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Corrosive Capital in the Western Balkans: an Analysis of Four High Impact Chinese Investments

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Corrosive Capital in the Western Balkans: an Analysis of Four High Impact Chinese Investments Corrosive Capital in the Western Balkans: An Analysis of Four High Impact Chinese Investments In this paper, Damir Marusic, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, analyzes the impacts of corrosive capital on corruption in the Western Balkans. He presents and examines the key findings of four recently published policy reports by Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) local partners in North Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. Each report investigates the negative economic and environmental consequences associated with Chinese investment throughout the region. To close, Marusic provides a series of recommendations for the European Union (EU) and national governments to prevent corrosive impacts from exacerbating the region’s governance gaps and struggles with corruption. CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL PRIVATE ENTERPRISE MAY 2021 CORROSIVE CAPITAL IN THE WESTERN BALKANS: AN ANALYSIS OF FOUR HIGH IMPACT CHINESE INVESTMENTS OFFOUR HIGH IMPACT ANALYSIS IN THE WESTERNBALKANS: AN CAPITAL CORROSIVE Disclosure: This report was prepared with support from the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), whose mission is to strengthen democracy around the globe through private enterprise and market-oriented reform. The views expressed in this report represent the opinions and analysis of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of CIPE or its staff. The content of this report is provided "as is"; no representations are made that the content is error-free. Corrosive Capital® is a CIPE initiative that provides support for activities and programs to mitigate the effects of corrosive capital on democratic governance and human rights. The “Corrosive Capital” trademark is owned by CIPE. Copyright © 2021 by the Center for International Private Enterprise All rights reserved CIPE | 2021 B CORROSIVE CAPITAL IN THE WESTERN BALKANS: AN ANALYSIS OF FOUR HIGH IMPACT CHINESE INVESTMENTS OF FOUR HIGH IMPACT IN THE WESTERN BALKANS: AN ANALYSIS CAPITAL CORROSIVE Corrosive Capital in the Western Balkans: An Analysis of Four High Impact Chinese Investments Ivan Krastev once famously described the it was by a fear that if the war’s logic was not Western Balkans as the “soft underbelly checked, ethnic partition would come soon of Europe .” He was writing in the year enough to Kosovo. This could, in turn, pull after Russia annexed Crimea and was Albania, Greece, and Turkey into a fight that warning European leaders worried about would make the first Balkan Wars seem like destabilization coming from the Kremlin to mere scuffles. turn their gaze southward. “Logic dictates But as the region grew uneasily peaceful that if Russia wants to increase the pressure in the early 2000s, that urgency faded. on Europe, it should try beyond the territory With the EU ushering in the euro, faith of the former Soviet Union,” he wrote. in the so-called liberal world order was Since then, Krastev’s observation has at its height. For the countries of the become something like received wisdom. Western Balkans, like the rest of the world, Balkan experts, myself included, have there was no alternative to becoming pointed to the region as a lingering full-fledged members of this emergent, vulnerability for the West. The historical peaceful, trade-based system. Proponents analogies write themselves: World War I was of globalization described it as “a rising tide kicked off by an assassination in Sarajevo, lifting all boats,” albeit at an uneven pace. but well before that, the “Eastern Question” The problems that remained to be solved CIPE | 2021 kept policymakers in European capitals up were real enough, but they were ultimately at night. Richard Holbrooke’s firm advocacy technocratic in nature — apolitical — and for intervention in Bosnia was informed as would be worked out over time. Corruption much by a desire to uphold human rights as was one such problem. 1 While it might be too cute to say that While naked systems of patronage may corruption is as old as the world’s oldest have been mostly outlawed in the modern profession, the issues we commonly group West, they continue to be tolerated in under that umbrella term have been present the rest of the world to various degrees since state-level societies first emerged from by both locals and the international their clan- and tribe-based precursors. The development community. For most of the idea that a state is not merely the property 20th century, concerns about corruption of its ruler, but rather a kind of public trust, were secondary to the competition for only started to coalesce in the West in the the hearts and minds against the deep- seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was pocketed Soviets in what was then termed only with the advent of the American and the “second” and “third” world. But the French revolutions that this paradigm shift lack of concern outlasted the Cold War. began to assert itself. Arguably, it wasn’t until World Bank President James Wolfensohn made his Despite these changes, corruption has “cancer of corruption” speech in 1996 stayed with us. Students of democratic that the Western NGO world started development are quick to point out that grappling with what would prove to be a the kind of clientelism and patronage very thorny issue. roundly denounced by transparency NGOs these days was the norm in emerging The intractability of corruption has long CORROSIVE CAPITAL IN THE WESTERN BALKANS: AN ANALYSIS OF FOUR HIGH IMPACT CHINESE INVESTMENTS OFFOUR HIGH IMPACT ANALYSIS IN THE WESTERNBALKANS: AN CAPITAL CORROSIVE republics all across the West, especially been prominently on display in the Western so in the United States. Even in so-called Balkans. In 2003, analyst David Kanin advanced, consolidated democracies, described the region as always existing clientelism and patronage networks persist “at the margins of succeeding global as an organizing principle to this day, one economies.” Too sparsely populated and that is only partly subsumed by increasingly fractious to emerge as coherent states, democratically accountable institutions. the region’s peoples have long survived As Francis Fukuyama noted in his seminal through being ruled by so-called Big Men, book Political Order and Political Decay, local notables who intermediate between “The big historical mystery that has to be imperial powers and local economies. solved is thus not why patronage exists, Since the 19th century, Kanin argued, these but rather why in modern political systems men “gilded themselves with Westernized it came to be outlawed and replaced by political party labels, but modernization CIPE | 2021 impersonal organization.” mainly meant they were able to use 2 CORROSIVE CAPITAL IN THE WESTERN BALKANS: AN ANALYSIS OF FOUR HIGH IMPACT CHINESE INVESTMENTS OF FOUR HIGH IMPACT IN THE WESTERN BALKANS: AN ANALYSIS CAPITAL CORROSIVE Westernizing structures to broaden and Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. deepen traditional patronage networks.” Using illustrative case studies, the reports This pattern, he argued, persisted through together paint a picture of the current the communist era and emerged largely state of Chinese penetration in the region. intact after the Cold War ended. Instead of Many of these cases are shaping the news the Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian Empires today. Montenegro recently asked for trying to govern and modernize these lands, a bailout from the EU to help pay off its an army of Western technocrats was trying Chinese loan financing an economically to do the same. Ingrained governance questionable highway project (and has been patterns die hard. rebuffed). And protests against widespread pollution, labor abuses, and general lack of Understanding this dynamic is not to make accountability for Chinese firms prospecting excuses for corruption, but rather to add for copper and gold deposits in rural Serbia necessary context. This social dynamic is have rocked Belgrade. what revisionist powers are exploiting as they challenge the West in the Western The current term of art is that China is Balkans. In 2015, the focus was on the deploying “corrosive capital” into these Kremlin, whose strategy was to create societies, and there is much to recommend messes and be invited to fix them. Today, this expression. The lack of transparency the more insidious challenge is coming from attendant to these murky deals does real China, which is using its vast capital reserves damage to the eventual emergence of and local indifference to transparency to accountability institutions. Nevertheless, buy influence throughout the region. To be one should not fool oneself into thinking sure, part of the dynamic reflects a strategic that “corrosive capital” is itself the root imbalance, with small emerging economies problem. It isn’t. Chinese efforts are falling facing a large authoritarian state capital on fertile ground, and while reports such model that throws money around in a way as these ably map out the contours of that flouts market logic. But the result is a the damage they are doing, ending these perpetuation of these long-standing trends, practices only gets us back to square one. and a brake on reform efforts. The work of getting the Western Balkans CIPE | 2021 The included four reports lay out different to surer footing is daunting, but ultimately facets of the same story unfolding unavoidable if these countries hope to across several of the successor states of improve their governance and ensure a Yugoslavia—Montenegro, North Macedonia, better future for their populations. 3 The report by the Center for Democratic Montenegro Transition (CDT) located in Podgorica, Apart from some suggests that local elites have benefited investments in handsomely from the deal. Though several Montenegro’s energy sector (including in feasibility studies were done ahead of renewables), China’s major foray in the breaking ground, they remain hidden from the Adriatic country’s economy has been its public. Some of these assessments have been investment in the Bar-Boljare highway, a leaked to journalists, who have reported that 170-kilometer route through rugged terrain the project would never be profitable.
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