Villagers in Kazakhstan Challenged a Chinese Cement Plant for Pollution Concerns, but Legal Loopholes Let it Stay

FThis article was submitted as part of the Global Voices Climate Justice fellowship, which pairs journalists from Sinophone and Global Majority countries to investigate the effects of Chinese development projects abroad. Find more stories here.

Between 2019 and 2024, the residents of a small village in Kazakhstan named after Shegen Kodamanov in the southern Kyzylorda province fought against a Chinese cement plant located on the outskirts of their village. Tired of dealing with pollution from the plant and worried about the community's health, the villagers took the matter into their own hands and filed a formal complaint in court in 2021.

Their ultimate goal was to receive compensation and shut down or relocate the Gezhouba Shieli cement plant.

They won the battle but lost the war. The district and provincial courts sided with the villagers, overturning the local authorities’ assessment that did not detect pollution from the plant and ruling that the plant was built too close to the residential area in violation of the relevant legal framework.

Everything was going in the villagers’ favor until the Kazakh government intervened and amended the regulations governing the mandatory distance between hazardous plants and residential areas. This loophole allowed the plant to remain operational at its current location and continue polluting the area without facing legal consequences.

One of the 55 BRI projects

Kazakhstan is a key partner in China’s multinational mega-infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Kazakh-Chinese bilateral cooperation extends far beyond cement and covers a wide range of industries, including energy, agriculture, machinery, mining, and others.

The Gezhouba Shieli plant was part of a mega investment deal signed between China and Kazakhstan in 2015, which envisioned the construction of 55 joint Kazakh-Chinese enterprises under the BRI worth USD 27.4 billion.

By 2023, half of these projects were completed or under construction, and activists had even set up a website called Eco Info China to track the implementation of these projects, assessing their social and environmental impact. The site is no longer accessible.

The cement plant was one of the first BRI projects to be completed. It was inaugurated in December 2018 in a nationally broadcast event, which Kazakhstan’s then-president Nursultan Nazarbayev attended in the capital Astana.

Here is a YouTube video about the cement plant, produced and broadcast by the Kazakh state television broadcaster, Qazaqstan.

He was peppered with compliments by Li Ming, chairman of China Gezhouba Group Cement Co., Ltd., who noted that the whole world knows about Nazarbayev’s “merits in attracting investments and technologies.” Li added:

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The USD 178 million plant, which produces 2,500 tons of oil well cement daily for oil extraction and uranium mining, was intended to help Kazakhstan break its dependence on foreign imports. It remains the first and only Chinese cement plant in Kazakhstan.

A three-year-long legal battle

The first complaints against the plant arrived soon after its opening. Before the legal battle started in 2021, the village residents tried to address the issue of pollution and mounting health problems by talking to the local authorities, who dismissed their concerns.

Thus, in 2020 and early 2021, following complaints, the local authorities conducted assessments of air pollution in the village and did not find harmful levels of pollution. However, the villagers noted that the plant was shut down when inspections took place.

For them, the plant’s polluting effect was obvious and actively damaging their lives. The noise, air, and water pollution have had a severe negative impact on the villagers, especially those living on Makulbekova Street, which is located around 500 meters from the plant.

One resident, Layla Tuganbayeva, was forced to relocate to the northern Pavlodar province (1,200 kilometers away) after her kids developed respiratory diseases and headaches due to the pollution.

In an interview with Radio Azattyq, a Kazakh branch of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Tuganbayeva shared: “When we lived in the village, the children had nosebleeds all the time, they complained of shortness of breath and headaches.”

Almas Duisebayev is another villager whose children developed health problems after the plant’s opening. His house is located closest to the plant, affecting not only his family’s health, but also his cattle, garden, and the property upon which the house is built.

Here is a documentary about the negative environment and social impact of the cement plant on the residents of the Kodamanov village.

Almas wishes he could relocate somewhere else, similarly to Tuganbayeva, but his situation is different. “I would be happy to drop everything and leave, but no one will buy our houses,” he shared in an interview with Kazak media outlet Ulys Media.

Appalled by the local authorities’ lackluster monitoring, which did not detect any pollution and claimed the plant did not cause any health damage, in 2021, Almas and other villagers launched a court case against the plant and local authorities.

The Shieli District Court sided with the villagers and recognized the monitoring results as illegal, prompting the plant to appeal the decision. In October 2024, the verdict was upheld at the Kyzylorda Provincial Court, marking the second win for the villagers. The provincial court also ruled:

In practice, the decision meant the plant had to either shut down, relocate, or appeal the decision again in the Supreme Court. Instead, they simply took advantage of the amendments to the legislation, which were adopted in May 2024.

The ministerial order from the Health Ministry stated that “due to historically established development, it is permissible to reduce the size of the sanitary protection zone.” This allowed Gezhouba Shieli to reduce its sanitary protection zone from the legally required 1,000 meters to 450 meters and thus avoid closure.

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Jobs, charity, and economic development

Forcing a shutdown or relocation of the Gezhouba Shieli is no easy task. Standing behind the cement plant is China’s Gezhouba Group, one of 60 cement groups supported by the Chinese government. Gezhouba Group has over 40,000 employees and operates in 140 countries, as a major state-run enterprise.

The company traces its history back to state engineering projects ordered by Mao Zedong himself. It may not be surprising that the company, as such, enjoys strong ties to the Chinese state even today.

The Gezhouba Group-owned companies have now come to play a key part in BRI initiatives, with the company’s evolution mirroring the various transformations in China across the past half-century.

Gezhouba’s development of cement plants in Kazakhstan dovetails with the shuttering of hundreds of cement facilities in China due to tightening environmental regulations, as well as problems of overcapacity. This has been a major driver of the shift abroad for many Chinese industrial companies, as part of the BRI.

The Gezhouba Group has touted its cement plants in Kazakhstan as building local capacity and allowing Kazakhstan to avoid dependency on imports. Likewise, Gezhouba frequently touts the various awards it has been given by the Kazakh government, with awards for “Outstanding Quality,” “Outstanding Investment Contribution,” and “Best Charitable Enterprise.”

With regards to the latter, Gezhouba highlights donations of concrete for local mosques, buildings used as quarantine facilities during the pandemic, financial assistance to students, and medical assistance to leukemia patients, among other endeavors.

In a similar vein, the company has emphasized that it added prayer rooms in its facilities for Muslim employees and always celebrates Kazakh festivals. The company seeks to depict Chinese and Kazakh workers as living together, commuting together, and playing sports together.

During visits to Gezhouba facilities in 2018, Nazarbayev is quoted as saying that the company had built the cement industry in Kazakhstan from “nothing to something.”

On the official website of the Hubei Provincial Government, the deputy head of Shieli County, Yersultan Amantai, is quoted as saying the following:

A Kazakh worker is quoted as saying, “Before, young people in our village had to travel elsewhere to find jobs, and those jobs were unstable. Now, they can work right next door, and the jobs are respectable.” In 2023, it was reported that 600 people worked for the plant, including from vendor companies, and 90 percent were locals.

Here is a YouTube video from 2023, in which the local plant workers request that it remain open, arguing it is the community's only source of income and does not harm the environment.

The standoff between the villagers and Gezhouba Shieli is a perfect example of the dynamics around Chinese investments in Kazakhstan. It shows how economic development often trumps environmental and social concerns, especially when the affected are powerless, and the state tries to appease investors.

(GlobalVoices/NS)

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