Zijin and Huayou's Serbia problem repeats in three more countries

Zijin Mining and Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, the two Chinese parent companies behind a Serbian copper forced-labour case Evidencity flagged in June, also control mineral projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Zimbabwe, and Indonesia.

New human rights data published on 22 July 2026 name both companies, alongside Tsingshan Group, among 10 Chinese firms that account for nearly two-thirds of all documented abuse allegations against Chinese-backed mineral projects worldwide since 2021.

On 16 June 2026, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a Withhold Release Order (WRO) against copper and copper products manufactured by Serbia Zijin Copper D.O.O., the Serbian subsidiary of China's Zijin Mining. Evidencity reported that the case exposed a screening gap: Serbia reads clean on a country risk score, so a jurisdiction-based compliance tool never flagged the parent company's record.

Three more supply chains carry the same exposure, and new data show why the pattern repeats.

Four projects, four countries, four minerals

Each of the following reads, on its own, as a standalone bilateral investment story.

In the DRC, Zijin holds a 39.6% stake in the Kamoa-Kakula copper complex alongside Ivanhoe Mines (39.6%), the DRC government (20%), and Crystal River Global (0.8%). Kamoa-Kakula produced 388,838 tonnes of copper in concentrate in 2025, and is now the largest copper operation on the African continent and the world's third-largest copper mining complex.

Also in the DRC, Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt sources copper and cobalt through its subsidiary Congo Dongfang International Mining (CDM). CDM operates two cobalt refineries in the Luiswishi region, built after Huayou acquired mineral rights there in 2015.

In Zimbabwe, Huayou's local unit Prospect Lithium Zimbabwe acquired the Arcadia lithium deposit for USD422 million in April 2022. The company has since invested a further USD300 million to build a processing plant with capacity for 450,000 tonnes of lithium concentrate a year.

In Indonesia, Tsingshan Group's Morowali Industrial Park has grown into a fully integrated nickel-to-stainless-steel complex; Tsingshan alone accounted for roughly 22% of global mined nickel output in 2021. Huayou separately holds a 73.2% stake in a Ford- and Vale-backed high-pressure acid leach plant at Pomalaa, budgeted at roughly USD3.8 billion in total investment.

Four countries, four minerals, four local partners. A compliance team screening each relationship in isolation would log four separate, low-correlation counterparties.

New BHRC data show the same two owners recurring

The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRC) published new tracking data on 22 July 2026 covering Chinese-backed mining, smelting, and refining projects worldwide between 2021 and 2025. Recorded allegations of harm rose every year over that period, reaching 148 in 2025 alone, for a five-year total of 434. BHRC found that 10 Chinese companies, including Zijin Mining, Tsingshan Group, and Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, accounted for nearly two-thirds of all allegations recorded.

All three named companies are behind the DRC, Zimbabwe, and Indonesia projects above, and Zijin is also the company named in the Serbian forced-labour case. Allegations tracked by BHRC span negative impacts on local livelihoods, health, and land rights, workplace deaths, and water pollution. Between 2023 and 2025, 18 people were attacked for raising concerns about Chinese transition mineral projects. Zijin Mining and Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt responded to BHRC's allegations by saying they take environmental and social risks seriously and adhere to international standards. Tsingshan Group did not respond to BHRC's requests for comment.

Ownership-chain mapping catches what country screening misses

A compliance workflow organised around country risk scores treats a Zimbabwean lithium supplier, an Indonesian nickel supplier, a Congolese cobalt supplier, and a Serbian copper supplier as four unconnected relationships. Ownership-chain mapping shows two parent companies recurring across all four supply chains, consolidating what a country-score model logs as four separate, low-risk jurisdictions into a single, documented five-year abuse record.

This is the same gap Evidencity identified in the Serbian case. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) Entity List named Zijin Mining in January 2025 over its Xinjiang operations. The WRO against its Serbian subsidiary followed 17 months later, treated by CBP as a separate action against a separate corporate entity.

Germany's Supply Chain Due Diligence Act and the European Union's (EU) Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive have required demonstrable investigation of ownership structures since 2023. Both are now being narrowed: Germany is replacing its Supply Chain Act with a lighter regime and suspended enforcement review in October 2025, while the EU has pushed back full implementation of its directive to 2029 for companies above 5,000 employees. The obligation existed on paper when Serbian copper shipments were crossing into Europe in 2024; enforcement of it is now shrinking just as the same ownership pattern turns up in three more supply chains.

A buyer sourcing lithium from Zimbabwe, nickel from Indonesia, and cobalt from the DRC through three separate contracts is carrying the same compliance exposure already on record in Serbia. It is just split across three contracts instead of one.

Myanmar's rare earths sector, also flagged in the same BHRC report, involves a more diffuse set of Chinese buyers than the three named companies above. For the pattern documented here, the arithmetic holds: two owners, four countries, one abuse record, and a screening architecture built on country scores and entity lists that was never designed to connect them.