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Industrial

Great Stone China–Belarus Industrial Park

Smalyavichy District, Minsk, Belarus
Written by Maryia Danilovich.
Updated on 22 January 2025
Great Stone China–Belarus Industrial Park, located near the Belarusian capital, has been widely advertised as a flagship project of the Belt and Road Initiative. Established as an intergovernmental cooperation project, its aim is to foster the development of modern industries, supported by supplementary facilities for science and research, logistics, trade, administration, and residential. Yet, despite high initial expectations, since 2020 the project has faced significant challenges due to the Covid-19 pandemic, political unrest in Belarus, and regional geopolitical turbulence.

Basic Information

Name: Great Stone China–Belarus Industrial Park
Chinese Name: 巨石中白工业园
Location: Smalyavichy District, Minsk
Type of Project: Industrial; logistics; research and development; residential.
Project Developers: Industrial Park Development Company, a Sino-Belarusian joint venture in which Chinese companies hold a 68 per cent stake divided among China National Machinery Industry Corporation (Sinomach, 国机集团), China Merchants Group (招商局集团), China CAMC Engineering Company Limited (CAMCE, 中工国际), and Harbin Investment Group (哈投集团).
Main Contractor: China National Machinery Industry Corporation (Sinomach, 国机集团).
Financier: Export–Import Bank of China
Project Status: Some parts are operational, some still in the construction and development phase.

Great Stone Industrial Park (Belarus), Source: Homoatrox (Wikimedia Commons).

Project Outline

Great Stone China–Belarus Industrial Park (GS) is a joint venture 25 kilometres from the Belarusian capital, Minsk. Named after an old nearby village, the park spans more than 80 square kilometres. Established as an intergovernmental cooperation project, it was designed as a special economic zone modelled after the China–Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park. With a primary focus on modern industries, GS also incorporates supporting areas with facilities for science and research, logistics, trade, administration, as well as residential.

Origin and Vision

The idea for the park originated from Belarus’s aspiration to attract large-scale Chinese investments. Although the initial proposal dates back to 2010, its implementation was propelled with the promotion of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the middle of the decade. The official website of GS advertises it as a ‘key part’ of the BRI, situated ‘directly on the Northern Corridor of the New Silk Road trade route’. However, despite the high initial expectations and ambitious rhetoric, the project’s initial advantages faded in the early 2020s due to the deteriorating geopolitical situation in and around Belarus.

The foundation of GS began in 2010, when Xi Jinping, then China’s vice-president, visited Minsk and reached an agreement on the project with President Aleksandr Lukashenko. Later that year, when Lukashenko visited China, the Belarusian Ministry of Economy and China CAMC Engineering Corporation (CAMCE, 中工国际) signed an agreement establishing a joint industrial park in Belarus. CAMCE, a subsidiary of the large state-owned enterprise (SOE) China National Machinery Industry Corporation (Sinomach, 国机集团), had reportedly been recommended by the Chinese Embassy in Minsk due to its parent company’s operational experience in the country. In autumn 2011, Belarus and China entered into an intergovernmental agreement on the park.

The joint undertaking was planned to be developed on 80.5 square kilometres in Smalyavichy District, a location chosen for its logistical suitability due to its proximity to Minsk, the national airport, international and domestic railway lines, as well as the transnational Berlin–Moscow highway. According to the agreement, the park was to be developed with China’s support to attract investment and coordinate financial assistance for qualified investors. Following the intergovernmental agreement, CAMCE and the Export–Import Bank of China signed a cooperation agreement with Belarus’s Horisont Holding Company to develop the park. Horisont already had experience collaborating with China’s home appliance manufacturer Midea Group in 2007.

Given the underdeveloped market economy of Belarus, the project was designed to combine governmental steerage with market-driven operations. Its governance structure involves three tiers: the Intergovernmental Coordination Council, serving as the park’s supreme governing body; the park administration operating directly under the Belarusian Government; and the joint Industrial Park Development Company (IPDC) responsible for developing and maintaining the infrastructure, utilities, buildings, and communal areas.

The ownership of the IPDC is divided between the Chinese and Belarusian sides, with a 60/40 split, as specified in the first presidential decree on the park in 2012. When the IPDC was established in August that year, it was reported that 60 per cent of its 10 million USD authorised capital was contributed by the Chinese developer CAMCE, while Horisont and the Minsk Regional Executive Committee, a state agency accountable to the Belarusian President, contributed 10 per cent and 30 per cent, respectively. However, later, the official GS website stated that the Chinese side owns 68 per cent of the IPDC and the Chinese shareholders include Sinomach, China Merchants Group (CMG, 招商局集团), CAMCE, and Harbin Investment Group (哈投集团).

Implementation

In June 2013, the Belarusian Council of Ministers approved the general plan for the construction of the project. It was nearly a year later before the park’s foundation stone was ceremonially laid. Huawei and ZTE, China’s two leading information technology (IT) companies, were expected to be among the first residents. Both were already operating in Belarus and were reportedly relocating to benefit from favourable taxation regimes. Soon after the opening ceremony, the park was officially granted the name ‘Great Stone’.

During the opening ceremony, Belarusian state officials expressed considerable optimism for the GS, citing interest shown by companies from third countries, including Japan, South Korea, and the European Union, to invest in the park. This reflected the grand, if somewhat wishful, expectations of attracting substantial foreign investment and advanced technology companies into the GS. Yet, the realisation of the GS project was slower than expected due to bureaucratic clumsiness and, as highlighted by Chinese experts, the poor investment climate in Belarus. Additionally, as observed by a former Chinese diplomat in Belarus, there was little interest from Russia, Belarus’s primary political and economic partner, in incorporating the GS into the emerging Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) as a free port zone, due to Russia’s desire to both protect its own market and maintain control over the EAEU with a unified customs tariff system.

Nonetheless, the Belarusian and Chinese governments place special significance on the GS project in connection with the BRI. During a visit by President Xi Jinping to Belarus in May 2015, both heads of state declared the GS to be an important joint BRI undertaking. Such political recognition from the Chinese side appeared to accelerate the GS’s development and construction. On the eve of Xi’s visit, CMG, a major Chinese SOE conglomerate with businesses in banking, shipping, and industrial zone operation, acquired a 20 per cent stake in the IPDC. CMG’s logistics arm, Sinotrans, established the China Merchants CHN-BLR Commerce and Logistics Company (CMCB, 招商局中白商贸物流股份有限公司) within the park. CMG pledged to invest 500 million USD, making it the anchor investor within GS. By 2018, CMCB had completed the construction of its facilities, including a business centre, warehouse, and trade and exhibition centre. The general development of the zone’s infrastructure also made good progress, with the first phase of 8.5 square kilometres ready by September 2019.

The 2012 presidential decree established a special economic zone regime for the park, featuring 50 years of special tax treatment and up to 99 years of land leases for plots within the park’s boundaries. A presidential decree issued in 2017 further enhanced the legal framework and improved favourable conditions for resident companies, such as exemption from property and land taxes for 50 years, instead of the previous 10 years.

The number of resident companies grew from 13 in 2017 to 28 in 2018 and 55 by 2019, including third-country firms from Germany, the United States, Russia, Austria, and Lithuania. Notably, in 2018, Duisburger Hafen AG (Duisport), the operator of Germany’s inland Duisburg Port, became a pioneer third-party shareholder in the IPDC, acquiring around 1 per cent of the state-owned shares—the first sale of Belarusian state-owned shares under non-Belarusian law. With a strong focus on China and the BRI, Duisport was particularly interested in constructing additional railway links towards Poland to shorten the travel times of China-bound trains. It also considered establishing a rail terminal in GS to manage logistics services for rail traffic between China and Western Europe, thereby enhancing the logistics functions of the park.

Overall, in 2023, 38 per cent (42) of the GS joint projects had been put into production, while the remaining 62 per cent (69 projects) were in the construction and development phase.

Table 1: Distribution of Park Residents Across Declared Cooperation Areas (2024)

Declared cooperation areasResidents
Artificial intelligence0
Big-data storage and processing7
Biotechnology6
Complex logistics6
Education1
Energy machine-building0
Electric transport0
Electronics10
Electronics and telecommunications3
E-commerce6
Healthcare3
IT0
Laser equipment0
Logistics1
Manufacturing of medical equipment, devices, and products6
Mechanical engineering22
Mechanics1
New materials11
Optical technology0
R&D28
Pharmaceuticals6
Robotics0
Science and technology park projects, to provide services to technology start-ups1
Telecommunications1
Telemedicine0
TOTAL119

Data sources: Official website of the Great Stone Industrial Park, accessed in January 2025.

Table 2: Number of Company Residents in the Park, by Country (2024)

CountryResidents
Belarus57
China58
OtherAustria1
 Belgium1
 Czech Republic1
 Germany2
 Israel1
 Lithuania1
 Russia7
 Switzerland4
 Ukraine1
 United States2
TOTAL*134

* Including joint-venture resident companies formed by the listed countries.

Data source: Official website of the Great Stone Industrial Park, accessed in January 2025.

‘Time is money, efficiency is life (China Merchants)’, proclaims the banner at the entrance to the park, May 2017. Photo: Maryia Danilovich.

Political Crises and Challenges

Starting in 2020, however, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic hindered the project’s development, as business visits were restricted. Worse still, the deteriorating political situation in Belarus has been posing significant challenges for GS. First, the political crisis following the Belarusian presidential elections in 2020—characterised by a massive crackdown on civil society, along with the ensuing economic meltdown—tarnished the image of Belarus as a stable and predictable partner for China. The earlier concerns of Chinese scholars and diplomats regarding the deficiencies of the Belarusian economy, including poor investment climate, high inflation, and an unstable legislative framework, were proved right. While the Belarusian State’s harsh response, supported by Russia, temporarily stabilised the situation, the roots of the crisis and its potential to resurface remained a concern for foreign investors and Chinese resident companies.

Second, the series of events that followed—including the instability caused by a migrant crisis on the Belarus–European Union border, Belarus’s involvement in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the constitutional renouncement of the country’s ‘non-nuclear’ status—posed unprecedented challenges for collaboration with Belarus, significantly impacting Chinese and third-party partners and investors in the GS. These challenges have ultimately undermined GS’s once-promising locational advantages. The neighbouring Baltic states and Ukraine closed their borders with Belarus, leading to the restriction of logistics routes through the country. Belarus was sanctioned politically and economically by the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Duisport discontinued all business operations in Belarus, divested from the IPDC, and ceased its investment in GS’s Eurasian Railway Gateway, a bimodal container railway terminal project. However, Duisport was still listed as a business partner on the official GS website in January 2025.

According to Chinese sources, several other park residents withdrew from GS due to order cancellations from EU and US markets, and some companies suspended plans to enter the park. Chinese enterprises have also become concerned about the security situation in Eastern Europe and the possibility of EU and US sanctions affecting their investments in Belarus, even threatening their businesses in Europe and the United States.

Additional Support

Given the challenges, the Chinese and Belarusian governments have sought to provide further stimulation for the project. In 2021, a fourth presidential decree aimed to further enhance the project’s image and investment prospects by refining its legal framework, improving investment protection, and expanding the scope of GS activities. Specifically, the park’s administrator was granted greater autonomy in executing infrastructure development and approving large (that is, exceeding 50 million USD) investment projects. Moreover, to create additional incentives for attracting residents, income tax was decreased from 13 per cent to 9 per cent in 2023, with no income tax for foreign workers. GS was also encouraged to undertake projects in biopharmaceuticals, including Chinese medicine, as well as 5G technologies.

In a high-level declaration on bilateral relations released in September 2022, both sides emphasised the importance of attracting greater investment to GS, with a special focus on traditional Chinese medicine as a new catalyst for further development of the park. China expressed its interest in promoting the logistics functions of GS through the construction of a multimodal railway station mentioned above. Another attempt to add synergy to GS involved concluding a memorandum of cooperation with a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) platform, the China–SCO Demonstration Zone for Local Economic and Trade Cooperation (中国–上海合作组织地方经贸合作示范区). GS and the zone launched their first China-funded joint industrial project, which focused on producing wear and corrosion-resistant anti-infection coating for packaging and containers. This once again linked an industrial component of the GS with logistics.

Project Impacts

  • Transparency and limited community engagement: The project’s opaque planning and lack of accessible official information on land allocation and ecological regulations initially sparked public discontent among locals. In response, the authorities took some formal steps to ensure improved transparency in the project’s plans and ecological assessments. However, more recently, public discussion of the project seems to have diminished, likely due to a broader suppression of civic engagement.
  • Divergences in expectations and impact assessment: At an early stage, the park faced setbacks due to divergent expectations among the Chinese and Belarusian partners regarding its scope, market orientation, projects, and technical standards. More recently, in response to further setbacks, the park’s scope has broadened, with more types of projects added and the EAEU envisaged as the main target market.

Initial Lack of Transparency and Limited Community Engagement

In the early 2010s, during the initial period of the project’s planning, a lack of clarity about the demarcation of the land allocated for the park, its future ecological regulation, as well as the absence of consultation with residents, created tensions between the local population and the Belarusian authorities. Locals appealed to the Belarusian President to hold off approving the park, insisting on the need for a local referendum before a decision was made. The state judicial authorities rejected calls for a referendum, while the local authorities of Smalyavichy District held out the prospect of high-tech jobs for locals being created through the park.

In response to public pressure, efforts were made, at least formally, to enhance the transparency of the project. In 2013, an information board with the general plan was displayed for two weeks in the Smalyavichy District Executive Committee building. In 2018, the GS reportedly received certification from the EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS), demonstrating compliance with environmental standards. In 2022, the general plan, along with ecological assessments, was presented for public discussion, again on the project’s website and on an information board within the park itself. The final protocol of the discussion stated that no complaints were received from the public. This could be an indication of alleviated local concerns about the park, but it could also be due to suppressed local engagement on the issue after the crackdown on civic activism since the 2020 presidential elections.

Contradictory Expectations and Difficulties with the EAEU Market

The initial overarching objective for the GS was to develop ‘modern industries’ and supplementary areas such as ‘science and research, trade, logistics, administrative, residential, etc’. During the early implementation of the project, tensions between the expectations and interests of the Chinese and Belarusian partners emerged. The Belarusian officials anticipated attracting more high-tech companies and green technologies to GS. Based on this criteria, the park’s administrator, subordinate to the Belarusian State, denied registration to a number of companies and projects, including a Chinese food processing plant and malt production facility, and a German brewery. Chinese practitioners and experts, however, viewed this as an obstacle to larger-scale cooperation. They emphasised China’s experience of initially accepting less technologically advanced projects before transitioning to high-tech sectors. They recommended that the GS should evolve based on market demands, producing products that met Chinese technical standards and prioritising the markets of the EAEU. The Belarusian side, on the other hand, aimed to restrict Chinese competition with established Belarusian industries, such as machinery-building. Moreover, the EAEU’s regulations required a high level of production localisation for automotive industry products to circulate freely within this economic space—a requirement that the Chinese side is also unlikely to meet.

As GS was experiencing setbacks after 2020, Aleksandr Lukashenko suggested unifying the industrial policies of China, Belarus, and Russia, using GS as a bridging platform. This was linked to the progress of the Russia–Belarus Union State—a supranational entity aimed at political, economic, and defence integration—and its agreement to establish a unified industrial policy. The suggestion might have been appealing to the Chinese side, but Russia’s position was in question.

In-Depth Sources

Danilovich, Maryia. 2020. ‘Bridging Westward to Open the Gates of Europe: Implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative in Central Asia and Belarus.’ In How China’s Silk Road Initiative is Changing the Global Economic Landscape, edited by Marcus Taube and Yuan Li, 207–27. London: Routledge. Link.

Great Stone Industrial Park. Official website. Link

Liu, Zhigao, Michael Dunford, and Weidong Liu. 2021. ‘Coupling National Geo-Political Economic Strategies and the Belt and Road Initiative: The China–Belarus Great Stone Industrial Park.’ Political Geography 84: 102296. Link.

Wang, Chao 王超, and Wang Yuan 王苑. 2023. ‘乌克兰危机下中白工业园发展现状、问题及建议 [Development Status, Problems and Suggestions of China–Belarus Industrial Park under the Ukrainian Crisis].’ 俄罗斯学刊 [Academic Journal of Russian Studies] 4. Link.

Zhao, Huirong 赵会荣. 2023. ‘乌克兰危机升级背景下的白俄罗斯及中白经济合作 [Belarus and China–Belarus Economic Cooperation in the Context of the Escalating Crisis in Ukraine].’ 中国欧亚经济 [Journal of Eurasian Economy] 5. Link.

Last updated on 22 January 2025.

Updated on 22 January 2025


Maryia Danilovich is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Modern East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen, Germany, and an associate researcher at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research examines China’s evolving foreign policy towards both Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

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