Regulator estimates about 80% of Bolivia’s mining is illegal
Private Chinese mining companies have turned Mayaya, a small town in Bolivia’s Amazon, into a hub of mining activity. Chinese miners and investors run most local operations: about 20 open-pit mines and 12 dredge boats, operated by about 2,000 Bolivian and 200 Chinese workers. Mining regulator Jaime Sanabria estimates that Bolivia produces about 100 tonnes of gold a year but only about 10% is sold legally, and that about 80% of mining is illegal. The Guardian reports that critics accuse the companies of exploitation and illegal exports. Alfredo Zaconeta, a mining researcher at Cedla, said foreign investors sign service contracts with local cooperatives while controlling mines end to end and taking 75% to 80% of profits; he also said the state rarely, if ever, enforces ownership and permit rules.
At a restaurant in Mayaya, Zhang Changchun, a middle-aged chef and mine investor from Heilongjiang province, cooks pork belly for his friends, a group of half a dozen Chinese men who work as investors, miners, supply importers or equipment dealers. The group gathers most nights to eat, drink and play mahjong, with pork trotters, duck wings and braised sábalo on the table. Zhang said, “Bolivia is my happy place,” in Mandarin. The table gets rowdy as the men debate their afternoon games over high-end Chinese cigarettes and Bolivian beer, and almost every conversation revolves around money. Zhang also said, “We developed this town.” He added, “Without the Chinese, there would be no Mayaya today.”
In less than a decade, private Chinese mining companies turned the once-remote Amazonian town into a hub of mining activity. Mining equipment stores, hotels and Chinese restaurants now line the main street.
Yanzhi Chen and Benjamin Swift of The Guardian spent five days with Chinese miners, investors and traders in Mayaya. They reported that record gold prices were driving Amazonian deforestation and violent conflict and that small-scale private mining operations were expanding China’s role in global gold supply. The Bolivian Amazon has long attracted foreign capital, from rubber and timber industries to North American mining companies in the 1950s. The report said the Chinese operations draw on global networks of goods, machinery and labour that often operate illegally under Bolivian law.
A 2014 national law limits mining rights to cooperatives and independent miners, state-controlled firms, and domestic and foreign private companies. Foreign firms must maintain a registered Bolivian office and operate in their own name. The state permits joint ventures, leases and risk-sharing agreements between foreign and national firms only through public-private contracts in which the state is a shareholder. The report said Chinese mining firms operating outside that framework act unlawfully. Under a 2016 law, cooperatives also risk expropriation if they contract, lease or share mining-concession risks with foreign firms.
Chinese gold miners first arrived in Mayaya in 2005, but the major wave of immigration came in 2017. That wave followed a ban on domestic small-scale gold mining by China’s national development and reform commission, which cited environmental and national defence concerns. The ban sent many miners and investors searching for work globally and spurred several companies to hire workers from closed mines in China for newly opened operations in Bolivia. One of those firms is Shenzhen Vicstar Import and Export, which has operated in Bolivia since at least 2011. Officially, the company does not carry out mining operations; its supplier-directory listing names only print materials and manufacturing.
Campaigners say the companies skirt the law, “hiding behind” cooperatives to operate in Bolivia’s mining industry. On paper, foreign investors sign service contracts with local cooperatives and provide capital and machinery. Alfredo Zaconeta, a mining researcher at environmental thinktank Cedla, said they control the mines end to end: selecting sites, hiring workers, providing machinery, exporting gold and taking 75% to 80% of profits. Behind these contracts, Zaconeta said, Chinese investors evade legal responsibilities because the state lacks the resources and political will to oversee the mining lobby. He said the state rarely, if ever, enforces existing ownership and permit rules.
The migration has produced an economy in Bolivia that serves it. In La Paz, lawyers specialise in Chinese work visas, and a local phone store doubles as an informal bank for exchanging bolivianos and renminbi. In some regions, Chinese miners recruit friends and family, forming hometown clusters dedicated to the local mining industry. Along Mayaya’s main street, shops sell Chinese goods from bottled tea and cigarettes to pork intestines. Chinese investor Yang Yanbin said, “As long as you have money to invest, this country welcomes you. We stuff all the money straight into our pockets.” At one of the Chinese investors’ frequent dinners, after at least a dozen Paceña beers, one investor said, “You’ll encounter Chinese people in every corner of the world.” A friend then joked, “We are just powerful like that – we could conquer the world!”
Chang Yuequan, a lifelong miner who has mined gold along the China-Russia border since his teens, is another Chinese investor in Mayaya. In 2017, after verifying Mayaya’s gold quality, he ordered 120 shipping containers from China and began assembling machinery. A photograph published with the report showed Chang with a picture of the gold haul from one of his mines, made the previous day and worth £20,000.
In 2025, Chang opened his newest mine next to the Kaka River. He named it “Passion Fruit” in Spanish, referring to the wild vines covering the hillside. During a periodic visit, Chang and a Chinese employee watched an excavator in a huge pit claw soil into a loader before Bolivian workers blasted it with high-pressure hoses. Chang said the workers then mixed the slurry with mercury and burned it to produce large, lumpy gold nuggets. Turning to the mine’s Chinese manager, Chang pointed to the green half of the hill and said, “This whole mountain is ours. Excavate that too.”
He Zijian, Chang’s friend and colleague, who ships gold from Mayaya to La Paz during price surges, said, “Everything – down to the tiniest screws – is imported from China.” The trade can be highly lucrative, the report said. Much of the gold from Mayaya ends up in Dubai via illegal exports. According to He, Chinese middlemen bring the bullion to Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, before smuggling it to the Gulf state, where the metal is sold at Murshid Bazar, Dubai’s largest gold market.
The Guardian reported that gold in Dubai is often shipped further to Switzerland, where it is laundered into legal supply chains and sold in western markets. In July, police arrested a Bolivian man set to depart for Dubai from Santa Cruz, Bolivia. His four suitcases allegedly contained 189.5kg (418lb) of high-purity gold worth roughly £18.5m. Although the man may not have links to Chinese mining companies, authorities said the arrest highlighted the vast quantities of gold illegally exported from the country.
Jaime Sanabria, director of Bolivia’s mining regulator, Ajam, estimates that Bolivia produces about 100 tonnes of gold a year but only about 10% is sold legally, costing the Bolivian government and the country’s people billions in lost revenue. Alongside illegal exports, the report described poor labour conditions and rapid environmental degradation. According to two dredge-boat miners, Bolivian workers are routinely paid a quarter of what Chinese workers doing the same jobs earn.
The report said mercury poisoning had become increasingly common in surrounding Indigenous communities. Residents already hit hard by the climate crisis, deforestation and wildfires often struggle to make a living through agriculture and fishing, and many turn to mining, compounding mercury pollution. The report also said that, with Chinese companies controlling the river, Bolivian artisanal miners increasingly enter Madidi national park, one of the world’s most biodiverse places. A photograph published with the report states that the Kaka River near Mayaya has been severely affected by mining in recent years.
Tensions have included residents of a rural village south of Mayaya seizing and burning mining machinery allegedly owned by a Chinese company in August to denounce its environmental effects. Nearby municipalities also banned gold mining. Lifelong Mayaya resident Victoriano Piloy, whose store sits by the River Kaka, said Chinese mining had brought pollution with little benefit for local communities. “They’ve left nothing for us,” he said. “The money doesn’t stay here – that’s why we’re poor.”
Sanabria said, “The environmental impact is devastating because no one is inspecting or enforcing the rules,” adding that about 80% of mining in the country is illegal. The government conducts environmental audits every year, but Zaconeta said Chinese investors commonly receive advance notice and clean up before inspections. The decentralised mining sector, with 3,117 cooperatives nationwide, complicates state regulation. Zaconeta also said, “It’s just a good faith declaration; it can’t be verified. Everyone knows they are breaking the law.”
The Ministry of Mining and Metallurgy did not respond to requests for comment. Shenzhen Vicstar Import and Export Co and the Regional Federation of Gold Mining Cooperatives of Bolivia were also approached for comments. Despite the criticism directed at the mining industry, the report said that under the country’s new conservative president, Rodrigo Paz, the trend was toward even more permissive policies. In May, Paz signed an agreement with mining cooperatives that reduces barriers to mining in protected areas and Indigenous territories.
The report cautioned that government incentives may not be enough to ensure foreign companies’ long-term presence in Bolivia’s mines. Chang, one of Mayaya’s early Chinese investors, had spent his life chasing the world’s best gold from Russia to Tibet and North Korea before finally reaching the Bolivian Amazon. After 12 years in Mayaya, he said the town’s gold was depleting. He expected to move to another destination in five or six years, once his boats stopped operating.