In Russia, Chinese workers have privilege to protest

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These were scenes Russians could not imagine. More than 1,000 construction workers surrounded vehicles of the armed police and National Guard and forced them to release from a…

These were scenes Russians could not imagine. More than 1,000 construction workers surrounded vehicles of the armed police and National Guard and forced them to release from a vehicle a worker they had detained.

Over 200 workers marched through the street of a city in Khabarovsk, in the Far East, demanding back payment and help from President Vladimir Putin.

How could they get away with it? The workers were Chinese, the largest single group of foreign workers outside those from the CIS, countries in the former Soviet Union.

Normally subject to no restraint, the Russian security forces did not want to arrest citizens of the country’s most important military and trading partner. In the first seven months of this year, trade reached US$159 billion, up 26 per cent on the same period in 2025. It is likely to set a new record for the full year. China is the most important supplier of materiel for Russia’s war effort.

Data from the Russian Ministry of the Interior shows that, in 2025, it issued 92,000 work permits to Chinese, up 50 per cent from the year before. In total, it issued 240,000 such permits, up 42 per cent, with India second to China with 56,500, up from 36,200 in 2024.

Russia faces a chronic labour shortage. More than 1.4 million have been killed, wounded or missing in the Ukraine war and an estimated one million have fled to avoid mobilisation. Economists put the nationwide shortage of workers at about 1.5 million.

The worst hit sectors are manufacturing, construction, agriculture, energy and logistics.

The first Chinese protest this year took place on April 12 at Komsomolk-na-Amure in Khabarovk. The workers are building a fuel-making unit at a Rosneft refinery and work for a Russo-Chinese joint venture Petro-Hehua.

They marched through the streets demanding back pay and help from Putin and Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin. In a statement, the regional government said that the Rosneft subsidiary and the mayor’s office “had established contact with the workers and promised to…

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