In the previous text (“Geopolitical Mimicry or How Rio Tinto Suddenly Became a Chinese Company“), the focus was on a media operation conducted in the open Serbian public sphere this summer. The operation aimed to depict Rio Tinto as a Chinese wolf in British-Australian corporate clothing just before the protests in Serbia flared up. This was intended to divert at least some of the Serbian public’s attention away from the fact that the European Union, particularly Germany, is desperately insisting on the opening of the controversial mine near Loznica.
HOW SERBS WENT FROM A NATION TO A LOCAL POPULATION?
The real position of Serbia on its European path does not favor the proponents of pro-Western policies here. Instead of the promised membership in the European Union, which has been awaited like Sisyphus for a quarter of a century, Belgrade has “received” the dismemberment of its own state territory and is being designated as a German mining colony. As will be evident in this text, Serbs are slowly ceasing to be a nation and are becoming “local inhabitants.”
We receive evidence of this weekly, and it must be admitted: very openly and honestly, for which we have no right to be angry. For example, last week, German State Secretary Franziska Brantner announced that a potential lithium exploitation project in Jadar would not affect Serbia’s European integration process and that there would be no “concessions” regarding the rule of law, Kosovo and Metohija, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Moreover, she announced that Rio Tinto would form a permanent advisory body composed of representatives of civil society (sic!), adding that the “Greens” in Germany have always advocated for civil society in Serbia, which speaks volumes on its own.
But what is key in her, I repeat, very honest and open address to the public is neither the European integration of Belgrade, which in reality does not even exist, nor Kosovo and Metohija, nor Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is the very essence of the protest, i.e., the framework of the protest from the perspective of the European Union’s interests.
Brantner literally stated that in Serbia, the “local population” and the opposition rightly demand that state institutions apply environmental standards, while at the same time, it is good that, as she also literally said, European reserves are exploited and processed in a European way to prevent increased Chinese influence.
Just a few days later, Brantner announced that there would be no lithium mining in Germany, even though that country, not Serbia, is entirely dependent on lithium imports from China.
Brantner initially supported the protests against lithium mining in Serbia, but has since changed her mind, recently stating that she believes Rio Tinto has changed its mining plan, aligning with European standards.
It remains unclear why Rio Tinto or another similar company, which has “changed its mining plan” to comply with “European standards,” still cannot mine lithium in Germany, but for some reason, it can in Serbia.
WILL WE FALL FOR THE SAME OLD TRICK AGAIN?
The goal of the protests, therefore, is not to ban or at least avoid lithium mining in Jadar, as the protesting citizens expect, but merely the application of European environmental standards in the exploitation—not of Serbian, but “European” lithium—to prevent Chinese influence, which has brought the German automotive industry to a near-market crisis.
Doesn’t all this remind you of the EU’s trick regarding “standards before status” for Kosovo and Metohija?
This very clearly expressed position of an important German politician is entirely in line with the stance of Dragan Đilas, the most influential pro-Western politician in Serbia, as well as with the views of the Serbian government.
Let us recall that in 2017, Đilas saw the lithium mine in Jadar as a great opportunity (“Let’s talk about the concession for those mines, but let the battery factory be here because they are in all mobile phones and electric cars. Isn’t that an opportunity for Serbia?” – NIN, October 19, 2017). However, last year he stated the same thing that Brantner did this week: that lithium mining should not be banned, but that we need European technology for it (“I am not advocating for the ban on lithium mining, but in this situation where there is no technology that I know of that can extract lithium without consequences. But I believe that it is an opportunity for us, a very big development opportunity. A development opportunity, that’s right. When we join the EU, get close to them, then we will have the standards that apply there.” – “Euronews,” April 20, 2023).
REQUEST FROM 2016 REJECTED BECAUSE OF EVENTS FROM 2020?
Given this, the Serbian public’s attention now needs to be redirected through pro-Western media. Therefore, reports on protests against the lithium mine near Loznica will increasingly include Chinese companies in Bor and Smederevo. This is not to subject their business to objective criticism, for which there is always room, but to divert public attention from the fact that pro-Western political forces, which do not oppose the Jadar mine itself but are currently tactically “against” it for highly opportunistic reasons, have a strong interest in reappropriating and exploiting spontaneous protests.
Here’s an example of a classic spin about Rio Tinto supposedly being a Chinese company, published on the “Forbes” portal on June 23 of this year (“Rio Tinto’s largest shareholders are Chinese: All about Chinalco and its business”).
“In 2016 and 2017, the Chinese wanted to increase their ownership in Rio Tinto to about 18%, but the Australian government strongly opposed this, largely due to the 2020 scandal when Rio Tinto, in an attempt to expand a mine in Australia, destroyed the Juukan Gorge, a sacred Aboriginal site with evidence of human existence for the past 46,000 years, considered the only prehistoric human settlement site in Australia during the last ice age.”
Even if we didn’t know that there are no Chinese in Rio Tinto’s boards of directors, as I also wrote in the previous article, nor among the company’s management members who were punished for destroying the ancient Aboriginal sanctuary, even a cursory reading of the presented passage reveals the absurdity of the claim: the alleged Chinese request from 2016 was rejected because of events in 2020, which have nothing to do with the Chinese.
POINT OF POLITICAL SINGULARITY
Surprisingly, many people I spoke with this summer actually believed that Rio Tinto is, in fact, a Chinese company.
The concern of the author of these lines, who is not among those who believe in the ecological and economic soundness of the lithium mine in Jadar, that pro-Western political forces, which fundamentally do not oppose the mine, will try to take over, reframe, and eventually undermine the very meaning of the protest, is not without basis, as can be seen from the statements of European officials (“the local population” demands the application of environmental standards) and from the very clear statements of politicians who are trying to approach the protest both externally and internally.
It can be said that the application of so-called environmental standards in the opening of the mine is the point of political singularity for the local government, the pro-Western opposition, and the European Union, but that this forest, because of the trees, is difficult for citizens to notice, reacting emotionally to everything that appears in the public discourse, such as the absurdity that the Chinese are transporting gold from Serbia by train, and that for this reason, railways should be blocked.
EPIDEMIC OF CANCER?
We saw the same political theater of the absurd last year when the dissatisfaction of citizens, who took to the streets due to mass shootings, was skillfully harnessed to the party interests of pro-Western political forces and ultimately reduced to the issue of pre-election conditions and disagreements within that political group, instead of satisfying the interests of the citizens.
If we take another step back, we will encounter the forgotten Jelena Anasonović and her struggle against the party windmills that ground down the citizen protest.
In recent days, we have seen spins that Western Serbia is on the verge of a cancer epidemic, as in Bor. Public claims have emerged that every fourth resident of Bor has cancer, or according to another claim, that out of 28,000 residents of that municipality, 4,000 have the disease, as well as that the number of cancer patients in Bor has doubled in the last seven years.
Since different data from the “Milan Jovanović Batut” Institute have meanwhile been presented, indicating that the number of cancer patients in Bor is actually lower than reported, i.e., lower than in some other parts of the country, the question arises as to whose interest it is in Serbia to spin public opinion in this way and in whose favor?
STRUCTURE OF THE ANTI-CHINESE CAMPAIGN
Those who have been paying closer attention to world events over the past decade have easily noticed the main principles on which Western anti-Chinese propaganda is based, which also echoes here.
The Western media narrative will always run China through the “hot seat” of pre-defined media techniques that do not depend on reality, but on the interpretation of events and facts.
Firstly, there is the selection of information or the principle of media weeds: negative news behaves like weeds against news about real economic, technological, infrastructure, and other progress, in this case, of China.
In the Serbian pro-Western media discourse, this means that a spin about an inflated number of patients in Bor will be read by at least a hundred times more people than the news that “Zijin,” or as it is commonly called in public, “Zijin,” will set up wind turbines, a solar power plant, and a so-called green hydrogen factory with a capacity of about thirty thousand tons on abandoned parts of the mine, and will try to introduce electric trucks to reduce carbon emissions, all in line with the company’s five-year environmental plan, which almost no one in Serbia has heard of.
Then, there is the emphasis on negative aspects (human rights, censorship, ecological disasters), based on unnamed and indirect sources, to which is added the simplification and stereotyping of Chinese society and the political system.
BEWARE—DO NOT OVERLOOK THE HYPOCRISY OF THE EU
The cherry on top of this “cake” is the continuous linking of China to global problems (Franziska Brantner) and the criticism of Chinese actions, but exclusively through the prism of one’s own interests, as we witnessed in Zrenjanin, where the position of workers very quickly fell into the background compared to the never-proven human trafficking, which was also refuted by the Vietnamese government itself.
The road to hell is paved with European standards. Therefore, participants in protests in Serbia, whom I believe are justified, because they stem from concern for the country itself, must be cautious and keep in mind the hypocrisy of the European Union, which will try everything it can to gain access to the mine on which the future of its faltering automotive and electronics industries significantly depends.
Globally speaking, it is in China’s interest to export lithium batteries and other products to Europe, including cars, or electric vehicles. Bearing this in mind, the Jadar mine does not suit China at all.
On the other hand, “Zijin” possesses a sulfuric acid factory in Bor, and the Aluminum Corporation of China owns about 13 percent of Rio Tinto, but it is very difficult to imagine that the Chinese would sacrifice an entire herd for a few grams or in another case, a few kilograms of meat, which we will certainly be repeatedly persuaded of in the coming months.
The most recent example from Zrenjanin speaks in favor of this.
There, local NGO activists and (geo)politically biased journalists linked the Linglong company with (non-existent) connections to Rio Tinto, which I also pointed out in the previous text.
By manipulating the fact that the Aluminum Corporation of China has a 13 percent ownership stake in Rio Tinto, the mentioned British-Australian mining company was manipulatively presented in Zrenjanin as a company under Chinese ownership or at least under Chinese control. They did this by mere spinning, despite the facts and information that are easy to access and the clear statements of European officials.
