China in Western Balkan Academia: Scientific Opportunity and Research Security

Chinese partners have become part of university research in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania, and more thinly, Kosovo. The examples are concrete: a genomics center in Belgrade, a drug-discovery partnership linking Western Balkan scientists with Shanghai, and agricultural laboratories connecting universities across Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Together they show how widely China has become embedded in Western Balkan academia. 

China’s academic presence is uneven, but it reaches well beyond Confucius Institutes and language teaching. Its significance lies in the depth of selected relationships rather than dominance over the region’s universities. Understanding this means taking Western Balkan academics seriously as participants with ambitions of their own. Research security matters where the pursuit of scientific opportunity leaves institutions with limited control over data, intellectual property or future choices.

The attraction is practical: equipment, research partners, specialist training, and opportunities to turn university expertise into applications. The consequences, however, are strategic: these relationships can shape which questions researchers pursue, the technologies they use, and the partners they depend on. This article maps Chinese academic partnerships across the region, asks what universities gain and what they risk, and proposes policies to protect research while keeping cooperation open.

Universities Pursue New Research Opportunities

Europe remains the region’s principal research reference point: all six Western Balkan participants are associated with Horizon Europe. Concretely, an OpenAlex comparison of articles and reviews published between 2015 and 2025 identifies 4,795 China-linked works involving Serbian institutions, against 28,853 involving partners in the EU. And the European total is larger in each of the six countries examined. These figures, which are the author’s own calculations from OpenAlex, include multinational teams and overlapping affiliations, indicating scientific connections rather than discrete bilateral projects or formal partnerships.

Against this European background, China offers additional routes into particular fields. Serbia’s mapped partnerships span genomics, drug discovery, metallurgy, computing, and space science. Bosnia and Herzegovina has an emerging agricultural network; Montenegro, computing partnerships; North Macedonia, engineering and neuroscience links; and Albania, agricultural research and training. Kosovo’s formal institutional connections are considerably more limited. This distribution suggests that local academic specializations and individual relationships help determine where cooperation begins.

Serbia, where partnerships are both the most numerous and the most varied, illustrates how different academic incentives can converge. At the University of Belgrade’s Institute for Biological Research “Siniša Stanković” (IBISS), cooperation with the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM), part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), connects researchers through the Pan-Balkan Alliance of Natural Products and Drug Discovery Association (PANDA), founded in 2019, and a joint drug laboratory approved in May 2021. PANDA includes representatives from five Western Balkan countries. A December 2025 review of laboratory results shows a relationship continuing beyond the signing ceremony. For the scientists involved, the opportunity is to connect knowledge of biological resources with drug-discovery expertise and a wider research network. The institutional question is how discoveries, biological materials, and commercial returns are shared.

Industrial cooperation provides another route. Belgrade’s Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy launched its virtual green-steel laboratory with the Chinese industrial group HBIS Group Co., Ltd. (HBIS) on April 15, 2024, reporting three projects addressing strip quality, energy efficiency, and new steel grades and dimensions. A university gains issues to investigate and an industrial setting in which its expertise can be applied; a steel producer gains access to local scientific capability. This brings academia directly into the relationship between Chinese investment and Serbia’s industrial development. In June 2026, the University of Belgrade and North China University of Technology (NCUT) signed a memorandum of understanding, following a visit initiated by the University of Belgrade’s Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy. During the visit, Zhang Lifeng, NCUT’s president and a professor specializing in steel metallurgy, delivered a technical lecture on controlling impurities in high-quality steel. 

Individual scholars also help turn academic contacts into institutional partnerships. Miodrag Mihaljević, a corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA) and a research professor specializing in cryptography, information security, and machine learning, arranged the Chinese delegation’s visit to the University of Montenegro, during which the university signed a July 2025 memorandum with the Shandong Computer Science Center (SCSC), presented in its announcement as the National Supercomputing Center in Jinan. The planned cooperation covers cryptographic protocols, AI, hardware and software security, and a joint platform for testing cryptographic algorithms. 

The choice of partner warrants closer scrutiny. In April 2021, the US Commerce Department added the Jinan center to its Entity List, among seven entities linked to activities supporting China’s military actors, military modernization, and/or weapons-of-mass-destruction programs. This designation does not establish that the Montenegro partnership serves military purposes. It does, however, provide a concrete reason for the university to examine its partner’s institutional connections, the potential uses of shared research, and access to data and technology before implementing joint projects. Academic networks can open valuable opportunities, but responsibility for assessing those opportunities must rest with institutions rather than individual researchers. 

These examples are increasingly backed by public funding. In 2026, the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) launched a public call for the Joint Research Program of Scientists from the Republic of Serbia and the People’s Republic of China, which closed on September 25, 2026, and allocated €4 million, split equally between the two countries. The 23 agreements signed during the Vučić–Xi meeting in May 2026 established a broader political framework for cooperation in AI, technology and innovation, and education through 2030. For universities, the key challenge is to translate that framework into sustained research funding, staff development, and publishable results.

Note: The University of Priština in Kosovska Mitrovica is physically based in northern Mitrovica, Kosovo, and is distinct from the University of Prishtina. It operates within Serbia’s higher-education system under the oversight of the Serbian Ministry of Education and is accredited by Serbia’s national accreditation body. Its China cooperation is documented through the China–Serbia rectors’ forum. However, its own Erasmus+ identifiers page lists XK KOSOVKS01, not an RS code; the reviewed evidence does not establish that Erasmus+ participation is administered through Serbia. The dataset therefore distinguishes physical location from institutional affiliation without taking a position on status.

A Regional Network with Different National Foundations

Beyond Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina demonstrates how university relationships can develop across a fragmented institutional landscape. The University of Banja Luka reported 18 active agreements with Chinese universities in November 2025. The reviewed registers identify three Chinese partners at the University of Sarajevo and 13 entries at the University of East Sarajevo. These figures show the breadth of contact, while the content of cooperation reveals its academic value.

Jiangsu University’s agricultural network is particularly revealing. In May 2025, Jiangsu University unveiled two joint laboratories on smart agriculture technology and equipment, one with universities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and one with universities in Serbia. A subsequent June 2025 regional agreement linked universities in East Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Novi Sad, and Niš. The agreement’s agenda includes agricultural technology, food-processing waste, and related materials applications. This could give Chinese partners a coordinating position across several Western Balkan universities, while giving local faculties access to a network broader than any single bilateral exchange could provide.

East Sarajevo’s laboratory also illustrates why institutional announcements need careful interpretation. In April 2026, the university described the laboratory as being in the process of establishment and development, while press reports that month described an opening ceremony in Zhenjiang, with headquarters planned for East Sarajevo. Rector Milan Kulić subsequently dated its establishment to 2025. These accounts may describe different stages of the same initiative, but they leave unclear what equipment the Bosnian site has and what research it produces. The distinction matters academically: an affiliation with a laboratory is useful only if it translates into opportunities for staff and students to conduct research.

Alongside these research partnerships sits the educational infrastructure. The University of Novi Sad was selected to host the European secretariat of the China–Central Eastern Countries Higher Education Institutions Consortium (CCHEIC) for 2017–2019 and, according to the China Education Association for International Exchange (CEAIE), holds the role again for 2026–2028. Hosting offers opportunities to bring universities together, develop exchanges and identify joint projects. CEAIE reported 371 member institutions in April 2026, a figure covering the entire CCHEIC rather than Chinese partnerships specifically in the Western Balkans.

Confucius Institutes sometimes contribute to these links. The Confucius Institute at the University of Niš was co-established with Jiangsu University, the same partner involved in smart agriculture. The University of Banja Luka’s 2024 agreement with Tianjin University of Technology and Education explicitly built on the two universities’ Confucius Institute relationship, envisaging an engineering-practice center. Yet the University of Novi Sad’s Confucius Institute partner is Zhejiang A&F University, which is distinct from Jiangsu University. The evidence supports investigating how language programs, personnel, and introductions facilitate research, rather than assuming a single regional pathway from cultural outreach to scientific cooperation.

In Montenegro, the University of Montenegro’s July 2025 memorandum with the SCSC sits alongside the University of Donja Gorica’s engagement with six Chinese counterparts on AI and high-performance computing and a 2+2 program with Beijing Union University. Teaching cooperation can familiarize students and staff with a partner institution before joint research develops. The significance of such cooperation should therefore be assessed through academic progression and subsequent collaboration, as well as immediate publications.

North Macedonia offers a longer research history. The Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Seismology (IZIIS) at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje (UKIM) lists six bilateral projects spanning 2009–2019, including seismic hazards and structural response. UKIM’s Faculty of Medicine also records a 2020–2021 collaboration between Associate Professor Tomislav Stankovski, Head of the Department of Medical Physics, and Fudan University in Shanghai on inferring and dynamically modeling brain networks using neurological data. These relationships show Chinese cooperation drawing on identifiable scholarly expertise. UKIM’s newer agreement with Yunnan Agricultural University expands the range of potential collaboration, although an agreement alone cannot demonstrate comparable research depth.

Albania’s clearest applied example is the Agricultural University of Tirana’s relationship with China Agricultural University. Their Albanian–Chinese Center for Innovation, Science and Agricultural Technology was established in 2018, with training for more than 30 technicians. A 2019 scientific visit addressed cucumber genetics, gene regulation, and soil amendments. Unlike the human-genomic work discussed below, this was a cooperation centered on agricultural knowledge and practical skills. The University of Tirana’s relationship with Beijing Foreign Studies University adds language and humanities exchanges. Together, these examples show why the academic content deserves more attention than a generic count of Chinese agreements.

Kosovo remains a different case. No Chinese partner was identified in the reviewed University of Prishtina register. The University of Priština in Kosovska Mitrovica (UPKM), physically based in Kosovo but operating within Serbia’s higher-education system, however, signed two agreements at the October 2024 rectors’ forum and advertised a Shandong University International Summer School. Political and institutional jurisdiction explains this uneven access to Chinese networks. The dataset distinguishes the two institutions rather than treating their relationships as interchangeable.

Genomics Changes the Stakes of Academic Cooperation

Genomic cooperation raises the stakes because it involves human biological data, not just equipment and training. Serbia’s relationship with BGI Group (formerly Beijing Genomics Institute, BGI) shows how an emergency partnership can become part of a university’s research infrastructure. The Belgrade Fire Eye laboratory was opened in April 2020, followed by Niš in July. For Niš, the Serbian government reported a capacity of 1,000 samples daily, approximately €3.5 million invested by Serbia and €500,000 donated by Zijin Mining Group, which operates major copper and gold mining operations in Eastern Serbia. Later, the accounts from Serbia’s Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation described both laboratories as BGI donations, leaving the allocation of costs between partners unclear.

The next stage connected this public-health cooperation to the Institute of Molecular Genetics and Genetic Engineering, University of Belgrade (IMGGE). Its Center for Genome Sequencing and Bioinformatics was inaugurated on December 9, 2021, although the center’s current institutional profile shows 2022 as its opening year. BGI Genomics Co., Ltd. reports that it donated sequencing equipment and sent five technical experts to train Serbian colleagues over eight months. This equipment and training expanded the institute’s capacity for viral surveillance and human-genomic analysis, connecting pandemic cooperation to longer-term biomedical research.

Further agreements reinforced the connection. According to BGI’s November 2022 announcement, a memorandum between Complete Genomics, a subsidiary of MGI Tech Co., Ltd., and IMGGE envisaged the company donating a DNBSEQ-G400 genome sequencer to the institute for genomics research. April 2023 memoranda with the science and health ministries covered biotechnology, diagnostics, and screening. Scholarships for students at the universities in Belgrade, Novi Sad, and Kragujevac extended the relationship into training. BGI’s BIO4 partnership points toward a longer presence, although the campus’s occupancy timetable and rental process do not establish that BGI already occupies a laboratory there.

Taken together, these steps raise a broader concern regarding how academic capability and supplier dependence develop together. Training on particular equipment can influence later purchases and research workflows. Human-genomic research adds questions about samples, consent, and secondary use. These issues require scrutiny of the actual arrangements, especially where university research, public healthcare, and commercial interests intersect.

Data access is the most contested of these questions. As reported by RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty, BGI states that it has no access to the sequencing center’s data and no data-sharing agreement. Serbian authorities said the data were stored in Kragujevac. The Washington Post juxtaposed Science Minister Jelena Begović’s remark and BGI’s benchmarking release with BGI’s explanation: validation samples were shared, then destroyed – sequencing data were not. Reuters recorded Begović describing the laboratory as a source of regional information for BGI, while BGI’s own account describes benchmarking Serbian results against another team’s sequencing results. These accounts raise legitimate questions about the boundaries of technical collaboration, without establishing unrestricted access to patient records. Storage location alone cannot answer those questions.

A separate concern comes from outside Serbia. The US restrictions could affect the choices available to Serbian researchers. BGI Group and named affiliates, and separately MGI, appear on the Section 1260H list, an official Department of Defense roster that identifies “Chinese military companies” operating directly or indirectly in the US. The Commerce Department imposed restrictions on particular BGI-related entities in 2020 and 2023. The BIOSECURE provisions enacted in December 2025 introduce federal procurement and funding restrictions, with the Office of Management and Budget’s company list due by December 2026. For institutions pursuing international grants, the practical issue is whether one partnership complicates another. The measures do not themselves establish misuse of Serbian data.

Protecting Research While Keeping Cooperation Open

Besides genomics, emerging fields such as space science raise a related question: what role do local researchers play in practice? The Astronomical Observatory, Belgrade (AOB) has moved from a September 2024 lunar-experiments memorandum toward a planned joint laboratory with China’s Deep Space Exploration Laboratory (DSEL), which would include astrobiology. Such initiatives can offer researchers access to projects beyond their institution’s independent reach. Their value depends on the role local scientists actually secure: contributing to research design, producing publishable results, and developing expertise that remains useful beyond the partnership.

Value is only part of the picture. The security implications extend beyond the protection of individual laboratories. Genomic samples and unpublished datasets can expose sensitive information; AI and space research can have military or surveillance applications; and industrial cooperation can transfer commercially valuable know-how. Dependence on a supplier’s equipment, software, or maintenance can make changing partners costly. Universities should assess whether their cooperation agreements adequately protect research independence, sensitive data, and intellectual property. The partnerships discussed here illustrate why these safeguards matter – they do not, on their own, demonstrate misconduct. Chinese partners bring varied incentives. HBIS is a state-owned industrial group, Shanghai’s drug-discovery partner belongs to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and BGI operates commercially. The relevant questions concern ownership, funding, access, and intended use. A university must know who can obtain its results, whether the partner can transfer them onward, and whether researchers can publish without an external veto. An agreement negotiated by an individual professor should also be understood and overseen by the institution responsible for it.

However, universities cannot manage this alone. Western Balkan governments should turn research security into a funded institutional responsibility. The EU Council’s research-security recommendation offers a framework they can adapt: proportionate risk assessment, support for research institutions, and protection of academic freedom. Science ministries should establish national guidance and advisory services linking universities, funders, data-protection authorities, and relevant export-control expertise. Smaller institutions could share legal and technical support. Public research funding should require disclosure of foreign funding and affiliations, identification of sensitive work, and a documented review before high-risk agreements are signed.

Universities, for their part, should keep a central record of partnerships and negotiate enforceable provisions on intellectual property, publication rights, onward transfers, and termination. Sensitive projects need clear access permissions, cybersecurity controls, and periodic review as partners or intended uses change. Genomic cooperation warrants particular scrutiny. Across the Western Balkans, applicable national protections for genetic data and, where relevant, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) safeguards should inform arrangements for consent, sample custody, remote access, retention, and secondary use. In Serbian partnerships, universities should also ensure that Serbia’s protections for genetic data inform these arrangements. A domestic server provides insufficient protection if access and subsequent processing remain opaque. Independent ethical review and auditable access records would make assurances testable.

Apart from individual agreements, countries should also reduce avoidable dependence by supporting domestic technical skills, diversifying funding, and favoring equipment that allows data to be moved between systems. Regional exchange of contract models and anonymized lessons could help universities negotiate from a stronger position. These safeguards should follow the sensitivity of the research and the partner’s conduct, with decisions open to review. Blanket suspicion of Chinese students or researchers would undermine academic freedom and the collaboration the region needs.

These measures matter because China’s expanding academic presence means today’s research arrangements shape tomorrow’s scientific choices. The challenge for Western Balkan countries is to secure the benefits of international cooperation while retaining control over sensitive knowledge, protecting research participants, and preserving access to other partners. Research security belongs at the point where collaborations are designed. Once a laboratory, dataset, or research program depends on arrangements that its university cannot scrutinize or change, recovering that autonomy becomes much harder.