of glass and limestone that consumes almost the length of an entire block of the international enclave just off Connecticut Avenue.

The opening last night drew a large crowd of diplomats and politicians, many of them swooning over the vaulted ceilings, skylights and wood-paneled walls. The building [TSB note: actually five buildings over a ten-acre site], which is far larger than neighboring embassies, was designed by two sons of I.M. Pei, the renowned Chinese American architect who beamed from the stage.

China's decision to import its own workforce has prompted criticism from some U.S. labor leaders, who contend that the jobs should have gone to American workers, particularly at a time when an economic slowdown has rattled the construction industry.

"We're allowing them to import Chinese construction workers to do work that American construction workers should be doing," said Terry O'Sullivan, president of the Laborers International Union of North America, a Washington-based group that represents 508,000 construction workers. "We play by their rules in their country. Why shouldn't they do so in our country, with all due respect?"

Evidently Mr. O'Sullivan doesn't quite grasp the purpose of that imported Chinese labor. But his AFL-CIO counterparts do.

Not all unions share that sentiment, however. Tom Owens, a spokesman for the AFL-CIO's building and construction trades department, which represents 2.5 million plumbers, iron fitters and electricians, said that the union understands that foreign countries feel compelled to use their own workers.

"We would love to have the jobs, but at the same time we understand diplomatic security," he said.

Wang Baodong, an embassy spokesman, said he is unaware of the reason that China brought in its own workforce [TSB note: I'm sure Wang Baodong appeared perfectly sincere when he said that], nor could he detail how many workers were brought in at any time, except to say "several hundred." He also could not say how much the project cost. Wang said, however, that a local construction company he identified as Cherry Hill was hired to work on the site before the building was constructed. In explaining why Chinese workers were imported, he said the custom "is not special to China. It's an international practice to have your own workers build embassies".

Bringing your own laborers is, in fact, not all that common in international construction, but it was the practice in this case.

Nicole Thompson, a State Department spokeswoman, said that it is unusual for foreign governments to use only workers from their countries. Thompson also said that a bilateral agreement between Chinese and U.S. officials, enacted for the construction of the two embassies, allowed the countries "to use their own workers to build their respective facilities."

Building an embassy on foreign soil has often been fraught with cloak-and-dagger complexity, especially between superpowers that do not trust each other. In 1985, the United States halted construction of an embassy in Moscow after U.S. officials found electronic surveillance devices in the walls.

The United States has shown that it, too, can dabble in embassy espionage. In 2001, federal investigators revealed that the United States built a secret tunnel beneath the Soviet Embassy in the District, with the hopes of checking up on Russian chatter.

In Beijing, as well as anywhere else that the United States builds embassies, American workers construct the areas in which intelligence or sensitive information is disseminated, said Joseph Toussaint, managing director of project execution for the State Department's Bureau of Overseas Building Operations. American-hired contractors are free to employ local workers for unclassified areas, such as a cafeteria, parking lot or auditorium.

In Beijing, where the United States' $464 million embassy is to open Aug. 8, contractors employed as many as 1,000 Chinese workers, Toussaint said. He said 300 to 400 Americans worked on the project.

Huge New Embassy Nears Completion

No, not the one in Baghdad (although that one was certified as "substantially complete" yesterday and will be occupied starting in May), but the one the Chinese are building in Washington DC.

Like its Green Zone counterpart, it will be gigantic, at least by the standards of Washington's diplomatic community, having at least 250,000 square feet. The next-largest of the 15 embassies in the new International Drive complex are the embassies of Nigeria and Malaysia, at about 100,000 square feet each.

From the article linked above:

Although the Embassy was designed largely in the West (by Chinese-Americans I.M. Pei, Li Chung and Chien Chung), it is being built by a consortium of four massive companies from the East: the China State Construction Engineering Corporation, the Shanghai Construction Group, General Corporation and China Rilin Construction Group. Many of these construction giants have been involved in building the gleaming new Chinese skylines of cities like Shanghai. Secrecy and security have been paramount concerns on the construction site in Washington. Few visitors have been allowed inside to glimpse the building’s progress. The construction site’s gates are monitored night and day by watchful Chinese guards who carefully inspect every shipment and container entering or leaving the compound. Virtually every worker and contractor has been brought in from China or somewhere outside of the United States, and virtually every step in the design and construction phase is inspected to ensure that no "unexpected modifications" slip through. There is virtually no local content in the entire edifice.

If I didn't know better, I'd think that the Chinese have been taking Fortress Embassy lessons from the U.S. State Department.