How Social Media Is Used to Smuggle Chinese Nationals Through BiH
Detektor has uncovered accounts on social media where human smugglers advertise, offering Chinese citizens illegal border-crossing services between BiH and Croatia.
"I really had no choice but to leave China"— Wenbin
That's what Wenbin told Detektor journalists at the beginning of September 2026 in Bihać, 10km away from the border with Croatia. The 22-year-old from China pointed to a post he had seen a month earlier on the social network Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
It visually explained how to illegally cross the border into Croatia from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The images listed the journey through BiH, and the guide was depicted as a cartoon bear.
Wenbin, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, had been considering leaving his country for several months. He had taken part in protests in the city of Jiangyou, in China's Sichuan province. They had broken out in August 2025 when citizens took to the streets over a perceived lack of response by the authorities into a brutal attack on a girl in the city. It was a rare example of a mass street demonstration in the country.
"Because I participated in that protest, the police took me to the station and beat me. This [being taken to the station] has been going on from last year into this year, up until now. They call me almost every month to ask where I am. They ask if I've been involved in anything lately, inquiring about my personal affairs, constantly harassing me," Wenbin said.
On Douyin's online platform he saw that some people from China who had traveled through BiH on their way to the EU, the UK, and the US were posting videos and charging high brokerage fees of up to 10,000 euros. Wenbin sold his valuable belongings and decided to take the same path.
He is one of several hundred thousand Chinese nationals whose entry into the country over the past four years has been registered by BiH authorities.
Data from Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, show that the number of detections of illegal border crossings by Chinese nationals on the Western Balkan route has increased from just three in 2021 to 706 in 2025.
A detection does not mean an exact number of people: One person may be detected more than once.
Figures for 2026 cover the period from January to July.
Show table
| Year | Detections |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 58 |
| 2020 | 8 |
| 2021 | 3 |
| 2022 | 88 |
| 2023 | 462 |
| 2024 | 620 |
| 2025 | 706 |
| 2026 (Jan–Jul) | 240 |
Source: Frontex, Monthly detections of illegal border-crossings (data up to July 2026)
Detektor journalists spent several months analysing thousands of messages and advertisements posted on social media, mainly on Telegram, Douyin, and TikTok, which shared advice for Chinese nationals leaving their country with the intention of starting a new life in Western countries.
The investigation revealed that along the way, far from the easy passage into the West portrayed online, migrants faced people smugglers, violence, rejected asylum applications, and frightening deportations back to China. Some traffickers even posted videos showing how they smuggled children and families.
China allowed its citizens to travel outside the country in early 2023, following restrictions due to the pandemic. Since then authorities in BiH have recorded several hundred thousands of Chinese arrivals in the country, of which around a tenth, according to figures from 2022-2024, are people seeking asylum in the West.
Watch Detektor TV on the dark business of smuggling Chinese migrants through Bosnia
Emir Prcanović from the Sarajevo based organisation Vaša prava, which assists migrants, explained that although Chinese nationals generally do not meet the conditions to receive asylum in BiH, information gathered by human rights activists show that many individuals were exploited in their own country.
"They were victims of exploitation or abuse even in their country of origin. Working from dawn to dusk without proper working conditions for very minimal wages in certain parts of the country, across entire industrial sectors," Prcanović explained.
His organisation found they had been exposed to adverts on social media, put out by people smugglers.
'Escape Route to Europe'
Detektor uncovered at least three Telegram groups intended for Chinese nationals illegally emigrating to Western countries and several accounts on Douyin and TikTok publishing ads claiming to offer transit for Chinese citizens, including children, from BiH to Western countries.
Journalists analysed the content of the Telegram channel "Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina - Practical Group Formation for Escape to Europe," which has 829 followers; the channel "Chinese Group Serbia/BiH," which has 934 members; and the channel "Escape Route to Europe," which in September had 11 members and allowed real-time tracking of the journey of three Chinese nationals—from landing in Sarajevo, through Velika Kladuša and Bihać, to a German reception centre in late 2024.
But the groups were not only a shop window for smugglers. Members also shared what had gone wrong: being caught at the Croatian border up to four times in a single day, being sent straight back to Serbia, and being cheated out of their money by smugglers.
Group members inquired about natural obstacles awaiting them along the way, asking questions like "will a man 1.8 meters tall be swept away by the current if he tries to swim across?"
Labels in the image (Chinese): "Croatia", "Sava river", "129.06 m"*Telegram shows all deleted accounts under the same name.
One migrant shared his experience crossing a river on an improvised air mattress he used to push his wife to the Croatian shore, and how after an hour the cold forced them to give up and return.
GPS coordinates with routes through high-risk border regions were shared in the groups.
from Bihać to Slovenia via Croatia.
The first part of the walking route starts in Bihać and leads toward selected entry points on the Croatian border.
"It's just that one big mountain, cross it and you're done. There are border police during the day. Everyone knows this route." Oct 10, 2024
Video instructions on how to get from Bihać to Korenica in Croatia. Oct 10, 2024
"This one. Not even 200 metres." Coordinates were sent with the image, plus: "Navigate from Bihać to these coordinates." Oct 10, 2024
A Telegram account named "Againbike123" described himself as a victim of a smuggler scam.
According to this member of the "Practical Group Formation for Escape to Europe" group, a smuggler named "Yang," after taking his money, abandoned people on the route and blocked them on WeChat, the dominant communication platform in China.
Detektor contacted the Chinese embassies in both BiH and Serbia in an attempt to learn details about this and similar cases, but no response was received by the time this story was published.
The same account also stated that they were returned to Serbia and banned from entering BiH for two years.
Detektor attempted to contact the person behind the "Againbike123" account via Telegram, but was unsuccessful.
Messages also reveal that smugglers offer tiered "service" packages for illegal transit.
Advertisements for the packages claim to cover all expenses and guarantee entry into the desired country.
Prices for these packages range from 1,000 to 2,000 euros for a trip from Sarajevo or Bihać to destinations in Germany or Italy.
The highest-tier packages reached up to 10,000 euros, for an "all-inclusive arrangement from China to Austria."
Amounts are claims from ads and interviewees. The yuan amount is converted approximately. Bars share the same scale (€10,000 = full bar).
Criticisms directed at China
Some comments were critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its leadership, describing China as a "completely totalitarian society" built on "surveillance, wiretapping, and informing."
Some expressed their dissatisfaction with Chinese President Xi Jinping by sharing satirical images depicting him as a baby, as well as through poems.
Detektor contacted dozens of people who were, or still are, active in the Telegram channels.
One member of the Telegram channel "Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina - Practical Group Formation for Escape to Europe," who identified himself only as 'KW', said he came up with the idea of coming to BiH and illegally crossing the border into Croatia after his residence permit was revoked in Serbia.
"During the year when I had status (in Serbia), I paid my own insurance and company taxes in accordance with Serbian laws, but when it was time to extend my residence status, the Serbian authorities rejected me for no reason," he said during a message exchange with journalists on Telegram.
As he recounted, he had three unsuccessful attempts at crossing the border from Bosnia into Croatia. It was not clear whether he had paid smugglers advertising on the Telegram group to help him.
"The experience was that we almost died of thirst because we didn't bring enough drinking water. Luckily, we came across farmland at the border. They had tap water for irrigation," KW recalled.
Only after the third failed attempt—which, as he noted, resulted in one of his friends losing consciousness—did the group he was with decide to turn to a people smuggler, known in the Chinese underworld as "snakeheads".
"After those three failures, we realised that the border is truly difficult to cross, so we paid to find a 'snakehead', and after that, entering the Schengen area was easy," KW explained.
It was not clear on which social media platform KW contacted the snakehead.
He noted that within circles of people experienced with migrants, there are suspicions that organised crime groups from the Balkans, rather than Chinese nationals, are behind much of the people smuggling.
When asked why he suspected this, he replied:
"Because at that time we entered Croatia directly from Serbia. When we passed border control, we only heard the driver and the border police exchange a few words, and we breathed a sigh of relief, he was definitely bribed in advance," he added, before ceasing to respond to Detektor's inquiries.
Diary of three migrants
The Telegram group "Escape Route to Europe" was active from October 22 to November 12, 2024, but it served as a fascinating diary for the three most active members who used BiH as a stepping stone to the European Union.
The three wrote that in October and November 2024 they landed at Sarajevo International Airport, where they purchased bus tickets to Bihać.
Smugglers, or "snakeheads", were a central topic of the group from the moment they entered BiH.
The price for guidance across the border, according to one post, started at 2,000 euros per person and was charged "per head."
Those who do not have this money, it was explained, negotiate with the smugglers.
One member stated he reached an agreement with a smuggler to make up for the money he lacked through working after successfully arriving at his destination.
Detektor managed to contact one of the three Chinese migrants from that Telegram channel. He said he is currently in Germany, where he has appealed a decision by the authorities to reject his asylum application.
Child smuggling adverts
Detektor found dozens of video adverts on social networks Douyin and TikTok in which smugglers offered illegal transit of families with minor children, as well as people being transported in car trunks.
Sophie Richardson from Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an international NGO, told Detektor that people are leaving China due to political or religious vulnerability, for economic reasons and out of fear of state policies.
Those leaving are often well-educated or members of the middle class. "Precisely the profile of people that Xi Jinping and the Chinese government claim is both desirable and content," she added.
She also warned of the dangers facing the families of migrants who remain in China.
"A person who is wanted, and outside the country, their family members inside the country would face pressure to try to get those people to return," Richardson explained.
She emphasised that real dangers exist for those returned to China after a failed escape.
"The amount of data the Chinese government collects on citizens is quite impressive. And if the authorities know you tried to leave, failed, and were sent back, you can truly be at risk," Richardson said.
BiH a transit country
Data from BiH's Ministry of Security show that between 2022 and 2024, the number of Chinese citizens entering BiH increased nearly five-fold, with one in ten never leaving the country.
According to Frontex data, Chinese nationals became the sixth most represented nationality on the Western Balkan migrant route for two consecutive years.
Prcanović, from "Vaša prava", said the organisation records a relatively small number of Chinese nationals who apply for asylum in BiH and wish to remain.
"After filing an asylum application and following their registration, a considerable number of them leave the country. They do not wait for a final decision on their asylum claim. Some even leave before an interview is officially scheduled," Prcanović said.
In a hostel in central Bihać, a group of Chinese nationals told Detektor in September that they organise the illegal transit of their fellow countrymen from BiH into Croatia.
Smugglers in Bihać
One of them, who introduced himself as 'Jimmy', said he has smuggled about 2,000 people so far. When asked by Detektor about the methods of human smuggling, he said that information was a "business secret."
The group charges about 500 euros per person.
It was in Bihać that the Detektor team encountered Wenbin.
As he recounted, he traveled by plane from Yunnan to Chengdu, then via Turkey to Sarajevo. After that, he traveled seven hours by bus to Bihać.
Detektor met with Wenbin twice in September. After the first meeting he managed to cross illegally into Croatia, but Croatian authorities arrested him and sent him back to BiH following his arrest. Authorities in BiH gave him a deadline of seven days to leave the country. He told Detektor journalists during the second meeting he would try getting into Croatia again.
As Detektor confirmed, he managed to cross into Croatia again and reached Italy in September.
"When I was trying to cross the border and climb the mountains, at one point I thought about giving up halfway through, because the thorny vegetation there was very dense. I thought about giving up and going back to Bihać. But I thought to myself that I had already come so far and it would be a huge loss to give up, so I kept going"— Wenbin
While he was being interviewed, rescuers saved two of his fellow countrymen, who had gotten lost in the dangerous border mountains of BiH, in 24 hours.
Despite this, most of them will continue their journey and try to cross the border again.
The adverts in these groups promise that all costs are covered and entry into the desired country is guaranteed, with some claiming: "All I need is your passport". But those who set off describe a different journey: half a day in the water, a smuggler who took their money and blocked them, a return to Serbia and a two-year ban on entering Bosnia.
Irvin Pekmez contributed to this text.