Growing Chinese influence in Republika Srpska - They publicly give 200 KM, secretly earn millions

 

Written by: Milkica Milojević

 

FIPA points out that investments and loans from China are increasing dramatically after 2019.

 

In the last 5 years, not only Chinese builders and bankers have arrived in the Republic of Srpska, but also Chinese language teachers, sinology professors and doctors of traditional Chinese medicine. The Confucius Institute of the University of Banja Luka is responsible for this.

 

A small ceremony was recently held at the Confucius Institute, in the building of the Faculty of Political Sciences in Banja Luka. Two Sinology students at the Faculty of Philology in Banja Luka received scholarships in the amount of 200 KM per month from the powerful Chinese company "Shandong".

 

This company is building the Banjaluka - Prijedor highway. The deal is worth around 300 million euros, and the contract between "Shandong" and the Government of Republika Srpska has been hidden from the public for years.

 

On the other hand, scholarship contracts were personally handed over to Chinese students by the director of the "Shandong" branch in Banja Luka, Mingha Wang, in front of TV cameras.

 

Secret contracts and public promotion

 

The Chinese state company for the construction of roads and railways, "Shandong", has been present in Serbia for a long time, and in 2018 it opened a subsidiary company "SDHS-CSI BH" in Banja Luka. Fr. Fr. In the same year, he signed a concession contract with the Government of the RS for the construction of the Banjaluka - Prijedor highway.

 

This contract was published only recently, after several judgments of the District Court in Banja Luka. But the contract was published without a key part: the one related to the "financial model", i.e. spending money.

 

The same company recently expressed interest in the construction of the Sokolac - Bijeljina expressway, and as director Mingha Vang said, "there are also long-term plans for the reconstruction of railroads in the Republic of Srpska."

 

That these plans are realistic is evidenced by the fact that the Government of the RS is already negotiating extensively with the "Chinese Railway Engineering Corporation", which has officially announced that it will move its European representative office from Warsaw to Banjaluka, because "the Republika Srpska has great potential".

 

The Chinese Corporation for Roads and Bridges CRBC recently signed a Memorandum with the Government of the RS on the construction of 15 kilometers of the highway Foča - Šćepan Polje. According to the statement of the Prime Minister of the RS, Radovan Višković, the project is worth around 100 million euros. The details, of course, are not known, and judging by earlier "Chinese projects", they will not be revealed.

 

While Višković was negotiating with the Chinese builders behind closed doors, a public lecture "Belt and Road in the Balkans" was held at the Confucius Institute in Banja Luka, and before that the people of Banja Luka could enjoy the promotion of selected short stories by Petr Kočić translated into Chinese, in the form of comics.

 

All this happened in the last month.

 

Current events illustrate the way in which Chinese influence is spreading in Republika Srpska. Public work is being done to promote the Chinese language and culture, as well as Chinese foreign policy, expressed by the "Belt and Road" initiative, and the Confucius Institute is responsible for that part of the work, while on the other hand, business projects worth hundreds of millions of euros are characterized by a distinct lack of transparency.

 

How Confucius arrived in Banja Luka

 

The story of Confucius in Banja Luka begins in 2017, during the summit of the countries of Eastern and Central Europe and China, known as the "16+1 Initiative". Then the headquarters of the Hanban Confucius Institutes gave consent to the State University of Technology in Tianjin and the University of Banja Luka to jointly establish the Confucius Institute in Banja Luka.

 

As political scientist Miloš Popović, a postdoctoral fellow at Leiden University, warned in 2019, Hanban, which licenses Confucius Institutes around the world, operates under the baton of the leading external propaganda group of the Chinese Communist Party.

 

Since 2004, when this mission began, more than 1,200 Confucius Institutes have been opened in more than 120 countries.

 

According to Ljiljana Stević, director of the Confucius Institute in Banja Luka, this institute was opened in Belgrade in 2006 and was among the first in Europe.

 

Although the Confucius Institute in Sarajevo was opened in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2015, the Chinese thought that it would not be a bad idea to have their center of influence in Banja Luka as well.

 

At the opening of the Confucius Institute in Banja Luka in 2018, the guests of honor were the President of the Republic of Srpska Milorad Dodik and the then Ambassador of China to BiH Chen Bo.

 

It is important to know the language of an economic superpower

 

Since then, the institute has been promoting Chinese culture, art, tradition and philosophy, with the Chinese language as their focus.

 

"It is important to know the language of the country, which is the second and potentially the first economic power in the world. It is important to know the customs and rules of doing business in China. That is why we organized a course in Chinese language and Chinese business etiquette for employees of the Cabinet of the President of the Republic of Srpska" - says Ljiljana Stević.

 

The Confucius Institute also organizes Chinese courses for children, youth and adults. Currently, there are 10 Chinese language teachers working in Banja Luka, most of whom are local, mostly educated in Belgrade, and some professors and students who come from China and stay in the RS for one to two years.

 

Chinese academics stay in the student campus as guests of the University of Banja Luka. Although they are volunteers, they receive compensation for their work.

 

"Until now, about 200 participants, from kindergarten children to adults, have taken our Chinese courses. We organize optional classes in five elementary schools in Banja Luka, and in Banja Luka High School, where the Confucius classroom was opened in 2000. We also work with secondary schools in Srpac and Doboj" - states Ljiljana Stević, adding that the courses for children and students are free.

 

"It is a gift from the university to the community," says Stević.

 

Wages borne by the citizens of Srpska

 

As is the practice elsewhere in the world, the Confucius Institute in Banja Luka operates as part of the university. It has offices and a classroom at the Faculty of Political Sciences, and it also uses the premises of other faculties for its events. The domestic staff of the institute are employees of the Rectorate of the University of Banja Luka.

 

The Confucius Institute in Banja Luka employs three Chinese, including the Chinese director Shen Li, and they are paid by the University of Tianjin. Four domestic employees are paid by the University of Banja Luka.

 

"Our annual budget for projects is around 100,000 dollars and that is provided by partners from China. The salary costs for the four of us are higher than that amount, and that is provided by the University of Banja Luka," says director Stević.

 

The University of Banja Luka is a public university and is mostly financed from the budget of the RS and other public revenues, which means that these salaries are at the expense of the citizens of Srpska.

 

But both at the Confucius Institute and at the Rectorate of the University in Banja Luka, they emphasize that the community also benefits from them.

 

"We support the Rectorate in international activities, we have strengthened the university. We translated the works of Petr Kočić, Stevka Kozić Preradović, Ranko Preradović and some other writers into Chinese. We also work in other ways to promote the Serbian language and culture in China," says Stević.

 

Peking via Banja Luka

 

The support of the Confucius Institute was crucial for the establishment of the Department of Sinology at the Faculty of Philology in Banja Luka in 2022. Today, the department has 4 professors of Sinology, one proofreader from China and 23 students.

 

"We hope that there will be many more students, and our ambition is to establish Asian studies at the University of Banja Luka," says Stević.

 

Back in 2011, the Department of Sinology was opened at the Faculty of Philosophy in Pale, part of the also public University of East Sarajevo. This study group enrolls 10 to 15 students per year.

 

Therefore, there are more and more Chinese speakers in the Republika Srpska, and more and more people who, even if they do not know Chinese, travel to China through the Confucius Institute.

 

As stated in the publication issued on the occasion of the 5th anniversary of the Confucius Institute in Banja Luka, thanks to them, not only the best Sinology students and participants of Chinese courses, but also university professors and delegations from the Government of the RS and the City of Banja Luka stayed in Beijing and Tjeđin.

 

Mina Đorđević from Belgrade, one of the two Sinology students in Banja Luka, who received a scholarship from the "Shandong" company at the beginning of our story, hopes to travel to China soon.

 

"I want to continue my education in China and get a job there. I enrolled in Sinology in Banja Luka, because I did not succeed in Belgrade, there is a lot of competition there. In fact, today it is easier to reach China via Banja Luka than via Belgrade - says Mina Đorđević.

 

Why did the activists sue the RS Government?

 

The contract on the construction of the Banjaluka-Prijedor highway is at least partially available to the public today, because non-governmental organizations and journalists sued the RS Government.

 

"The problem is that it is a concession contract. According to the media, "Shandong" was given a 30-year concession for that highway, and Republika Srpska undertook to reimburse the concessionaire, if he does not collect as much from the tolls as he had planned. The point of concessions is precisely for the concessionaire to assume the risk, and here all the risk is assumed by the Republika Srpska, which guarantees the investor the profitability of this project. For this reason, it is important that the public receives all the information about what the RS has committed to in that contract" - explains Srđan Traljić, spokesperson for Transparency International in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

 

TI BiH won two verdicts in this case, and they sued the Government of the RS for the third time, because they insist that the "financial model" of the contract, which is still a secret, be published.

 

CONCLUSION

 

The manner in which China exerts influence in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian entity of Republika Srpska has been very clearly depicted, intertwining economic, educational, cultural, and public institutions. All these institutions are directly or indirectly linked to the Communist Party of China, the only political force in this country that has been in power for decades. Non-transparent business dealings of Chinese companies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as other countries in the Western Balkans, have become a sort of "modus operandi." The ruling structures do not acquaint the public with the details of signed agreements on Chinese investments, especially the financial aspects of the agreements, which ultimately are of most interest to the public. It is highly likely that the financial parts of the agreements contain very unfavorable clauses for the borrowers (in this case, the entity of Republika Srpska), and as such, they will have consequences for the future development of Republika Srpska. Reports about a concession granted to the Chinese side for a period of 30 years, with compensation to the Chinese if there is insufficient traffic on the highway, rightly raise concerns in the NGO sector, which has even initiated appropriate legal proceedings and obtained judgments. However, the details of the contentious agreements have still not been disclosed to the public, indicating that the authorities in Republika Srpska are not inclined to publish this information.

As we have witnessed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as other countries in the region, collaboration with Chinese companies (whether as investors or contractors on infrastructure projects) often involves details of signed agreements not being disclosed to the public "due to demands from the other party" (which also suits domestic signatories of the contracts). Since the funds used to repay loans/credits or invest in infrastructure projects are public, budgetary funds, perhaps the solution would be to introduce a legal obligation for the public to be informed about (at least) the financial aspects of these transactions.