As the Spring Festival is approaching, staff members at the Consular Protection Division of the Beijing Municipal Foreign Affairs Office are getting increasingly busy. They need to stay alert as this period typically sees a surge in outbound tourists and a resultant increase in accidents and emergencies associated with these travelers.
Consular protection is a job that requires full commitment. Giving top priority to the interest of the people, the Foreign Affairs Office values prompt response and preventive measures, and the number of accidents (emergencies) and casualties both dropped in 2019.
Consular protection provided for Chinese citizens throughout their travel abroad
In December 2019, the microfilm “By Your Side” won first prize in the 3rd National Microfilm Competition on the Theme of Socialist Core Values. It tells more people what consular protection is about.
(Photo: Foreign Affairs Office of the People's Government of Beijing Municipality)
As the protagonist said, “Consular protection, in simple words, means helping Chinese people overseas.” When Chinese citizens' lawful rights and interests are seriously threatened or harmed in a foreign country, the Chinese government and its embassies and consulates there have the responsibility and obligation to provide necessary help.
What makes consular protection a matter of growing attention is the sharp increase in China's outbound travel. It is reported that residents in the Chinese mainland made 149.72 million overseas trips in 2018, and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and embassies and consulates abroad handled more than 80,000 consular protection cases, averaging one case every six minutes. The number of overseas trips made by the residents and organizations in Beijing has also seen explosive growth. Travel agencies have organized more than 5.1 million overseas trips and over 6,000 enterprises have “gone global”.
In 2013, Beijing Foreign Affairs Office set up the Consular Protection Division, the first of its kind formed by a local foreign affairs office. In 2014, it was also the first to set up a foreign-related emergency command center to coordinate the work of 45 municipal departments towards protecting the interests of Chinese citizens overseas.
Wherever Chinese citizens go, consular protection will be provided; wherever they stay, the motherland is with them. Beijing Foreign Affairs Office has worked with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Chinese embassies and consulates abroad in providing protection and assistance for Beijing residents and organizations, handling hundreds of cases across six continents over the years. The emergencies it has dealt with include evacuation of nationals from Libya, explosion in the Republic of the Congo, the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, earthquake in Nepal, volcanic eruption in Bali, and major traffic accident in North Hwanghae of Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
A race against time
Dealing with emergencies is a race against time.
At 24:00 on July 5, 2019, a message popped up on the cellphone of a consular protection officer of the Foreign Affairs Office, saying “two Chinese divers killed by dynamite fishing in Malaysia.”
It was a race against time. The foreign-related emergency command system started to work immediately. Emergency response workers called the Chinese Embassy in Malaysia to confirm whether the victims were from Beijing and, when getting a positive answer, they tried to locate the victims' residence in Beijing and contact their families.
The Foreign Affairs Office quickly convened a meeting with the entry & exit section of the Municipal the Bureau of Public Security, Haidian District, Shunyi District and the Municipal Bureau of Justice to jointly work out a plan. Early next morning, the workers contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Malaysian Embassy in China and obtained the passports and visas for the victims' eight family members including their parents.
From being informed of the accident to the departure of the victims' families for Malaysia, it took less than 24 hours.
Such a rapid response is commonplace for the Foreign Affairs Office. In 2018, a serious traffic accident took place in DPRK, involving eight Beijing residents. Staff members of the Foreign Affairs Office flied to DPRK within three hours of receiving the information. On December 16, 2019, a Thai newspaper had a headline saying “a Chinese tourist drowned in Coral Island, Phuket Province.” The office confirmed relevant information within an hour.
When emergencies happened outside of China, one moment's delay may prove costly, as the situation might change very soon, said an official from the Foreign Affairs Office. Whether it is instructions from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or Chinese embassies and consulates, a request forwarded from the Ministry's 12308 consular protection hotline, or an emergency alert the Foreign Affairs Office has received via its monitoring platform, prompt response always matters.
(Photo: Foreign Affairs Office of the People's Government of Beijing Municipality)
In 2014, the Foreign Affairs Office set up the foreign-related emergency command center that consisted of the 16 districts as well as relevant municipal commissions, offices and bureaus. It also formed the country's first medical team to deal with such emergencies and developed a comprehensive, detailed and well-targeted contingency plan both at the municipal and district levels. With the ministerial-municipal cooperation mechanism in place and the launch of a hotline connecting it with over 30 Chinese embassies and consulates abroad, the Consular Protection Division of the Foreign Affairs Office can contact any of these embassies and consulates immediately after an emergency occurs.
Prevention is the best protection
If we log on to the Beijing Service Platform for Overseas Security and click the “risk map”, we would see many yellow dots on a world map, each dot representing a risky location. After we click a dot, a pop-up message will warn us against the risk of travelling there.
This is the smart consular protection platform developed by the Foreign Affairs Office, which monitors more than 300,000 websites and microblog accounts worldwide around the clock. It captures reports on overseas risks within 10 minutes and sends about 300 warnings and alerts every year on average. The timely risk update has largely reduced the possibility of Chinese citizens falling prey to accidents overseas.
(Photo: Foreign Affairs Office of the People's Government of Beijing Municipality)
“Consular protection is not a cure-all solution. It is extremely complicated and is restricted in many ways and by many factors including international laws and the laws in the countries of departure and destination,” said an official at the Foreign Affairs Office, adding that prevention is the best protection and it is best to stem the possibility of accident at source.
In addition to risk alerts, the Foreign Affairs Office also launched the Consular Protection Publicity campaign to step up the publicity and education and enhance the residents and organizations' awareness of risks of overseas travels and their capabilities of emergency response.
Given the different groups of people who go abroad for study, work or tourism, the Foreign Affairs Office has categorized consular protection cases and customized its services to meet their specific needs. It has also organized a variety of interactive activities to intensify relevant communication, such as mock oversea trips, parent-child marathon, theme carnivals and lectures by experts. Since 2016, we have held more than 200 offline publicity events and 30 large theme events, handed out more than 50,000 overseas safety brochures, and played our promo films at subways, airports and train stations over 1,000 times.
(Photo: Foreign Affairs Office of the People's Government of Beijing Municipality)
The Foreign Affairs Office launched consular protection lectures via integrated media, including nearly 60 online lectures on safe travel abroad and microlectures on consular protection. The online and offline publicity has benefited more than 100 million people.
Consular protection protects nationals during their travel or stay in foreign countries. The Foreign Affairs Office, in conjunction with other municipal government departments such as the Bureau of Public Security, the Bureau of Commerce, the Bureau of Culture and Tourism and the districts, has sent overseas safety inspection teams to provide safety guidance for Chinese enterprises and citizens abroad and better protect them from risks and harms.
