A YouTube screenshot from the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park‘s official promotional video. Fair use.

This 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.

In October 2024, a sudden explosion rocked a steel factory at Morowali in Indonesia’s Central Sulawesi province. Following the explosion, thick smoke rapidly engulfed the factory located in the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park (IMIP), one of the world’s largest nickel processing and stainless steel production centers. Fire erupted from the factory’s upper structure, and workers tried to contain the blaze by directing high-pressure water hoses there. A crane operator called Laode Gunawan was trapped in the fire and later died from the explosion, while another worker suffered a minor injury.

The steel plant is owned by Chinese metal conglomerate Tsingshan Holding Group (青山控股集团有限公司), which is also IMIP's largest investor. 

In 2013, Tsingshan entered a joint venture with Indonesia-based mining giants PT Bintang Delapan Investment and PT Sulawesi Mining Investment to build IMIP. Tsingshan was in charge of building infrastructure and production facilities, while the Indonesian partners dealt with government relations and the management of Indonesian workers. 

Today, the mega industrial park sprawls across 4,000 hectares and hosts 50 tenants, mostly subsidiaries of Tsingshan. The park also has its own airport, marine port, high-end hotel, and dorms for workers. Designated as a “national strategic project,” the industrial park employs more than 84,000 Indonesian and Chinese workers. 

But this rapid development has come with environmental and human costs. On top of environmental concerns such as deforestation, pollution, and waste management, labor abuses and work safety scandals have long loomed over the project. 

After the fatal incident in October 2024, the Chairman of the Morowali Industrial Workers Union (SPIM-KPBI), Komang Jordi, condemned Tsingshan for being negligent and indifferent to the safety of workers:

 Kejadian berulang, selalu menjadikan buruh sebagai tumbal 

Accidents keep recurring and workers are always the victims.

Widespread safety loopholes

In 2023, three Chinese workers at IMIP filed a complaint to Indonesia’s human rights commission due to a lack of proper safety protocols and equipment, overwork, and pay cuts. But their plea didn’t manage to prevent the industry park’s worst accident in history. Just months later, in December 2023, an explosion at a nickel plant of a Tsingshan subsidiary at IMIP resulted in 21 deaths and 46 injuries, marking a gloomy milestone as the park’s most fatal accident. Among the 21 fatalities, eight were Chinese workers. Two Chinese supervisors were later charged with neglecting safety protocols. 

Zhao Jingtian, a Chinese worker, witnessed the catastrophe during his shift. He told Chinese magazine Lifeweek that he remembered “there was a lot of smoke” (烟冒得很厉害) and that some workers had to jump down from a high place to escape. Another Chinese worker Wang Zizhuang who also witnessed the incident said:

一出事，上面温度太高，急得不行。我这里的炉子每一层都能逃跑，他们应该是跑不了才选择跳下的。

When the incident happened, the temperatures upstairs became unbearably high, and panic set in. Every level of the furnace has emergency exits, but they probably couldn't run away — that's why they had to jump.

In 2024, Financial Times interviewed more than two dozen workers from various companies at IMIP who alleged systematic loose safety practices, insufficient protective gear and equipment, and poor communication between Indonesian and Chinese workers, which led to a high-risk working environment plagued by frequent accidents. “Production first, safety later,” a worker at Indonesia Tsingshan Stainless Steel told FT. Foreign Policy cited multiple sources who alleged that nonfatal accidents, which rarely generate news headlines, are an almost daily occurrence in the industrial park.

A worker at a steel smelting factory. Image from PXhere. CC0 Public Domain. Fair use

A recent survey conducted by the Mining and Energy Federation of the Confederation of All Indonesian Trade Unions shows that long, grueling working hours and weak safety protocols contribute to the high number of workplace accidents at IMIP. The average working hours of employees there are 56 hours per week or 225 hours per month, according to the survey.

Language barriers have also contributed to workplace risks to some degree. According to a Lifeweek report, Chinese workers with experience in the metal industry are usually paired up with less-experienced Indonesian colleagues. A smelter team at IMIP typically contains three Chinese workers and five to ten Indonesian workers. In order to facilitate communication, each team has at least one translator. But that is still insufficient, according to Hasrih Sonna, an Indonesian union leader at IMIP, who told the Chinese magazine:

并不是每个人都能配一个翻译，所以有时翻译人员不够，交流起来就会有困难。处理紧急情况时，情况就变得复杂.

Not everyone can be assigned an interpreter, so when translation support falls short, communication becomes difficult. In emergency situations, this quickly escalates into a critical complication.

After the deadly accident in December 2024, around 300 workers protested at IMIP to demand safer working conditions. One of the demands from the protestors was that Chinese workers should be required to learn Indonesian.

Environmental NGO Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia) stated in a press release that the repeated work accidents at Tsingshan-affiliated companies showed the “weak oversight” of the Indonesian government, as there were “no signs of improvement at all” by this Chinese-backed company. 

Former Indonesian President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) touring the PT Virtue Dragon Nickel Industrial Park in December 2021. Image from YouTube screenshot of Secretariat Presiden. Fair use.

The Chinese government has stayed largely quiet on the alleged systematic workplace hazards at Chinese-backed nickel and steel plants in Indonesia. After the fatal explosion at IMIP in December 2023, Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, expressed condolences for the victims. She added that the Chinese Embassy in Indonesia was giving guidance to the company concerning follow-up arrangements.

Human costs behind Indonesia’s nickel boom

In just a decade, Indonesia has grown from a small player to a dominating force in the global nickel sector. It is currently the world’s largest producer of nickel, accounting for 1.8 million tons, or 51 percent of the global output. 

Raw nickel ore. Image from YouTube screenshot. Fair use.

The country’s nickel boom is driven by an export ban on raw nickel ore and large investments from Chinese companies that have mastered the refining technique and are hungry for nickel to power China’s fast-growing electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing industry. However, Indonesia’s rising status in the global nickel supply chain has laid bare the impacts on the most vulnerable in the production process — workers on the ground.

Non-profit organization China Labor Watch documented 77 deaths and 120 injuries at multiple Chinese-backed nickel plants in Indonesia, including IMIP, from 2016 to 2024. China Labor Watch also found that Chinese workers working in Indonesia’s nickel production sites are subject to employment malpractices such as passport confiscation, withheld payments, and restriction of movement. 

Chinese workers reportedly account for about 13 percent of the total workforce at IMIP. They live in dormitories at the industrial park and are forbidden from roaming outside the industrial area freely, making them feel isolated. A Chinese worker at IMIP wrote in an online blog:

我们工作的区域是全封闭的 “物离乡贵，人离乡贱”，曾经对我来说仅仅是个俗语，现在却是我在印尼青山工业园区工作的真切感受。

Our work area is completely enclosed.‘The value of goods increases when they leave their origins, while the value of a person decreases when they leave their homelands.’ This was once just a saying to me, but now it has become my true reality while working at IMIP.

Many Chinese workers at IMIP had worked in the steel industry back home. As the steel sector and China’s economy as a whole have been facing a downturn, workers are increasingly looking toward Indonesia’s nickel sector for job opportunities. 

On the other hand, many young Indonesian workers have migrated for employment from Sulawesi and other Indonesian islands to Bahodopi, the industrial center of Morowali. They struggle to find housing outside the industrial area, as the dormitories are reserved for Chinese workers, and there is a housing shortage due to the recent population boom. 

In 2017, Bahodopi had just 7,517 residents, but by 2022, that number had surged to around 50,000 as newcomers migrated for job opportunities. While essential infrastructure in the town struggles to keep pace, the worker influx has led to a rise in overcrowded and makeshift boarding houses. Reports indicate that these temporary housing structures for Indonesian workers are often made out of easily accessible materials such as wood, concrete, and even shipping containers. With the warm, tropical climate in Sulawesi, workers staying in these houses often have to struggle with sweltering heat, poor ventilation, and water leaks. Many of the housing structures sit near the smelter smokestacks and coal-fired power plants, and the air pollution has led to lung diseases among residents in Bahodopi. 

Experts warn that the growing demand for nickel, driven by the energy transition, will continue to incentivize nickel corporations to increase productivity, which may lead to more labor abuses, workplace hazards, and health issues for workers unless regulations and worker protections are implemented.

In February 2025, a workplace accident claimed yet another life at IMIP. A worker died after a 150-kg object crushed his head at a nickel smelter. Merely hours after the deadly incident, the plant’s production resumed. It was back to business as usual.