China and Serbia proclaimed an “iron friendship” on Wednesday during a visit to Belgrade by Chinese President Xi Jinping, underscoring the close political and economic ties between two countries that share suspicion of the United States.
Xi arrived in Serbia on Tuesday night, 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 attack.
“We must never forget this,” Xi said in a statement published Tuesday by Politika, a Serbian newspaper, recalling that “25 years ago today, NATO flagrantly bombed the Chinese embassy.” He said China’s friendship with Serbia had been “forged with the blood of our compatriots” and “will remain in the shared memory of the Chinese and Serbian people.”
Xi appeared briefly Wednesday morning with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic before a cheering crowd gathered outside the Serbian Palace, the former headquarters of the now-defunct Yugoslav government that now houses Serbian government offices.
Unlike Xi’s last visit to Central and Eastern Europe in 2016, during which he faced noisy protests in the Czech Republic, he received a uniformly friendly reception in Belgrade, with authorities mobilizing state workers to cheer him on.
China is Serbia’s largest foreign investor and its increasingly close economic relations have helped expand a relationship forged before the collapse of Yugoslavia, whose capital was Belgrade, in the early 1990s over shared distrust of Western and Soviet power. .
The 25th anniversary of the NATO bombing comes at a time when Xi’s government is trying to stabilize relations with the United States and Western Europe. He was expected to visit the site of the bombed embassy, usually a mandatory stop for Chinese officials visiting Belgrade, but had yet to appear there by late afternoon. Xi visited the site, redeveloped as a Chinese cultural center, on his last trip to Serbia in 2016.
Beijing’s underlying suspicions about Western intentions and NATO’s role persist, a point that emerged in comments by Chinese officials and media about the anniversary. But Xi stopped short of expressing the outrage expressed in Beijing by China’s Foreign Ministry.
“The Chinese people will never forget this barbaric atrocity committed by NATO and will never accept such a tragic history being repeated,” ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters in Beijing on Tuesday.
Serbia, which still harbors deep resentment over the defeat of Christian Serbs at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in a battle in 1389, shares with China a view of itself as a righteous force aggrieved by hostile foreigners.
Serbia and China are also linked by mutual support for each other’s territorial claims: China’s to the breakaway island of Taiwan and Serbia’s to Kosovo, a former Serbian land that declared an independent state after the Soviet bombing campaign. NATO.
“Just as we have clear positions on the issue of Chinese integrity – that Taiwan is China – they support Serbian territory without any reservations,” said Vucic, who was Serbia’s information minister under President Slobodan Milosevic during the war. Kosovo. On Wednesday.
China, Xi said, “supports Serbia’s efforts to preserve its territorial integrity with respect to Kosovo.”
Public opinion has soured dramatically toward China in much of Europe, particularly in the former communist countries in the east, due to the war in Ukraine. But Serbia, which, like China, has close ties to Russia, has remained solidly pro-China and still looks to China for billions of dollars in investment.
But as with almost all European countries, Serbia has a widening trade deficit with China, a gap that Vucic hopes can be narrowed through a new free trade deal that he said Wednesday would allow Serbia to export 95 percent. cent of his assets. free. While Serbia has few products that China needs, Vucic said Serbian farmers would benefit from new Chinese contracts for prunes, plums and blueberries.
Vucic was one of only two European leaders, along with Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, to attend a meeting in Beijing in October to celebrate Xi’s Belt and Road infrastructure program. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and dozens of other foreign leaders also attended. Mr. Xi’s next trip will be Hungary.
Belgrade has been decked out with Chinese flags and billboards paying tribute to “dear Chinese friends.” Crowds lined the streets to welcome the Chinese leader, an outpouring of affection that opposition politicians said had been artificially manufactured by the authorities, who they said had ordered street sweepers and other state workers to They would miss work and cheer for Xi.
Serbia’s state television station even interrupted a broadcast of the Eurovision Song Contest, a hugely popular event watched by millions across Europe, to make way for coverage of a welcoming ceremony for Xi at Belgrade airport. .
Chris Buckley contributed reporting from Taipei, Taiwan and Alisa Dogramadzieva from Belgrade, Serbia.