China’s leader, President Xi Jinping, denounced Nato for what he labelled as an “outrageous” air strike on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 while he was striving to strengthen relations with Serbia prior to his formal visit to the Balkan nation. This marks Mr. Xi’s inaugural European tour in half a decade, embarking in Serbia on Tuesday subsequent to his stay in the French Pyrenees, where French President Emmanuel Macron served as his host on the concluding day of his national visit.
With reference to the 25th anniversary of the assault on the Chinese embassy during the Kosovo conflict in the erstwhile Yugoslavia which took place on Tuesday, Mr. Xi wrote an article in the Serbian news agency Politika, appealing for an alliance between Beijing and Belgrade. “On this day, 25 years ago, Nato outrageously bombarded the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, taking the lives of three Chinese journalists…We must never erase this from our minds,” Mr. Xi articulated, as interpreted in the English variant of the article. “The camaraderie between China and Serbia, moulded by the blood of our kin, will forever reside in the collective consciousness of our peoples.”
On Tuesday, the Belgrade locality where the former embassy is located was adorned in both Chinese and Serbian flags. A small assembly took place this week where two Serbian communist parties displayed banners in honour of the Chinese leader’s visit, making a comparison between Serbia and China with the message: “Kosovo is Serbia – Taiwan is China.” Belgrade asserts that its former province separated in violation of the law, whilst Beijing views Taiwan as a segment of its domain which it aspires to assimilate.
Mr. Xi’s European expedition will further extend to Hungary. Chinese scholars commend Mr. Macron’s support for a more autonomous European position on the global platform, whilst Serbia and Hungary lean more towards the pro-Russia stance despite the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia’s president and host to Mr. Xi, served as propaganda minister under the previous leader Slobodan Milosevic during the Nato bombing of Belgrade.
According to Milos Damnjanovic, an analyst at BIRN, a think tank based in Belgrade, the bombing continues to be a “persistent source of indignation towards Nato and specifically, the US” in Serbia and “cultivates a sense of unity between China and Serbia”. Nato has categorised the strike on the Chinese embassy as an unfortunate incident that occurred amidst a war conducted to shelter the people of Kosovo from Serbian hostilities.
China stands as Serbia’s largest overseas backer, providing 8.5% of Belgrade’s foreign loans, says Branimir Jovanovic, a researcher from the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies. Jovanovic further remarked that the EU and the West’s broader tactics allow China to take a more central role, which he regards as a missed opportunity. Xi and his spouse enjoyed a lunch with the French president, Mr Macron, and his partner at a restaurant situated in the Pyrenees mountains, close to the Macron family burial site. This was a personal meeting echoing Mr Macron’s visit to Guangzhou the previous year for a tea ceremony with Xi, where the latter’s father had lived.
Moreover, Mr Xi’s France visit resulted in multiple contracts signed by French and Chinese corporations, such as metro construction agreements with the French company Alstom. Tuesday saw an increase in French cognac manufacturers Pernod Ricard and Rémy Cointreau’s shares, following France’s temporary respite from potential special import tariffs from China on their EU brandy products.