Luís Lopez says he spent the past six months trying to get Chinalco, China’s largest aluminium producer and owner of the Toromocho copper mine in central Peru, to release what he calls the “true” number of miners infected with Covid-19 . Then, the trade union leader says, he got fired. According to Lopez, 39, Chinalco has yet to disclose how many miners tested positive for Covid-19 in July and August, which he says puts thousands of workers at risk at the mine, about a four-hour drive from the capital Lima. China to power post-virus economic growth for years to come, miner BHP says His complaints are echoed by non-government organisations in Peru and elsewhere in South America, saying mines run by Chinese companies fail to disclose infection numbers and follow local guidelines to combat the disease. Peru, which has a population of 33 million, has seen a spike in Covid-19 infections and is now among the world’s worst-affected countries, with more than 650,000 cases and over 29,000 fatalities. Officials reached at Chinalco’s Beijing headquarters declined to comment on the allegations and two emails to the Peru subsidiary’s communications team received no reply. Mining of copper, zinc, gold and other minerals makes up more than 9 per cent of Peru’s US$227 billion economy, but accounts for about 60 per cent of exports by value, according to the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mining. With the World Bank forecasting that Peru’s economy will shrink 12 per cent this year because of Covid-19 – the biggest decline in South America – the government is walking a line between fighting the pandemic and rebooting business activity. In March, a presidential decree ordered a two-week halt to businesses in the country to try and contain the spread of Covid-19. But in late June, the government allowed companies to suspend workers without pay as the pandemic drove more businesses to the brink. To be sure, China donated medical supplies to more than 20 countries in Latin America to help combat Covid-19, according to a July article in state-run newspaper People’s Daily . In the same month, foreign minister Wang Yi said Beijing would offer a $1 billion loan to the region for access to vaccines under development in China. Amid this, complaints about the lack of infection protection at Chinese-owned mines in Peru have increased, mostly from workers and NGO groups. The mining industry in Peru directly employed more than 208,000 people in 2019, but generated 1.3 million jobs in service sectors for the industry, according to government figures. Julia Cuadros, executive director of CooperAcción, an NGO monitoring Chinese mining companies in Peru, said the concern was the mines had become “vehicles of contagion”. Cuadros said other foreign mining companies in Peru faced Covid-19 outbreaks, noting the biggest was at a Peruvian mine owned by British multinational Glencore. But, she said, Chinese companies were less transparent. “We don’t know how many workers are infected with Covid-19 in Chinese mines, it’s a black box,” she said. These companies needed to understand the importance of building relations with local stakeholders, she added. Since April, residents of several villages have blocked roads to the Las Bambas copper mine in southern Peru, which is run by Australia-based MMG, whose major shareholder is state-owned China Minmetals Corporation. The villagers fear miners on buses to the site could infect local communities en route, Cuadros said. Complaints about the activities of Chinese miners are not limited to Peru. In May, 73 NGOs from across South America signed a letter of protest to Beijing, alleging that six state-owned Chinese enterprises operating in Peru, Ecuador and Argentina had violated labour laws and damaged the environment. Cuadros said they received no reply. “We always have great difficulties contacting official representatives of China, they don’t answer letters during normal times, let alone during a pandemic” she said. Club-goers in Peru crushed to death fleeing banned coronavirus party Shougang Hierro Peru, a unit of Chinese steelmaker Shougang Group, was named in the letter, along with Chinalco and MMG. Shougang, which runs the Marcona iron ore mine on Peru’s southern coast, failed to provide protective gear to workers, according to the NGO letter. Two emails to Shougang’s Beijing headquarters for comment were not answered and three phone calls to the company’s Peru offices for comment were not picked up. Two emails sent to MMG’s Melbourne headquarters and Peru offices went unanswered. An official at the company’s Hong Kong office declined to comment. Former union leader Lopez said Chinalco reported it had evacuated 71 workers at the Toromocho mine who tested positive for Covid-19 in June, the last month the infection number was made available. “But this fails to take into account the miners that are hired on short-term contracts,” he said in an interview. Lopez said the mine had around 1,400 full-time workers and 2,000 on short-term contracts and factoring in contract workers could put the total Covid-19 cases at the mine in the hundreds. Peru, Morocco to join phase 3 trials of Chinese Covid-19 vaccine hopefuls Cuadros, at the CooperAcción NGO, who has been tracking foreign investment in Peru for more than two decades, said her group tries to negotiate with foreign investors to solve disputes with local communities and is now in talks with MMG and the government about the Las Bambas Covid-19 blockade by locals. She said they had filed lawsuits against foreign miners in the past over labour disputes and pollution, but it was a last resort, because the process was so long and costly and often required filing suit in overseas courts. “With China, it’s more difficult, they don’t listen to us,” Cuadros said. Guo Jie, an associate professor of international relations at Peking University, said Chinese companies struggle to adapt to the trade union culture in Latin America. “In China, companies appoint the head of the worker’s union, and these usually just organise some fun activities, so before (these companies) leave the country they have no experience dealing with confrontational trade unions,” she said. Can China win over the locals in Latin America? Guo has conducted field research in Peru and interviewed Chinese staff in companies like Shougang. “Chinese companies in Latin America also have lots of complaints about how the workers are lazy and seem to be constantly in opposition to the company’s interests,” she said. “In Chinese culture this kind of adversarial mentality is unacceptable.” Lopez said that between March and July all attempts to organise meetings between the trade union and the CEO of Chinalco’s Peru subsidiary, Luan Shuwei, had failed. He never got a response, he said. China mining companies needed to study the countries they invested in, Cuadros said. “They know less about the culture and they have more money, but they don’t learn from their mistakes.”