Towns and workers in Serbia paying the price for China’s investment in EV boom
With booming demand for electric vehicles, the world needs copper. But in Serbia, where China is investing in mines and factories, Gethin Chamberlain finds some workers complaining of exploitation and local residents in despair
For as long as anyone can remember, life in the eastern Serbian town of Bor has revolved around copper mining.
From the brightly painted old machinery that lines the central reservation on the road into town to the huge spoil heaps on the skyline, the copper mines dominate the landscape.
And for most of the time since a French company turned up just after the turn of the last century to extract high-grade copper ore, the people of Bor welcomed the industry to which they owed their livelihoods.
Then electric vehicles (EV) and renewable energy arrived on the scene and turned their lives upside down.
Suddenly, the world needs copper – and in previously unimaginable quantities. A report this year from the International Energy Forum estimated that a typical EV requires 60kg of copper; it estimated another 194 new copper mines are needed worldwide by 2050 to achieve net zero.
That’s what drew Chinese mining giant Zijin to Bor. In 2018 it bought a majority stake in the mines and set about ramping up production to meet the soaring global demand for copper for use in electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy technology. Last year its mines in Serbia produced 240,000 tonnes of copper; by next year it expects that to rise to 300,000 tonnes.
But with the expansion came pollution; levels of arsenic, sulphur dioxide, cadmium, iron and nickel in the local air are literally eye-watering.
Instead of creating an employment boom for local people, Zijin imported a large – and largely Chinese – workforce. And with that came a host of labour rights issues. There are claims of wages late or unpaid, dangerous working conditions and long working days far in excess of the hours permitted by Serbian or Chinese labour law.
Head 320km northwest to the town of Zrenjanin and you will find another Chinese manufacturer busily gearing up to supply an automobile industry scrambling to switch from the internal combustion engine to EV production.
Linglong Tires hopes its gleaming new factory will soon be churning out 13 million tyres a year for the European market. It wants European manufacturers to fit its tyres as standard and has been raising its profile by sponsoring the Chelsea and Real Madrid football teams.
But just as in Bor, this rapid expansion has come at a cost to both the environment and the workforce. There are local concerns about pollution and the effect on important nearby wetlands of wells sunk to extract water for the factory.
Workers brought in from China and South Asia report that the company holds on to their passports, preventing them from leaving if they are unhappy with the late payment of wages.
So bad has the situation been that Linglong has been censured by the European parliament over reports of forced labour, human trafficking and the exploitation of the workforce in regards to salaries, leave and working hours.
Bor and Zrenjanin have something else in common: they are a physical manifestation of China’s controversial Belt and Road Initiative. They also demonstrate why the concept of a truly green EV is a lot more complicated than it might seem.
The Belt and Road Initiative – also known as the New Silk Road – is a vast infrastructure project launched in 2013 to boost China’s trade and influence. To date around 150 countries have signed up.
Serbia was among the founding members and last year signed a free trade agreement with China. The country has benefitted from billions in foreign direct investment from Beijing.
China identified Serbia’s mining and car industries as key areas for investment. In turn, Serbia has relaxed rules on foreign workers, with more than 50,000 work permits granted last year – twice as many as in 2022. Chinese nationals have also been exempted from local labour laws.
An investigation in partnership with US-based labour rights group China Labor Watch (CLW) has found China’s relentless drive to increase production has created fresh concerns.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in Bor, where Zijin took control of the existing Bor copper mine by acquiring 63 per cent of the company in 2018 (the rest is owned by the Serbian state).
China is already the world’s largest refiner of copper, and according to the analytics company GlobalData is expected to produce just short of half the world’s copper by 2030.
Such is the demand for copper that Zijin’s global production increased by 312 per cent to 825,000 tonnes between 2019 and 2023. More than 6,000 workers are employed at Bor, and Zijin has shipped in thousands from China.
But in interviews with CLW researchers, workers in Serbia reported being required to work 12-hours day, six days a week. The 72-hour working week exceeds the 40-hour legal limit specified in both Chinese and Serbian law.
Workers also reported overtime was paid at the standard rate of pay and they were prevented from leaving their quarters after friction with locals. Workers spoke on condition of anonymity.
“It is hot, humid, dangerous,” said one miner. “Accidents occur frequently and this environment can cause skin cancers and respiratory diseases,” he said. “I work 12 hours per day with a lunch break but no other designated time for breaks. Everyone is just here for earning money and want to go back to China someday, so will endure what they must undergo.”
A mine-cart assistant described working more than 14 hours a day for three years, and sometimes as many as 18 hours a day. They did it, the men said, because pay was better than in China and they had family to support.
“We haven’t been paid for months, and we’ve been working day and night without any rest. I don’t even have money to buy socks,” one said. “The food and accommodation are also very poor. Many people couldn’t stand it and have resigned and returned to China.”
For many workers, that’s not an option. They paid large sums of money to agencies in China to secure the jobs and cannot afford to lose the work. Those who quit face large financial penalties, workers said.
“We’re just enduring it for now,” one explained. “If we asked for wages, we would fall out with the company and lose the jobs.”
Local mining engineer Dejan Lazar, 33, said Chinese workers were prepared to tolerate conditions Serbs wouldn’t consider because they could not afford to lose their jobs.
“I don’t think it is healthy. Chinese workers work for 16 or 17 hours per day – it is not healthy conditions. China doesn’t respect their people. They think of the workers as expendable.
“Eighteen hours blasting and drilling is not uncommon. I think they are getting the maximum out of the workers – they have them for some months and then they get another worker.”
Zijin runs two mines, one in Bor itself and one in nearby Cukaru Peki alongside the village of Krivelj, a small village surrounded largely by forest.
From the central crossroads, a road leads off towards the mine. Further along, houses are increasingly derelict and abandoned, then broken. Beyond are diggers and men in hard hats working. A new building is going up.
The road from Bor runs past the entrance to the mine. Lorries trundle back and forth; the mine working is vast, with a constant procession of large trucks ploughing up and down the hillside.
Villagers began to notice the difference almost immediately as the company set about expanding production.
“The intensity is much busier, more and more trucks through the village, dust is everywhere,” says Vlastimir Djuric, who has lived in the area for 15 years.
Earlier in the year, locals blocked the road and held out for weeks, preventing trucks from getting through. But most regard the expansion as inevitable and are resigned to having to sell up.
Djuric, 34, runs the village shop. There has always been mining, he says, but now it is bigger and pollution is worse.
“People here work in the mine. There are not a lot of other chances here. A lot of people are working in the mine but need to sell their property, so there is a conflict of interest.”
Jasna Tomic, 52, and daughter Teodora Tomic, 22, live in the first house on the road to the mine. There is a neat garden and a well; the village church stands a short distance away. There are a few pine trees. They keep bees up on the hillside in multicoloured hives and sell their own brand of honey: the brand, Three Bees Honey, is a reference to the three generations of women from the family involved in the business.
“Before the Chinese people came here we thought they would take care of people and our land before they started mining,” says Jasna.
They accepted they would have to move to allow for expansion of the mine, but expected to be relocated as a community. Instead, many have already accepted offers and left.
“A lot of people have already sold and they destroyed our community,” she says.
“The thing we are most unhappy about is that our country took the side of the company over that of their own people. They left us alone to fight them.
“Everything here is politics. Everything is for their own good, not for their own country’s good. They sold the biggest mine here – it produced the purest copper in Europe. They sold it for a little money. They are destroying the culture and our nation’s identity.”
Jasna has lived in the village since she was born in 1972. The house itself dates back to 1860.
“There are people from here working in the mine, the whole city is based on the mine. My sister works in the mine. We all have a connection to the mine. A lot of people can’t afford to not work for them.
“But a lot of young people who work there say working conditions are not good. They don’t care about the people who work for them.”
Teodora is furious: “I’m so mad at this country. They didn’t stand by their people, they stood with people who came and took. We didn’t ask for them to sell the mine. We have land, we are farmers, we didn’t need to work in the mine. But the head of our country doesn’t care about our people.”
Back in Bor, in the shadow of one of Zijin’s sites, a Serbian businesswoman echoes that frustration. She complains about the air quality and checks the day’s online figures – the amount of arsenic in the air in the Gradski Park area where she lives is at 104.4 ng/m3 – 17 times the local limit of 6ng/m3, though there is no safe level for arsenic. Lots of people are getting cancer, she says, lung cancer in particular.
“Serbia is friendly with China but they want business and our president gives it to them,” she says. “This is our country. Well, we thought it was. But maybe no more.”
Serbia’s president Alexandar Vucic appears unconcerned about the criticism, extending a warm welcome to Xi Jinping when he arrived on a state visit earlier this year.
The leaders later pledged to “deepen and elevate” the comprehensive strategic partnership that has seen £4bn of Chinese investment pour into Serbia in the last 10 years.
China has made no secret of the importance it places on its relationship with Serbia, a country it regards along with Hungary as a gateway to the European market.
That’s a view clearly shared by Linglong Tires, which has set its sights firmly on Europe.
The company arrived in Zrenjanin in 2019 promising a “New Engine for Great March” helped along by £65m of Serbian government subsidies and the free lease of its 95-hectare site. Since then it has hired 1,200 people to work on the £800m project, though many of those have been brought in from China and countries in South and South-East Asia.
Brands that have certified the factory include VW, Ford, Audi, Nissan, Hyundai and Kia, with the company aiming to get its tyres fitted by these manufacturers as standard.
But as in Bor, its methods have drawn heavy criticism. In 2021 the European parliament expressed “deep concerns” about reports of human trafficking of 500 Vietnamese workers brought in to work on the construction of the factory and whose passports were reported to have been confiscated.
Three years on, with the factory now operational, workers report similar concerns. Most workers interviewed reported that their passports had been retained by the company – something China Labor Watch claims meets the International Labour Organisation description of forced labour.
“I am a poor man, don’t let me get trapped,” one worker said.
CLW said that workers reported their passports were taken away as soon as they arrived, with the company claiming it was for “safekeeping” or “administrative matters”.
Executive director Li Qiang said: “Passport confiscation is an insidious and effective method of controlling workers.
“Without their passport, workers cannot leave the country or seek alternative employment, and this restriction effectively traps workers in their current job, even if they face exploitation, abuse, or poor working conditions.”
Workers described how they had paid large sums of money to agents to secure jobs and could not afford to fall foul of the company by complaining.
But speaking on condition of anonymity, many bemoaned the low wages and reported delays in getting paid.
A Nepali man said he had paid an agent £3,700 to get him the job, but was only being paid £420 a month. “We have invested a lot of money when we came her from Nepal,” he said. “All the money is borrowed. That is why we must work to give the money back.”
In a town an hour’s drive away, a group of half a dozen men from India described how they had paid agents to secure contracts to work at the tyre factory, only to be switched to road-building duties.
“We are coming here because there is no work at the factory. The other work is finished,” one explained.
They each paid an agent £2,750 to secure a two-year contract earning about £375 a month.
But they couldn’t leave even if they wanted to. “The boss has the passport so we can’t go home. We have no passport, no documents. The people do not give us money but they have our passports.”
It’s not just the workers who are unhappy: local environmental campaigners are concerned that Linglong was allowed to get away without conducting a proper environmental impact survey, despite the presence nearby of the important Carska Bara wetland nature reserve.
Linglong said it had been misrepresented in the investigation and accused the workers of lying. “All cases mentioned are misrepresentations and Linglong Tire does not accept [them],” a European spokesperson said.
Zijin did not respond but has previously defended its operation, claiming it is “committed to responsible mining practices”.
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