Thewesternbalkans
Joint police patrols
In May 2019, China and Serbia signed a memorandum for joint patrolling of Chinese and Serbian police in major cities of Serbia. On this basis, in 2019 and 2023, half a dozen Chinese police officers patrolled jointly with their Serbian counterparts in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Smederevo, the cities with the most Chinese tourists.
Serbia is the third European country after Italy and Croatia, with which China runs similar campaigns as it looks to strengthen international policing and better protect overseas Chinese tourists and expats. The move aims to help create a safer development environment for the advancement of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Chinese police officers are also expected to appear in the Hungarian capital Budapest soon after Chinese Public Security Minister Wang Xiaohong visited Hungary in February 2024 and signed an agreement on joint police patrols.
Police cooperation between China and Serbia began to develop actively in May 2016, when the then Chinese Minister of Public Security Zhao Kezhi visited Belgrade and signed a bilateral security cooperation agreement. Serbian Interior Ministry spokesman Željko Brkić said that the joint patrols were another step in strengthening relations between the two countries, indicating that Serbia is a reliable partner for China. The initiative also allows for joint exercises of special police units and cooperation in fighting cyber crime.
China’s 2015 agreement on joint patrols with Italy was used as a model for the Sino-Serbian agreement, although the Italian side suspended it in 2022 due to the Covid pandemic and has not renewed it since. The more serious reason for the termination of the Italian-Chinese agreement was the discovery of illegal Chinese police stations in Italy and in many other countries of the world. The phenomenon has been highlighted by the Spanish-based rights group Safeguard Defenders, which has found more than a hundred similar facilities across Europe. The revelation of illegal Chinese police stations also casts a negative light on agreed joint patrols with China in Serbia and other European countries.
The joint Sino-Serbian patrolling is undoubtedly a good example of international police cooperation and is of practical benefit for communication between Chinese tourists and Serbian authorities, but there are also some indications that it is being used by Beijing to increase Chinese influence and directly control Chinese diaspora in Serbia.
Although it is officially stated that the Chinese police officers will be used primarily as translators between the Chinese tourists and the Serbian police, some observers consider the presence of Chinese police officers to be tantamount to foreign interference in the host country’s internal affairs.
The EU is also concerned about China’s police expansion in Europe, and in particular in member states, although this concerns primarily illegal police stations rather than intergovernmental security agreements. Some European politicians view the Chinese police presence in European countries as a Chinese Trojan horse in Europe and equate it with a hybrid threat.
In fact, the Sino-Serbian agreement does not provide for Chinese policemen to carry arms and take independent actions on their part. They will be allowed to wear uniforms, but not allowed to carry out investigations and arrests.
In addition to joint patrols, Serbian-Chinese security cooperation includes Belgrade’s purchase of Chinese weapons and equipment and surveillance and tracking software. Serbia and the Chinese electronics company Huawei have begun in 2019 a project called Safe City, which envisages mounting hundreds of surveillance cameras in Belgrade and the development of facial-recognition software. According to media reports, these cameras were used to identify and pursue participants in anti-government protests in the Serbian capital.
Other Serbian cities have installed surveillance systems of the Chinese company Dahua, which has been on the US sanctions list since 2019. The US suspects that Dahua developed the software that the Chinese government is using to monitor the Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Law enforcement capacity building in Serbia has been so successful that the streets of Serbian cities are now monitored by thousands of Chinese-made surveillance cameras.
To prevent security cooperation with Serbia from appearing to be a one-way street, in September 2024 China hosted six Serbian police officers for joint patrols in Sanya, the resort capital of the island province of Hainan, a popular tourist destination for Serbian tourists. The influx of Serbian tourists to China has increased sharply after the pandemic based on the visa-free regime between China and Serbia (2017) and a direct air route between the two capitals (July 2022).
Security export
China’s state leadership is increasing attention to security issues related to the global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project. For China, the protection of its own interests abroad and ensuring the security of Chinese citizens and institutions abroad are becoming more and more relevant. BRI, in addition to the visible, commercial component, has by design a second, invisible security component. At the heart of China’s approach to security issues related to the BRI is the enforcement of cooperation with foreign partners in the fields of defense, security and safeguard activities. The Chinese government is increasingly debating procedures for deploying security personnel to foreign countries along the BRI route. This issue is purposefully raised by the Chinese side in all negotiations with law enforcement structures from other countries.
In 2019, the Chinese Ministry of State Security established a special Directorate for the Protection of China’s Overseas Interests. Efforts are coordinated between the Ministry of State Security, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Defense and other government bodies, under the leadership of the party vertical of power, to prepare and implement a unified strategy.
In the area of security in the Western Balkans, at this stage China mainly relies on the local special services and the police to protect its interests. In the future, Beijing may use Chinese private security firms to meet growing needs for additional security capabilities.
In recent years, the Chinese government has taken practical measures to staff the expansion of Chinese security forces overseas. In Chinese military academies, specialized courses are organized to train Chinese military personnel for overseas activity. Gifted and promising personnel are selected for participation in these courses. Trainees enhance their qualifications and support their career development with a view to meeting security challenges within the BRI. Courses include training in strategic communications, military public diplomacy, intercultural diplomacy, foreign studies on the countries included in the BRI (86 in total), including nature, society, culture, languages and laws of the countries.
Police from China have trained 2,700 officers in the past year and is planning to coach 3,000 more from various countries over the next 12 months, public security minister Wang Xiaohong said on September 9, 2024, in a speech at a Conference of Global Public Security Cooperation Forum (Lianyungang, Jiangsu province in eastern China) with over 2,100 participants including officers from law enforcement departments and renowned experts and scholars from 122 countries, regions, and international organizations. “We will (also) send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities”, Wang said. The annual Lianyungang conference is seen as part of the Global Security Initiative (GSI) proposed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2022, which aims to address international issues through cooperation with other countries. However, analysts have described the GSI as a way of expanding China’s global influence and distancing from the current US-led security order.
Similar initiatives are opportunities for the Chinese side to showcase its ability to export security and to provide global security influence. The security, guard and defense components of China’s overseas interests, concentrated in the BRI and “14 + 1” platform, are deployed slowly, gradually and unobtrusively so as not to provoke negative reactions. Chinese penetration is finding gaps in all areas of the European economy, from tourism to sensitive infrastructures.
Foto: Xihua
