China and Serbia underline close ties between countries
Leaders speak of ‘ironclad friendship’
waRSaw — china and Serbia on wednesday proclaimed an “ironclad friendship” and a “shared future” during a visit to Belgrade by the chinese president, Xi Jinping, underlining the close political and economic ties between two countries that share a wariness of the United States.
Xi arrived in Serbia late tuesday — the 25th anniversary of a mistaken 1999 airstrike involving the US air Force during the kosovo war that destroyed the chinese embassy in Belgrade, the Serbian capital. three chinese journalists were killed in the strike.
Xi appeared briefly wednesday morning with the Serbian president, aleksandar Vucic, before a cheering crowd of people, some of whom told Serbian media outlets they had been bused in by the ruling party, gathered in front of the palace of Serbia, the former headquarters of the now-defunct government of Yugoslavia that now houses Serbian government offices.
“the ironclad friendship between china and Serbia has withstood the test of international storms and tribulations,” Xi told Vucic in a meeting, according to an account from Xinhua, china’s official news agency. “it has a deep historical bedrock, a robust political foundation, wide-ranging common interests, and a solid basis in public opinion.”
the leaders later signed an agreement declaring their intention to “deepen and elevate the comprehensive strategic partnership between china and Serbia” and “build a new era of a community with a shared future,” local news outlets reported.in contrast to his last visit to eastern and central europe in 2016, during which he faced noisy protests in the czech Republic, Xi has received a uniformly rapturous reception in Belgrade, with authorities reportedly detaining potential protesters and mobilizing state workers to cheer him.
china is Serbia’s largest foreign investor, and increasingly close economic relations have helped expand a relationship forged before the collapse of Yugoslavia, whose capital was Belgrade, in the early 1990s, through a shared wariness of western and Soviet power.
the 25th anniversary of the nato bombing has come at a time when Xi’s government is trying to steady relations with the United States and western europe.
He had been expected to visit the bombed embassy site, but he had not appeared there before he left Belgrade wednesday evening for his next stop, the Hungarian capital of Budapest, europe’s only other reliably china-friendly capital.
He did not ignore the bombing entirely but avoided antiwestern bombast. “this we should never forget,” Xi said in a statement published tuesday by politika, a Serbian newspaper.
Serbia and china are also bound by mutual support for each other’s territorial claims — china’s to the breakaway island of taiwan and Serbia’s to kosovo, formerly Serbian land declared an independent state after the nato bombing campaign.