So, about these kidnapped Chinese people in Sudan..

I think it says something about us, as a technologically advanced nation, if my auto-correct changed "Sudan" into "Sunday" when I was writing the title of the post.  Why is that? I guess people think about Sundays more than Sudan. Needless to say, it's Monday and Chinese people have been kidnapped!~

On Saturday, twenty-nine Chinese construction workers were kidnapped in Sudan. Since then, the NYTimes has reported that the Sudanese army has rescued some of these hostages but it is unknown where they were held during the last few days or where the other hostages are located.

I find this particularly interesting.

This is interesting because it doesn't make sense. Not only are Chinese people are being kidnapped (when do you ever hear that? It's usually UN workers or Americans who are in a warzone being taken), but also I find Sudan doesn't exactly have a reason to kidnap Chinese workers, who are from a country whose government fully supportive of their repressive government. Sudan has no reason to kidnap Chinese nationals who are working to build roads in the remote areas of their country that will eventually allow the movement of the army into those areas, closer and closer to the South Sudanese border.

The situation is what it is: Chinese people were kidnapped. My question is this: What is the Chinese government going to do about the kidnappings? Usually, many people die in China (yearly) and the Chinese government doesn't exactly stand by a motto like that of the US military: No one left behind. China is more than willing to send members of their population to countries that are facing hardship with both lack of domestic infrastructure and in the international sphere because it's profitable. Sudan has both domestic infrastructure issues and international human rights issues. China has sent many Chinese nationals to Sudan to help build roads to remote places that happen to be very rich in oil and natural resources. Could this be the reason China's so willing to help Sudan build such roads? I think so. It also seems reasonable that China has a lot of people to spare, just in case a few of them get killed while working a high risk area. Once again, even if a few Chinese nationals die, is it not still profitable to China when the government can just send more people to replace them?

For this situation, the Chinese government is facing a problem. Although happenstances and deaths, violations of human rights, have all occurred in the past. Now, online social media and blogging sites have caught wind of these occurrences and Chinese people themselves are demanding that the government work toward rescuing these Chinese hostages; whereas, in the past, the Chinese government could cover up the deaths and disappearances of Chinese nationals by fabricating stories about deaths at construction sites or other reasons that could assuage a grieving family. Now that social media has brought the layman into global politics, will the Chinese government learn to respect their people more?

One thing is for sure: If the Chinese government assumes their prior policy of merely replacing those who die with more from the mainland, it sends the a message to the Chinese populace they their own government doesn't value each Chinese life. This could get very messy for the Chinese government, especially since bloggers are not particularly supportive of new internet policies that require any blogger to give true personal identity information to the government so that the government can deter any malicious rumors that could be harmful to China's harmonious image.