China In Eurasia

SARAJEVO -- Amid a growing push for transparency, Sarajevo police have chosen to use body cameras from a controversial Chinese company that is under scrutiny in Canada and the European Union and blacklisted in the United States over national security concerns.

RFE/RL reporting shows that despite those warnings -- which also include charges from the U.S. Justice Department of industrial espionage -- the Sarajevo Canton’s Interior Ministry decided to purchase 200 police body cams in 2023 from Hytera, a partially state-owned Chinese manufacturer, for a pilot program launched on July 1.

This local-level episode comes amid an evolving conversation across Europe over the use of Chinese telecommunications equipment in government programs. While the United States has been the strictest -- banning surveillance cameras and other equipment made by Chinese giants like Huawei, ZTE, Dahua, and Hikvision -- European governments like Britain, Germany, France, and the Baltic states are also updating their procurement systems amid growing probes into security risks and lax data practices on a collection of Chinese firms.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina and elsewhere across the Balkans, budget-conscious governments have increasingly turned to affordable Chinese equipment with little public debate about the potential security implications.

In the case of the 200,000-euro ($222,000) sale of the police body cams -- small video cameras worn by an officer to record arrests and provide evidence from crime scenes -- Sarajevo Canton Interior Minister Admir Katica has not said publicly that the equipment is made by Hytera or that the company has been blacklisted in the United States and is under mounting scrutiny.

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When asked by RFE/RL if they were aware of the accusations and that Hytera has been blacklisted by the U.S. government, the Sarajevo Canton Interior Ministry said only that Bosnia's law on public procurement "does not give the possibility to exclude a certain bidder according to the criteria stated in the question."

Drazen Vidakovic, an attorney who previously worked for Bosnia's Public Procurement Agency, told RFE/RL that local procurement law does grant provisions for a supplier to be excluded over criminal proceedings, but applying this to international charges is difficult.

"An offer can be rejected due to gross professional misconduct, [and] industrial espionage could be considered part of gross professional misconduct," Vidakovic said. "But it's difficult to prove because the ruling was not made according to our laws, so we don't have any judgment of ours to cite."

A Closer Look At Hytera

Hytera Communications was founded in 1993 and is best known for its walkie-talkies, radio transceivers, radio systems, and bodycams like those bought for the Sarajevo police.

The Chinese government owns approximately 10 percent of Hytera through an investment fund, and sales and imports of its equipment were banned in the United States after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled in 2021 that the firm is one of several Chinese companies that pose an "unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States persons."

The Chinese firm has also been embroiled in a multiyear legal fight in the United States over charges that it stole trade secrets from the U.S. telecommunications company Motorola, a leading firm on the global market for police body cams, in addition to Hytera and Axon -- another U.S. manufacturer. A U.S. jury ruled in favor of Motorola against Hytera in 2020 and awarded more than $748 million in damages.

A new criminal trial against Hytera for allegations of theft and copyright infringement from Motorola is set to begin in October.

Hytera did not respond to multiple RFE/RL requests for comment about the body-cam sale to Sarajevo Canton, the legal case with Motorola, or security risks posed by its products.

Conor Healy, the director of government research at IPVM, a surveillance-industry research firm, says the response of officials from the canton’s Interior Ministry is insufficient.

"This is a common excuse from public agencies around the world," he told RFE/RL. "The reality is that procurement regulations almost always provide some latitude to exclude suppliers on legitimate grounds.

"[Were] the police really powerless to refrain from doing business with a criminally indicted company?" Healy added. "If that is really true, then there is a problem in the procurement law."

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In Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the country's national police service, faced a backlash in 2022 for buying Hytera body cams and eventually suspended a contract with its local subsidiary. A later review found that the equipment did not lead to any security breaches, but the incident led to an overall change in the RCMP's procurement system.

Some EU government institutions have also begun to phase out Hytera equipment.

An RFE/RL review of procurement records for the European External Affairs Service (EEAS), the EU's diplomatic service, shows that it has begun to replace Hytera equipment in use at its headquarters in Brussels and several other offices around the world with Motorola equipment.

"The replacement of the radio equipment is based on the technical and operational assessment of the EU delegations," the EEAS said.

Sarajevo's Pilot Program

The pilot program for the cameras was first promised in 2021 when the newly elected local government for Sarajevo Canton announced that it wanted to improve the transparency and efficiency of the police force.

The equipment was acquired from a Sarajevo-based supplier called MIBO Komunikacije in November 2023 and the program launched on July 1 is a pilot program involving traffic police in the canton, marking the first units to use body cams in Bosnia.

In a statement to RFE/RL, the canton's Interior Ministry said the body cams are in a trial period to gauge both how they are received by the public and by police officers.

One issue raised by Healy with the purchase of Hytera equipment is that in addition to the cameras, part of the sale also includes software from the company for downloading footage from cameras and managing material, which could come with weak security for protecting data from the body cams.

"I think there is a lot of data that body cameras record and the security of such a database is very important," Healy said.

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The ministry said its Professional Standards Unit, as well as the Internal Control Department, have access to the material recorded by the camera and are taking steps to manage it.

“The recorded material is kept on the storage system for 30 days, while during the test period of using this equipment the recording will only be kept for seven days,” the ministry said.

Healy, however, says that relying on Hytera’s software comes with risks given that similar programs from its peer companies for surveillance cameras, such as Dahua and Hikvision, have faced data breaches, had documented vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers, and have even been accused of providing access to elements of the Chinese government, a charge that the companies have denied.

“How many times have we heard companies say that they can’t access your data and then it turned out to be untrue?” Healy said. “I hope police in Sarajevo understand how sensitive the data they are recording and storing is.”

Written by Reid Standish in Prague based on reporting by Meliha Kesmer and Andi Mioc in Sarajevo

Welcome back to the China In Eurasia briefing, an RFE/RL newsletter tracking China's resurgent influence from Eastern Europe to Central Asia.

I'm RFE/RL correspondent Reid Standish and here's what I'm following right now.

The Africa Model

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is rolling out the red carpet for African leaders this week at a high-level summit in Beijing as China looks to deepen ties with the resource-rich continent that it has furnished with billions in loans for infrastructure and development projects.

But what kind of lessons does the experience of African countries hold for other regions where China has also become a political and economic force?

Finding Perspective: Beijing has said the September 4-6 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit will be its largest diplomatic event since the COVID-19 pandemic, with leaders and other delegates from every African state except Eswatini.

China has increasingly expanded ties with African countries in the past decade and Beijing has become the continent's largest bilateral lender, investor, and trade partner.

This has seen China furnish governments with billions of dollars in loans that have helped build much-needed infrastructure and bring economic growth, but also sometimes stoked controversy by saddling countries with huge debts.

FOCAC is Beijing's main forum for engaging with Africa and this year's gathering will tackle issues ranging from health-care cooperation to debt relief to securing the rights for critical minerals.

African leaders are looking for more balanced trade and continued investments from China, while Beijing is expected to push its green technologies products like electric vehicles (EVs) and its solar industry, especially amid Western curbs on those exports.

A New Era: As Alex Vines, the Africa research director at Chatham House, told me, the green-technology push isn't a surprise and has buy-in from both sides.

"Energy provision is key for Africa's development trajectory, and so investing in renewables will be welcomed," he said.

Chinese investment in Africa peaked around 2016 and Chinese loans to African governments have since declined significantly. The old China model of offering loans for large infrastructure projects and rapid industrialization has not quite disappeared, but certainly lost steam amid China's slowing economy and the difficulty some African countries have had in repaying loans.

As Beijing is eyeing new markets for its renewables sector, Africa is a logical target. It's a young and fast-growing continent that, according to the International Monetary Fund, contains nine of the world's 20 fastest-growing economies in 2024 and China sees it as a vital market for its products and its own economic growth.

And while there are petro-states in Africa, many countries deal with energy insecurity and are eager for the more affordable products like Chinese-made smartphones and EVs that have seen their quality dramatically increase in recent years.

Why It Matters: If any lessons can be drawn from Africa's trajectory with China for other regions around the world, it's that local governments are just as influential in this process as Beijing.

It can be easy to view everything through the lens of China's global ambitions, which are very real, but they only tell part of the story.

Debt owed to China is a major factor on the continent, and some African countries have large Chinese loans that they're struggling to repay.

But Vines says that their situations can't be entirely blamed on Chinese loans. Countries like Kenya and Zambia have poorly managed their debt to all creditors, not only China, while others have managed to navigate their Chinese debt arrangements without risk or incident.

Added to that, African countries know they are becoming more attractive to multiple outside powers and using this dynamic to have more room to balance their ties with partners beyond China and the West, like Russia, India, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey.

"Local agency needs to be strengthened more robustly," Mandira Bagwandeen, an expert on China's ties to Africa and a lecturer at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, told me.

"It's not China's responsibility to be sure that whatever deal they strike is in the local country's interest. It's the responsibility of African officials and it's ultimately up to them to make sure that it works for their country."

Three More Stories From Eurasia

1. Middle Corridor Chokepoint

Kazakhstan announced on September 2 that it will temporarily stop accepting containers heading to China through its Dostyk border crossing due to inadequate infrastructure to process the cargo.

The Details: The news is something of a positive sign for those cheerleading the viability of the so-called Middle Corridor trade route that runs through the Caucasus and Central Asia and connects to China.

The press release said that the infrastructure at the border crossing can't handle the large volumes of freight now going east. At the time of the announcement, there were 55 trains waiting in Kazakhstan to cross into China.

Dostyk is one of two main rail crossings between Kazakhstan and China. The other crossing, Khorgos, was built as one of China's key Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) investments in Central Asia.

2. BYD's Big Uzbek Plans

Chinese electric car production is gearing up in Uzbekistan and the Central Asian news site Vlast has a good look at where things stand today.

What It Means: The factory was opened in late June by Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev and will be a joint venture with state-owned UzAuto.

BYD pledged a $160 million investment in the production line, which is poised to put around 50,000 cars to market in its first phase, with an outlook of up to 500,000 cars. As the factory develops and expands, the company also plans to grow its China-trained local workforce from 1,200 to 10,000.

The flagship factory is the first large-scale investment of its kind in Central Asia and could be used as a template to be replicated elsewhere in Central Asia as China looks to build up the EV market across the region with its offering of affordable and increasingly reliable options.

As another interesting wrinkle, Vlast reports that "most of the electric cars that the production lines of [Central Asia] will churn out seem to be earmarked for export, with Russia being one of the main destination markets."

3. A Pakistani Great Firewall?

Millions of Pakistanis have for weeks experienced slow Internet connections and problems with accessing social media platforms.

And local activists say it's because Pakistani authorities are installing a Chinese-style national Internet firewall aimed at exerting more control over the online space and crushing dissent, my colleague Abubakar Siddique reports.

What You Need To Know: Islamabad has denied allegations that it is behind the Internet slowdown, which has disrupted businesses and triggered widespread complaints in the South Asian country of some 240 million.

Pakistanis have been unable to promptly send e-mails or use the messaging application WhatsApp, which is used by tens of millions of people. Businesses and entrepreneurs say the Internet slowdown has disrupted their daily work.

For weeks, Islamabad refused to comment, but then officials provided some contradictory remarks about the reason behind the disruptions.

Information Technology and Telecommunication Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja admitted on August 15 that the government was tinkering with the Internet, revealing that it was "upgrading a web-management system" it had previously installed.

Then on August 21, Hafeezur Rehman, the chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), claimed that a faulty undersea Internet cable was to blame.

Multiple digital-rights groups inside the country have accused the government of implementing new measures to monitor and regulate content and social media platforms in order to increase surveillance and stifle dissent, especially criticism of the country's all-powerful military.

The civilian government is backed by the military and the PTA is overseen by a retired general.

The alleged implementation of the firewall comes as Pakistan's military, which has an oversized role in the country's domestic and foreign affairs, says it is battling "digital terrorism."

Across The Supercontinent

Taipei's Rhetorical Counter: Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te has challenged China's claim over the self-ruled island by suggesting in recent comments that if China is truly concerned about its territorial integrity then it should also seek to reclaim the land it ceded to Russia in the 19th century.

"If China wants to annex Taiwan.... It's not for the sake of territorial integrity. If it is really for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn't China take back Russia?" Lai said during a TV interview.

Kazakh Nuclear Referendum: Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev announced that the country will hold a national referendum on October 6 on whether to build a new nuclear power plant, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reports.

According to public statements by the government, companies from China, France, Russia, and South Korea are all in the running to carry out the project if it gets enough support at the ballot box.

New Semiconductor Investment: Taiwan is planning to team up with the Czech government to build a semiconductor cluster in the Czech Republic, Taiwanese National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu said on August 30 during a press conference at the annual Globsec security conference in Prague.

Lining Up For BRICS : Bloomberg reports that Turkey has formally asked to join the BRICS group of emerging-market countries.

One Thing To Watch

A new investigation from The Washington Post found that Chinese diplomats and pro-China diaspora groups based in the United States organized demonstrations in San Francisco that harassed and silenced protesters opposed to Beijing's policies during Xi's visit to the city in November 2023.

The investigation around the events in San Francisco is another key piece of evidence that helps illustrate how the Chinese Communist Party takes steps to stifle anti-government dissent abroad, particularly in countries with large Chinese diasporas.

That's all from me for now. Don't forget to send me any questions, comments, or tips that you might have.

Until next time,

Reid Standish

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