- By Global China Unit
- BBC news
image source, Getty Images
Earlier this year, Ai Qing was woken in the middle of the night by angry shouting outside her dormitory in northern Argentina.
She looked out the window to see Argentine workers surrounding the building and blocking the entrance with burning tires.
“It was getting scary because I could see the sky lit up by the fire. It had turned into a riot,” said Ms Ai, who works for a Chinese company that extracts lithium from salt flats in the Andes for use in batteries.
The protest, sparked by the firing of a number of Argentine employees, is just one of a growing number of instances of friction between Chinese companies and host societies as China – which already dominates the processing of minerals vital to the green economy – expands its involvement in mining.
It was just 10 years ago that a Chinese company bought the country’s first stake in a mining project within the “lithium triangle” of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, which contains most of the world’s lithium reserves.
Many additional Chinese investments in local mining operations have followed, according to mining publications and corporate, government and media reports. The BBC calculates that based on their shareholdings, Chinese companies now control an estimated 33% of lithium at projects currently producing the mineral or those under construction.
image source, Getty Images
But as Chinese companies have expanded, they have faced allegations of abuse similar to those often leveled at other international mining giants.
For Ai Qing, the tire-burning protest was a rude awakening. She had expected a quiet life in Argentina, but found herself involved in conflict mediation because of her knowledge of Spanish.
“It wasn’t easy,” she says.
“Apart from the language, we have to tone down a lot of things, like how the management thinks the employees are simply lazy and too dependent on the union, and how locals think the Chinese are only here to take advantage of them.”
The BBC Global China Unit has identified at least 62 mining projects worldwide in which Chinese companies have a stake designed to extract either lithium or one of three other minerals key to green technologies – cobalt, nickel and manganese.
All are used to make lithium-ion batteries – used in electric vehicles – which, along with solar panels, are now high industrial priorities for China. Some projects are among the largest producers of these minerals in the world.
China has long been the leader in refining lithium and cobalt, with a share of global supply of 72% and 68% respectively by 2022, according to the Chatham House think tank.
Its capacity to refine these and other critical minerals has helped the country reach a point where it manufactured more than half of the electric vehicles sold worldwide by 2023, has 60% of the global production capacity for wind turbines and controls at least 80% of each step in the solar panel supply chain.
China’s role in the sector has made these goods cheaper and more available globally.
But it is not just China that will have to extract and process minerals necessary for the green economy. The UN says that if the world is to reach net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, their use must be sixfold by 2040.
The US, UK and EU have all developed strategies in the meantime to reduce their reliance on Chinese supplies.
As Chinese companies have increased their overseas mining operations, allegations of problems caused by these projects have steadily increased.
The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, an NGO, says such problems are “not unique to Chinese mining”, but last year it published a report with 102 accusations against Chinese companies involved in the extraction of critical minerals, ranging from violations of local rights . society to the detriment of ecosystems and unsafe working conditions.
These allegations date from 2021 and 2022. The BBC has counted more than 40 further allegations made in 2023 and reported by NGOs or in the media.
People in two countries, on opposite sides of the world, also told us their stories.
image source, BBC Byobe Malenga
On the outskirts of Lubumbashi in the far south of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, since 2011 Christophe Kabwita has led the opposition to the Ruashi cobalt mine, owned by the Jinchuan Group.
He says the mine, 500m from his doorstep, destroys people’s lives by using explosives to blast away at the cliff two or three times a week. Sirens wail when the blast is about to start, signaling everyone to stop what they’re doing and take cover.
“Regardless of the temperature, whether it’s raining or blowing a gale, we have to leave our homes and go to a shelter near the mine,” he says.
This applies to everyone, including the sick and women who have just given birth, he adds, as nowhere else is safe.
image source, BBC Byobe Malenga
In 2017, a teenage girl, Katty Kabazo, was reportedly killed by a flying rock on her way home from school, while other rocks are said to have punched holes in walls and roofs of local houses.
A Ruashi mine spokesman, Elisa Kalasa, acknowledged that “a young child was in that area – she shouldn’t have been there and was affected by the flying rocks”.
She said that since then “we have improved the technology and now we have the kind of blasting where there are no more flying rocks”.
However, the BBC spoke to a head of processing at the company, Patrick Tshisand, who appeared to paint a different picture. He said: “If we mine, we use explosives. Explosives can cause flying rocks that can end up in the community because the community is too close to the mine… so we had more accidents like that.”
Ms Kalasa also said that between 2006 and 2012, the company compensated more than 300 families to move further away from the mine.
On Indonesia’s remote Obi Island, a mine jointly owned by a Chinese company, Lygend Resources and Technology, and Indonesian mining giant Harita Group has rapidly engulfed the forests surrounding the village of Kawasi.
Jatam, a local mine watchdog, says villagers have been under pressure to relocate and accept government compensation. Dozens of families have refused to move, saying what is being offered is below market value. As a result, some say they have been threatened with legal action for allegedly disrupting a project of national strategic importance.
Jatam says ancient forests have been cut down to make way for the mine, and they have documented how the rivers and sea have been filled with sediment, polluting what was once a pristine marine environment.
“The water from the river is undrinkable now, it is so polluted, and the sea, which is normally clear blue, turns red when it rains,” said Nur Hayati, a teacher who lives in Kawasi village.
Indonesian soldiers have been deployed to the island to protect the mine and when the BBC visited recently there was a noticeable, increased military presence. Jatam claims that soldiers are being used to intimidate and even assault people who speak out against the mine. Nur says her community feels the army is there to “protect the interests of the mine, not the welfare of their own people”.
The military’s spokesman in Jakarta said claims of intimidation “cannot be proven” and that while the soldiers were there to “protect the mine”, they were not there to “directly interact with the local population”.
In a statement, he claimed that the relocation of villagers to make way for the mine had been monitored by the police in a “peaceful and smooth manner”.
Nur was among a group of villagers who traveled to the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, in June 2018 to protest the impact of the mine. But a local government representative, Samsu Abubakar, told the BBC that no complaints had been received from the public about environmental damage.
He also shared an official report which concluded that the Harita Group had “complyed with environmental management and monitoring obligations”.
Harita itself told us that it “strictly adheres to ethical business practices and local laws” and that it is “continuously working to address and mitigate any negative impacts”.
It claimed it had not caused widespread deforestation, it monitored the local source of drinking water and independent tests have confirmed the water met government quality standards. It added that it had not carried out forced evictions or unfair land transactions and had not intimidated anyone.
image source, Getty Images
A year ago, China’s mining trade body, known as the CCCMC, began setting up a grievance mechanism aimed at resolving complaints about Chinese-owned mining projects. The companies themselves “lack the ability – both culturally and linguistically” to interact with local communities or civil society organisations, says a spokesman, Lelia Li.
However, the mechanism is still not fully functional.
Meanwhile, China’s involvement in foreign mining appears to be increasing. Not only is it a “geopolitical game” to control a key market, says Aditya Lolla, the Asia program director at Ember, a UK-based environmental think tank, it also makes sense from a business perspective.
“Acquisitions are made by Chinese companies because for them it’s about profits,” he says.
As a result, Chinese workers will continue to be sent to mining projects around the world, and for them, these projects mostly provide a chance to earn good money.
People like, for example, Wang Gang, who has worked for 10 years in Chinese-owned cobalt mines in DR Congo. The 48-year-old lives in company housing and eats in the staff canteen and works 10-hour days, seven days a week, with four days’ leave a month.
He accepts the separation from his family in Hubei province because he earns more than he could at home. He also enjoys the clear skies and tall forests of DR Congo.
He communicates with local miners in a mixture of French, Swahili and English, but says: “We rarely chat, except for work-related matters.”
Even Ai Qing, who speaks the language of her host country fluently, has little interaction with Argentines outside of work. She has started seeing a Chinese co-worker and they mostly hang out with other people like themselves – being thousands of miles from home draws everyone closer.
A highlight for her is visiting the salt flats high up in the Andes, where lithium is mined and life is “chill”.
“Altitude sickness always gets me – I can’t sleep and I can’t eat,” she says. “But I really enjoy going up there because things are a lot simpler and there’s no office politics.”
Ai Qing and Wang Gang are pseudonyms
Additional reporting by Emery Makumeno, Byobe Malenga, Lucien Kahozy
