Chinese Police in the Western Balkans: Cooperation or a Wider Influence Network?

This article is part of a series of articles authored by young, aspiring China scholars under the Future CHOICE initiative.

Amid growing numbers of Chinese tourists flocking to the Western Balkans, China has stepped up surveillance of its nationals through joint patrols and police stations based abroad. While denying these accusations, Beijing has been keen to quell dissenters and has forcibly repatriated its citizens. The presence of police and surveillance equipment has renewed questions over China’s ability to exert influence through other countries security networks, individual privacy, and the possibility of the tech being co-opted by authoritarian leaders in the face of mounting demonstrations, such as those in Albania and Serbia.

Though highly publicized cases of police stations, such as those in the UK, have resulted in their closure after COVID-19, some Balkan states are trending in the opposite direction. By doing so, they reveal a permissive attitude that endorses China’s incursion into their domestic security policy, in exchange for receiving means to renew their legitimacy, including powerful technology, and infrastructure investments.

Police Exchanges or Fostering Foreign Intimidation?

Last summer, eight Chinese police officers traveled to Croatia as part of the sixth iteration of their month-long joint patrol program “Croatia – Safe Tourist Destination.” It has been billed as a way of protecting citizens overseas, including providing “lectures” to Chinese entrepreneurs on how to safeguard their businesses from fraud and theft, and delivering a stronger sense of security for Chinese tourists. Chinese media promoted the initiative by highlighting positive feedback from tourists and European nationals. The number of Chinese tourists traveling to Croatia has drastically increased, up 41 percent in 2024 in comparison to the previous year, and the two nations are working on establishing a direct flight link to further boost ties. Croatian officials have affirmed the partnership and made repeated statements framing the cooperation between police forces as helping to make Croatia “safe[r] for travelers.”

NGOs such as the Madrid-based Safeguard Defenders, which tracks human rights violations and crackdowns on activists by Chinese authorities, through several investigations unearthed the presence of “at least 54 overseas police service centers.” At these centers, including one located in the Serbian capital of Belgrade, 230,000 claimed “suspects of fraud” were “persuaded to return” to China. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has rubbished those reports and reiterated their official stance that the “service centers” are for purely administrative purposes, such as the driver’s license renewal. Both Croatia and Serbia have also denied their existence and said the Chinese police were there only to help with tourists.

Shaping Diaspora Thought and Suppressing Protestors

An unnamed Chinese official backed up the reports on secretive police stations by citing difficulties with European nations extraditing people to China and thus circumventing bilateral cooperation agreements. Previous revelations found “persuasion” to consist of three approaches to securing suspects, each with varying degrees of severity: harassing or persecuting family members at home, face-to-face confrontation with the target, and kidnapping – both with and without the suspects’ cooperation.

Similarly, in October 2024, the World Uyghur Congress, held in Sarajevo, had to ramp up security after organizers and attendees reported receiving threats and intimidation from Chinese nationals who were seen monitoring the event. China has been “arbitrarily detaining” Uyghurs in the country’s Xinjiang region because of fears of destabilizing the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) control. Several countries, including the US have referred to the treatment as genocide.

Under Xi Jinping, China has worked to reinforce influence on foreign soil, and now operates under the “guide, buy, and coerce” model, which comprises strategies such as using diaspora communities as agents and encouraging those who are favorable to the government to become politically engaged. Campaigns of transnational repression are frequent, with dissidents, including students studying abroad, being targeted for their criticism of China’s government. During several of Xi’s foreign trips, protestors were arrested and detained with questionable legal justification for displaying signs supportive of Tibetan and Taiwanese independence. In the cases of France and Serbia, when activists probed officers over their detention, they were told that they were acting under orders from their superiors.

Implementing Chinese-Made Surveillance Technologies

The adoption of surveillance technology has stretched the farthest in Bosnia and Serbia, where dozens of municipalities have implemented pedestrian and traffic monitoring systems in addition to video cameras. These systems are produced by Chinese corporations that are blacklisted by the current US administration for human rights abuses and security risks.

China has ignored the scrutiny that Aleksandar Vučić’s government has been under following the train station canopy collapse in Novi Sad – constructed as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – that took the lives of 16 people last year. As a response to massive protests following this tragedy, the government has implemented Chinese-made surveillance devices with at least 1000 known cameras in the capital, while intending to expand capacity by 3500 additional cameras, as suggested by a leaked purchase order with tech giant, Huawei. During Vučić’s tenure, Serbia has sought to extensively monitor protestors, including having plainclothes officers use high-tech cellphones to film individuals with the aim of cataloging “activists and other citizens who are critically aligned against the government.” This technology is deployed with murky legality and has faced criticism, being perceived as a conduit to reduce personal privacy, in spite of its official promotion as being used to “fight terrorism” and “reduce crime.”

Similar progress has taken place in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the Sarajevo Canton police using body cams and data management software made by Hytera, which is partly owned by the Chinese state, and was embroiled in a legal battle with the American telecom company, Motorola. Early last year, Hytera pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal technology from Motorola related to two-way radios. When pressed over these controversies, Bosnia’s Interior Ministry played down the ability for the Chinese company to be excluded from the procurement process based on these grounds.

Security Cooperation as a Facet of Multi-Varied Influence

Serbian leadership views Beijing as its primary non-Western ally primarily because of Chinese billions in foreign direct investment (FDI) flowing into the country and due to a bilateral friendship stemming from the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the late 1990s. Both countries perceive that incident as emblematic of Western aggression, with China utilizing the bombing’s 25^th anniversary to welcome Serbia, the first European country, to its diplomatic initiative “Community with a Shared Future for Mankind.” The partnership is described as being formed “on the basis of respect for state sovereignty, territorial integrity, and non-interference in the internal affairs of other states.” The territorial integrity component makes sense for both parties as China refuses to recognize Kosovo’s independence and as a result has gotten Serbia to affirm the One-China policy regarding Taiwan.

Despite receiving visible infrastructure benefits through cooperation with China, the projects, including the replacement of the Sava River bridge, have been facilitated with limited transparency, lack of due-diligence, and without public bidding for contracts. While the benefits of the BRI are substantial, China has exploited Belgrade’s balancing act between the East and the West to gain greater European influence and an unrestricted access to monitoring Chinese citizens and their behaviors in Serbia.

Under the Global Security Initiative (GSI) announced by Xi Jinping in 2022, the aim of Chinese actions, including policy exchanges or the sale of surveillance equipment, is to develop relationships with foreign states that shred the traditional security cooperation boundaries. This allows for China to normalize its security practices and promote the legitimacy of the CCP abroad while supplying less developed economies, such as those of the Western Balkans, with valuable security technology. These surveillance systems, when offered alongside key construction projects, produce a two-fold benefit: they enhance China’s regional influence while creating an environment where partner countries can exploit advanced technology to solidify their governance.

Analyzing Susceptibilities

While each nation maintains different vulnerabilities to China’s influence, those residing outside the European single market may naturally find it tougher to attract a partner capable of fulfilling both a steady stream of investment and constructing a multiplicity of infrastructure projects at a reduced cost. Interestingly, some of the cities where joint-police patrols have taken place in Serbia, specifically Novi Sad and Smederevo, feature large Chinese-backed developments and typically do not rely on tourism as part of their economy. In contrast to the stated purpose of the police exchanges, China has given the appearance that it is equally focused on monitoring swathes of Chinese nationals working on its projects.

Despite the risks of allowing a global superpower like China to embed its influence within a range of sectors including infrastructure projects, police exchanges, and surveillance technology, the Western Balkans nations have been eager to work alongside a partner who seemingly remains uninterested in their domestic political issues.

The EU might explore adjusting its accession strategy to include mitigative efforts regarding Chinese partnerships in the Western Balkans. However, limiting the role of Beijing is only one part of the task. The other consists of unearthing what enticements can be offered to prospective EU members to ensure their efforts are focused on long-term integration and not consolidating control within their own borders.