(Caption for photo at top of the post: “Activist groups in Zrenjanin have been pressing the authorities to release information about the size of the factory, its technology and its likely impact on the environment. Credit…Marko Risovic for The New York Times”.)
Further to this post based on an article by the same reporter,
the NY Times‘ bureau chief for East and Central Europe (based in Warsaw) returns to the country for this major article–excerpts :
‘Miserable and Dangerous’: A Failed Chinese Promise in Serbia
Poor conditions for Vietnamese workers building a $900 million tire factory underscore a chasm between the promise of investment from China and grim realities on the ground.
ZRENJANIN, Serbia — Seeking escape from grinding poverty in northern Vietnam, the 43-year-old farmer labored for years on construction sites in Kuwait and Uzbekistan before being offered a ticket to what he was told would be “the promised land” — Europe, and a job with a good salary.
“I wanted to go to the West to change my life,” the farmer, a father of three who asked that his name not be used to avoid retribution from his employer, recalled in an interview.
His life certainly changed: It got much worse.
The job turned out to be in Serbia, one of Europe’s poorest nations, with a Chinese company whose gigantic tire factory now under construction in the northern city of Zrenjanin has become a symbol of the chasm between the alluring promise of investment from China and the sometimes grim reality on the ground.
Touted as China’s biggest industrial investment in Europe, the $900 million Ling Long Tire factory is now a magnet of criticism for a Serbian government that opponents accuse of no-questions-asked subservience to China. Workers and activists say problems like human trafficking, prisonlike working conditions and environmental abuse are endemic.
About 400 Vietnamese work in Zrenjanin, along with hundreds more Chinese, who get higher salaries and better living conditions, according to the workers and local labor activists [emphasis added]. The former farmer from Vietnam described his work conditions in Serbia as “miserable and dangerous,” and said he was housed in a decrepit shack crammed with other Vietnamese workers and bullied by Chinese supervisors.
The Ling Long Tire project first took shape in September 2018 during meetings in Beijing between Serbia’s populist president, Aleksandar Vucic, and Xi Jinping, China’s leader.
Mr. Xi, who has looked to Serbia as China’s most dependable European friend at a time when other nations are souring on his country [emphasis added], praised the Balkan nation as a “good, honest friend and good partner.”
Mr. Vucic predicted that the tire factory, which plans to produce more than 130 million tires a year in Zrenjanin, and other planned ventures would make Serbia “the port for Chinese investments throughout the region [emphasis added].”
Serbia says Chinese investment has helped it achieve economic growth of over 7 percent last year, among the highest in Europe.
But the furor over working conditions has set back Serbia’s yearslong effort to join the European Union, whose view of China has become increasingly jaundiced. The European Parliament last month demanded an investigation into treatment of Vietnamese laborers in Zrenjanin and voiced alarm “over China’s increasing influence in Serbia and across the Western Balkans.”
It has also aggravated what has become Mr. Vucic’s biggest political headache: public anger over damage to the environment widely blamed on the government’s drive to juice the economy at all costs. Tens of thousands of people gathered late last year for weeks of street protests across Serbia against the development of a lithium mine project by the Anglo-Australian company Rio Tinto [emphasis added]. The protests forced a rare retreat by the government, which on Jan. 20 canceled licenses for the project.
Chinese ventures in Serbia, which include a smoke-belching steel works near Belgrade, the capital, and a copper mine and smelter in the southern town of Bor, have helped stoke this anger [see post mentioned at the start of this one]. Despite gushing praise of Beijing in the pro-government Serbian media, they have made China synonymous in the minds of many Serbs with environmental degradation…
A statement from Ling Long Tire cited in Serbian media said the company was “committed to full respect for and a humane and dignified approach to all employees.” Yet it stressed that none of the construction workers are employees, and work for subcontractors. Ling Long said it had asked the contractors to provide better accommodations. The tire company did not immediately respond to requests for comment at its head office in China…
Labor contracts signed by Vietnamese workers with China Energy Engineering Group, a Ling Long subcontractor overseeing construction, commit each worker not to engage in trade union activities, and to “refrain from anything that would detract from his reputation or the reputation” of the Chinese company.
Even more restrictive are the terms set by recruitment agencies in Vietnam. One agency, Song Hy Gia Lai International, demanded that all workers going to Europe sign a document pledging never to go on strike or protest…Vietnamese workers who agreed to be interviewed by The Times through an interpreter said they had lived for months in squalid barracklike shelters previously used by a local farm to raise pigs and chickens.The former farmer from northern Vietnam said conditions had improved somewhat in recent weeks. Many workers now live in a two-story concrete block surrounded by a metal fence and watched over by Serbian security guards who bar entry to outsiders.
One resident, a 40-year-old Vietnamese construction worker who requested anonymity, said he shared a tiny room with seven others and that their kitchen was crawling with rats. Salaries of about $900 per month, higher than what he could earn in Vietnam, were often paid late and slashed for days not worked because of sickness or inclement weather, he said…
“It’s like hell on Earth here,” he said.
Some belt. Some road. One suspects this photo at the end of the article was included for its black humour value:
A murder of crows near Zrenjanin. Credit…Marko Risovic for The New York Times
Mark Collins
Twitter: @mark3ds
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