China In Eurasia

BELGRADE -- Since China’s Zijin Mining Group acquired Serbia’s only copper mining complex in 2018, the company has faced protests over its poor environmental record and accusations that it has been involved in untransparent business deals in the Balkan nation.

In the face of mounting scrutiny, the Chinese mining company has engaged with disaffected communities by funding and rewarding local sporting teams in what activists and watchdog groups say is an attempt to repair its tarnished image.

Zijin’s latest contribution was a donation of 300,000 euros ($295,000) to Serbia’s national women’s volleyball team following its October 15 gold medal win at the World Championships in the Netherlands.

“They’re trying to show that they are a socially responsible company,” Mirko Popovic, the program director for the Regulatory Institute for Renewable Energy and Environment (RERI), a Serbian environmental NGO, told RFE/RL. “[But] our past investigations of Zijin’s work in Serbia shows that it is everything but a responsible company.”

Zijin has been repeatedly fined by the Serbian authorities for pollution violations over the years. In April 2021, the company was ordered to temporarily halt work at its copper mine after it failed to comply with environmental standards and build a wastewater treatment plant nearby.

The recent donation to the volleyball team is not the first time that Zijin has given money to fund sports teams amid the growing environmental concerns and local backlash.

Earlier this month, the company donated 2,500 euros ($2,465) to a local table tennis club. Last year, it also signed a 17,000-euro ($16,765) sponsorship deal with the official soccer club in Majdanpek, a town in Serbia’s eastern Bor district that is home to Zijin’s copper-mining operations. That same year, Zijin donated 153,000 euros ($150,000) to Serbia’s Ministry of Youth and Sports.

“China and Serbia are iron friends, and our bilateral relations have withstood the tests of turbulent times,” Zijin said in an October 17 statement that accompanied its donation to the national women’s volleyball team. “Volleyball is also one of the most popular sports in China, especially women's volleyball.”

Snezana Todorovic, a local environmental activist, told RFE/RL that the recent donation “leaves a bitter taste” in her mouth because it came less than a month after the authorities dismantled a camp built by activists in Majdanpek to stop the expansion of Zijin’s mining in the area.

“I think this money is intended to wash away [people’s] conscience, so they’ll [turn a blind eye],” said Todorovic.

Zijin and the Volleyball Federation of Serbia did not respond to RFE/RL’s requests for comment about the donations.

An Eye On Sports

Serbia and China have rapidly intensified economic and political relations in recent years, with Beijing viewing the Balkan country as a poster child for its massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and growing influence in Europe.

Chinese state banks have granted billions of dollars in loans to Serbia for construction projects that are mostly conducted by Chinese workers. Serbia has become an export market for Chinese drones, military equipment, and surveillance technology. Chinese companies have also expanded their reach in Serbia, taking over mines, steel mills, and building roads, factories, and railway lines.

SEE ALSO:

China Builds A New Symbol In The Balkans -- At The Site Of A NATO Bombing

China’s largest gold miner and one of the country’s top copper producers, Zijin acquired its Serbian mining operations in 2018 when it took over Bor’s debt-ridden copper-mining and smelting complex in a $1.26 billion deal. The agreement followed a 2016 deal that saw China’s Hesteel acquire a large steel plant in the town of Smederevo in eastern Serbia.

Zijin is not the only Chinese company that has looked to boost its brand in Serbian sports.

The logo of Peak, one of China’s leading sportswear and footwear brands, is emblazoned on the national jerseys of Serbia’s volleyball and basketball teams. The Chinese company Linglong, which is building a nearly $1 billion tire factory in Serbia, is the leading sponsor for the country’s top soccer league, which has been renamed Linglong Tire Superliga.

Like Zijin, Linglong has also found itself embroiled in scandals over the years for a spotty environmental record and poor labor practices. In 2020, Serbian NGOs revealed that some of the construction work surrounding the tire plant in the town of Zrenjanin had been done without permits or environmental impact studies, leading to protests and backlash.

A national scandal also erupted after poor labor standards were uncovered at the factory, where hundreds of Vietnamese workers who were hired by a subcontractor lived in makeshift lodgings without electricity, heating, or water and had their passports confiscated.

Environmental Concerns In Serbia

Despite the donations to local sports teams in the region, activists say the alleged efforts by Zijin to repair its reputation will not work.

Ljubica Vukcevic, the lead legal counsel for RERI, an environmental NGO, told RFE/RL that anger and frustration towards Zijin runs deep in the area, especially as pollution and environmental problems mount.

Chinese mining companies are not the only ones to court controversy.

SEE ALSO:

Red Flags: Chinese Project In Serbia Raises Familiar Concerns About Beijing's Balkan Investments

Widespread protests erupted in late 2021 in Serbia over plans to build a massive lithium mine that would be developed by the Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto. Following the protests, the Serbian government dropped its plans for the venture.

Activists and watchdogs say that the Serbian government has a weak legal and regulatory system that allows companies to bypass environmental protections and due diligence. According to the Global Alliance for Health and Pollution, an international monitoring group, Serbia is the most polluted country in Europe.

But added concerns have been raised in Serbia about the practices of Chinese companies, which have poor environmental records around the world. There are also fears that Chinese companies may be more willing to take advantage of Serbia’s weaker legal protections.

In a recent report, the European Parliament expressed concerns over Chinese investments, saying the lack of transparency around impact assessments could lead to mounting environmental problems. Zijin, in its past statements, has maintained that it follows Serbian law.

The Dutch advocacy group Just Finance has expressed similar worries. In a May investigation, it said that Zijin’s investments in Serbia were undertaken “without the necessary environmental and social due diligence,” which has led to people abandoning villages near its mining operations.

Since Zijin acquired the copper-mining and smelting complex in Bor, “the lives of the citizens in at least five villages in this area of Serbia have been upended,” the group said.

Written by Reid Standish in Prague based on reporting by Sonja Gocanin.

Welcome back to the China In Eurasia briefing, an RFE/RL newsletter tracking China's resurgent influence from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. To subscribe, click here.

I'm RFE/RL correspondent Reid Standish and here's what I'm following right now.

Xi Jinping used his opening remarks at China's weeklong Communist Party congress to outline a vision of how to lead the country toward superpower status as he defended his decade in power and said that tough policy lines would be needed to enshrine China's rise amid growing global threats.

Finding Perspective: The Chinese leader is poised to claim his third term by the end of the week, but the process is only a formality at this point.

With Xi's hold on power cemented at home, he used his lengthy October 16 report to China's ruling elite to warn that risk-filled times are coming to the country and the world and called on Communist Party members to adopt a fighting spirit to domestic challenges and continue to seize opportunities unveiled by changes on the global stage.

While light on specifics, the vision set forth by Xi points towards even more hard-line policies from Beijing as it grapples with economic headwinds at home, an intensifying rivalry with the United States, and fierce technological competition abroad.

When Xi came to power a decade ago, China had just overtaken Japan to become the world's second-largest economy, but it now potentially faces its second-lowest growth rate in 46 years, with the International Monetary Fund recently cutting its forecast for China's growth to 3.2 percent this year.

In another sign of weakened growth, Beijing also abruptly delayed the publication of its third-quarter GDP data, a day before it was set to be released.

Xi will also need to focus on changing the country's economic model and patching vulnerabilities in its financial system, which achieved record growth as a result of China's unfettered debt-fuelled expansion over the past decade.

Why It Matters: There's no going back for Xi. Having already changed the fundamental rules of Chinese politics, expect the same to hold true for foreign policy.

However, unlike when Xi first took power, China is now in a much more confrontational position with the West.

In its recently released national security strategy, the Biden administration labeled China as the most consequential geopolitical challenge to the United States despite Moscow's war with Ukraine.

The European Union, which has generally not been as hawkish toward Beijing as Washington, said that its relationship with China had fundamentally changed, with Josep Borrell saying that growing competition with the country had outstripped other aspects of bilateral relations.

China now finds itself more insular than before and the recipe for continued frayed ties with the West is ever-present.

During his speech, Xi outlined an aggressive foreign policy and railed against future "external attempts to suppress and contain" China, with added attention to the Indo-Pacific region.

But Beijing also risks pushing too hard, too quickly and sparking even tougher Western pushback -- something that Kevin Rudd, president of the Asia Society and former Australian prime minister, believes Xi is wary of, especially in regards to Taiwan.

"[Xi] doesn't want an accidental conflict with the Americans in the 2020s," Rudd wrote in a recent article. "Under present conditions, the risk that China might lose is still too great. He hopes to change that by the 2030s."

Read More

● For a deeper look at the opaque and high-stakes world of China's elite politics, read this article by Chinese writer Deng Yuwen in Foreign Policy.

● Among many interesting tidbits in a Politico interview with former U.S. National Security Council official Fiona Hill, I found this comment about Beijing and Moscow particularly interesting: "Once we get past the party Congress in China, we should watch how the Chinese-Russian relationship plays out. China would be instrumental in signaling to Putin how far he can go in terms of pursuing his endgame."

Expert Corner: The View From Taiwan

Readers asked: "Xi Jinping has likely secured his third term and seems to have his sights firmly on Taiwan. How does this new era look from Taipei and is a Chinese invasion of Taiwan a given at this point?"

To find out more, I asked William Yang, Deutsche Welle's Taiwan-based East Asia correspondent:

"People in Taiwan are closely following the messages as well as military activities adopted by China, especially since U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit in August. Since the threat from China is nothing new to Taiwanese people, most of them have developed a coping mechanism in which they don't let provocative gestures or predictive media reports affect their daily lives too much, while they remain alert and up-to-date about the latest signals coming from Beijing. With that being said, there is certainly a slight increase of the sense of urgency since August."

Do you have a question about China's growing footprint in Eurasia? Send it to me at StandishR@rferl.org or reply directly to this e-mail and I'll get it answered by leading experts and policymakers.

Three More Stories From Eurasia

1. The New Central Asia

The fallout from the Ukraine war continues to have ripple effects across Central Asia, leading to shifting dynamics for how the region deals with external players, particularly China and Russia.

What It Means: China received a win at the United Nations earlier this month, in part thanks to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan voting differently than how they had in the past when it came to Xinjiang.

In a close contest at the UN's top human rights body in Geneva, a vote to hold a debate on alleged rights abuses by Beijing against Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other minorities in China's western Xinjiang region lost out.

Seventeen countries voted in favor, 19 were against, and 11 abstained in the vote. The diplomatic victory for Beijing was in part because Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which had traditionally abstained when it came to voting on Xinjiang, voted against the motion, supporting China's position. (Ukraine also abstained, but later said it wished to switch its position to vote in favor of holding a debate.)

In other signs of shifts under way, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Central Asia on October 13 amid Moscow's diminishing influence in the region.

As my colleague Chris Rickleton wrote in a recent article, deep problems within the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Moscow-led security bloc, are brewing and Russia has few tools to fix the situation. (Chris and my colleague Steve Gutterman also explored this and more in a recent podcast episode.)

While Russia is too large and powerful to not be influential in Central Asia, it's clear that its reputation is suffering due to the war in Ukraine and China is picking up some of the pieces, with some tangible results already visible.

2. Chinese Police Go Global

Beijing has opened dozens of what it calls "110 Overseas Police Service Centers" around the world, some of which are being used to intimidate and blackmail suspects into returning home to China in order to face charges in breach of global extradition laws, according to a new report from the watchdog group Safeguard Defenders.

What You Need To Know: The report claims Chinese regional police forces have set up at least 54 offices on five continents, stretching from Uzbekistan to Hungary to Canada. The centers get their name from the police emergency telephone number in China, 110.

The Chinese government claims that the overseas police service centers are set up to help Chinese diaspora and tourists with everyday problems, but Safeguard Defenders says in its investigation that the stations are part of an expanding and complex surveillance and monitoring network that allows the Chinese Communist Party to reach far beyond its borders.

"These operations eschew official bilateral police and judicial cooperation and violate the international rule of law and may violate the territorial integrity of third countries involved in setting up a parallel policing mechanism using illegal methods," the report says.

3. Watching Tajikistan's Debt

Tajikistan's substantial foreign debt -- the vast majority of which is owed to China -- was under fire during a recent UN panel, my colleagues at RFE/RL's Tajik Service reported.

The Details: The questions over Dushanbe's external debt came from members of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, who raised their growing concerns about the financial commitments to a visiting delegation of Tajik officials.

Tajikistan's foreign debt currently sits at $3.3 billion -- 60 percent of which (roughly $1.98 billion) is owed to the state-run Export-Import Bank of China.

The Central Asian country's foreign debt has more than doubled in the past decade. Despite concerns over this -- and the fact that Tajikistan's debt exceeds 40 percent of its GDP -- the officials questioned at the United Nations insist that they have the situation under control and will be able to meet their repayment schedules.

Across The Supercontinent

Prep Work: Pavel Fischer, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Czech Senate, told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service that the European Union needs to draw lessons from Russia's invasion of Ukraine for a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan and have a sanctions plan already in place.

Racial Recognition: The Chinese company Dahua, the world's second-largest security-camera manufacturer, is marketing AI-powered cameras on its own website that can detect "race," "skin color," and even so-called "Xinjiang" or "Tibet" facial features. Read the full report from IPVM.

Covid-Zero Goes Abroad: According to an investigation by Australia's ABC, the Pakistani Army has been enforcing China's strict COVID-19 restrictions at a Belt and Road Initiative-funded power plant in Pakistan, which is operated by a Chinese company.

Welcome To Dushanbe: Tajikistan is hosting an international counterterrorism conference that will feature representatives from the European Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), China, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Qatar, and other states, RFE/RL's Tajik Service reports.

One Thing To Watch

Preparations for a possible Biden-Xi meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Indonesia began months ago, but with the meeting getting closer, there are some reports that Beijing is backpedaling on having a face to face with Biden.

Politico reported recently that Beijing won't engage with U.S. officials trying to draft an agenda for the meeting, which could prevent it from taking place. The White House denied the report, but China has signaled its frustrations of late over enhanced U.S. pressure and could look to back out.

A meeting between the two leaders at the G20 -- which takes place on November 15-16 -- could go a long way to calming tensions between the United States and China, which have descended to a new low point.

That's all from me for now. Don't forget to send me any questions, comments, or tips that you might have.

Until next time,

Reid Standish

If you enjoyed this briefing and don't want to miss the next edition, subscribe here. It will be sent to your in-box on the first and third Wednesdays of each month.