The Serbian government has enthusiastically accepted Chinese companies, while citizens are complaining about those investors because they are violating environmental rules, the New York Times writes today.
The paper writes that the government welcomes Chinese investments in Serbia because they save failed companies, but that many citizens complain about the bad environmental and political impacts of such investments.
Many companies bring in workers from China instead of hiring people from Serbia, and critics say they are helping the Serbian government reduce democratic freedoms.
The New York Times reminds that the Chinese company Zijin Mining Group took over the management of the copper smelter in nearby Bor in 2018 and started blasting in the hills in search of copper and gold.
Convinced that they have the support of Vucic and his officials, the mining company and other Chinese ventures in Serbia have mostly ignored the complaints and covered up their business in secret, the paper states.
Zijin bought a smelter that was previously owned by the state, after another Chinese company bought a steel plant before it collapsed near the capital Belgrade, and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic greeted Chinese investors as saviors of his country, the paper writes.
“Chinese money saved two large but business-poor manufacturing companies in Serbia from destruction, saving more than 10,000 jobs and strengthening what the two countries describe as the ‘steel friendship’ between Serbia and China,” the article added.
The paper states that for some, that friendship shows the danger of transferring this approach to investment to Europe and its negative impact on the local population, which Chinese companies apply in poor regions of the world.
The paper quotes former Belgrade mayor Dragan Djilas, who now leads the largest opposition party, that China operates in Serbia in the same way as in Africa with the same strategy.
“The basis of that strategy around the world was the establishment of close private relations with a local powerful man – in the case of Serbia, Mr. Vucic, democratically elected, but in his own way increasingly authoritarian,” the paper said, noting that Vucic had become perhaps China’s biggest supporter in Europe.
Vucic, the daily writes, said that China, which has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the country and provided millions of doses of vaccines against Covid-19, “is the only one that can help” the country.
He quotes Vucic as saying that Chinese leader Xi Jinping is not only a friend of Serbia but also a brother, which, as the paper states earlier, was the role of Russia, which is tied to Serbia by a common Orthodox faith and deep cultural and political ties.
The Prime Minister of Serbia, Ana Brnabic, pointed out that Chinese companies are extremely helping Serbia, but that German companies, for example, employ more people.
What provokes criticism is often the nature of Chinese investments, not just the volume, the paper said, citing Huawei who installed hundreds of cameras equipped with face recognition technology across Belgrade, which are criticized by those defending privacy, and pointing out that Vucic is using China to reduce democratic freedoms.
“The love between Serbia’s elected leader, who allegedly aspires to join the European Union and claims to share its democratic values, and Mr. Xi, the leader of one of the world’s most repressive countries, has appalled Serbs who want to join Europe and has not drawn them east in the least,” the paper writes.
By offering large loans, vaccines and investments without the control and transparency required by the European Union, China has helped Vucic fulfill some promises related to the Serbian economy, but according to opposition politician Marinika Tepic, all this is helping to build a police state.
The paper recalls that in January, 26 members of the European Parliament demanded a review of “China’s growing economic influence in Serbia”, including “dangerous projects with potentially devastating multiple impacts on the environment and the surrounding population”.
There is talk of a big jump in pollution above the allowed level from the Bor factory in 2019 and 2020, which triggered protests.
Activists say the level of pollution in Bor has dropped since the protests, but that the main danger is now in the south, where hundreds of Chinese workers brought by Zijin are developing one of the largest unused copper deposits, and digging for gold.
Public outrage has increased over the issuance of expropriation orders so Zijin can build access roads and expand the mine.
As it is stated, Bor now makes a staggering 80 percent of Serbian exports to China, repeating the pattern that has been seen far and wide in Africa, where Chinese companies extract natural resources which they then deliver back to China, Danas reports.
