Since 2007 in Serbia and 2008 in Albania, Chinese telecom vendors — particularly Huawei — have expanded across the Balkans, deploying 3G and 4G telecommunications infrastructure, as well as Chinese-built surveillance networks.
But both countries, plus North Macedonia, also promised to limit Chinese 5G involvement. The US and Europe consider Chinese telecom vendors a security risk. This May, the US Export-Import Bank approved financing this year for Telekom Srbija’s 5G rollout, contingent on the operator using US equipment.
Will the recent US move limit Chinese influence in the Western Balkans, a term invented by the European Union to describe the six Balkan countries in Southeast Europe seeking EU membership, work? My analysis suggests no. The countries will remain addicted to Chinese tech.
Beijing has made it a key priority to construct a Digital Silk Road to the Western Balkans, and China remains the leading telecommunications equipment supplier to all Western Balkan countries except for Kosovo. From 2017 to 2024 (the latest year available), UN Comtrade, a UN database of international trade statistics, shows that China accounted for an average of 45% of Western Balkan telecom equipment imports. By comparison, the second- and third-largest suppliers each accounted for less than 10%.
Contrary to expectations, Serbia, often regarded as China’s main gateway to the Balkans, is not the primary culprit. China’s share of telecommunications equipment imports remained consistently high across all five countries, ranging from an average of 51% in Bosnia and Herzegovina to 36% in Albania.
This pattern remained largely unchanged over the past eight years despite US memoranda of understanding and repeated calls from European officials. Albania was the only exception, reporting a brief decline in Chinese sales in 2022.
China’s strong position cannot be explained by the Balkan countries’ “wicked intentions” or a firm geopolitical allegiance to Beijing. Rather, it reflects how extensively Chinese technology is embedded across the region. Decades of large-scale Chinese investment, long-term contracts with national telecom operators, and generous donations to security services have created strong technological ties.
Huawei modernized critical infrastructure— from Albania’s power utility and Serbia’s fixed-line network to Bosnia’s core telecom backbone. These projects made the Chinese vendor a strategic, almost indispensable, partner. Switching costs are prohibitively high. Bosnia’s BH Telecom’s new contract with Huawei, signed in November 2024, reflects this dependence.
The penetration of surveillance tools sold as Smart Cities solutions deserves special attention. China exports cloud platforms and traffic management, from emergency response to facial recognition. It supplied key IT infrastructure for Serbia’s Kragujevac State Data Center, a major hub for government data and digital services, as well as at least three Serbian cities and Bosnia’s capital Sarajevo. Chinese-built digital networks run educational institutions across Serbia, North Macedonia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Like the US’s loan guarantee to Serbia, Europe is attempting to offer some democratic alternatives. The German development agency GIZ is funding local government data projects in five Serbian cities that include intelligent water supply and smart parking networks. But leaked documents show that Serbian authorities continue to purchase Huawei equipment to expand the state’s surveillance capacity.
The Chinese expression 慢慢来 — “take it slow” or “go at your own pace”— emphasizes patience and gradual progress. China’s digital footprint in the Western Balkans has evolved the same way: two decades of cooperation between Balkan governments, telecom operators, and professional communities have created a profound digital footprint. Changing that trajectory is proving far more difficult.
Ekaterina Kurbangaleeva is a Visiting Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), affiliated with the Democratic Resilience Program, and a Visiting Scholar in the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University.
Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions expressed on Bandwidth are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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