Why Serbia is becoming China’s best friend in Europe

Thousands of Serbs gathered outside the Palace of Serbia Wednesday to welcome the Chinese president Xi Jinping, chanting “China, Serbia.” Addressing the audience, Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić thanked Xi for choosing to visit Serbia: “We are writing history today… [Xi] hasn’t come to Europe in five years and he has again chosen our little Serbia.”

The visit has been choreographed to coincide with the twenty-fifth anniversary of NATO’s bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999. The strike killed three Chinese journalists and sparked mass protests across China. It is an incident China will never forget and has been a constant thorn in Sino-American relations. 

In a statement published Tuesday in Serbia’s leading daily newspaper Politika, Xi said that China’s friendship with Serbia “is soaked in the shared blood of the two nations.” There were rumblings that he would take the opportunity to visit the former embassy, now a China Cultural Center, to pay his respects to the dead and make a political point — that NATO is not a purely defensive alliance, and that China is far stronger now than it was then.

Since Xi’s previous visit to Serbia in 2016, relations between the two countries have intensified, with China emerging as Serbia’s primary economic partner. China is the single largest investor in Serbia, and its second largest trade partner after the European Union. Last October, the two countries signed a free trade agreement, making Serbia China’s first free-trade partner in central and eastern Europe.

Chinese investment in Serbia, which accounts for around a third of the country’s total foreign direct investment, is concentrated in mining and manufacturing. Zijin Mining and Serbia Zijin Copper are now the second and third most profitable companies in Serbia. Chinese companies have also been involved in major infrastructure projects in Serbia, such as the Belgrade to Novi Sad high-speed railway and the Miloš the Great highway.

It is obvious why China is an important partner for Serbia — it has invested billions in the country and has been a bulwark against the international recognition of Kosovo at the United Nations. It might be less clear, however, why Serbia is important for China. China’s trade with Serbia is less than one-fortieth of its trade with Germany — and yet it has chosen to visit Belgrade not Berlin.

For China, Serbia is a rare friend in Europe, and one which shares its worldview. Both countries sacralize state sovereignty and territorial integrity in international law. While China has always opposed Kosovo’s independence, Vučić has been clear on his position on Taiwan. “Taiwan is China. And it’s up to you, what, when, how you’re going to do it,” he said in a recent interview. 

China also sees Serbia as a gateway to Europe. As an EU candidate state, Serbia could become a conduit through which China could enter the European market. And by occupying a strategic position in the western Balkans, Serbia plays an important role in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, connecting the Greek port of Piraeus, run by China’s Cosco Shipping, to Hungary in the north.

Serbia’s courting of China does raise questions about Belgrade’s commitment to EU accession. But after waiting to join the EU for more than two decades, Serbia has little to lose here. The sluggish accession talks and constant moving targets mean Serbia has been forced to look elsewhere to develop its economy and increase growth.

As the governor of the National Bank of Serbia recently remarked, “this waiting room is turning into captivity.” Instead of waiting around doing nothing, Serbia has “dared to have its own path and to be different.” Since 2009, Serbia has pursued a foreign policy which balances its relations between the US, EU, Russia and China.

Much like the former Yugoslavia, Serbia insists on its right to pursue an independent foreign policy. Serbia has refused to distance itself from Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and has continued to seek economic opportunities and diplomatic support from China.

So far this strategy has not served Serbia badly.

Serbia’s growth rate is among the highest in Europe (its estimated GDP was 4.6 percent for the first quarter of 2024), and its public debt to GDP ratio is among the lowest (and projected to decline to around 50 percent in 2024). Despite warnings from the EU that Chinese investment would create a debt trap, Serbia’s total external debt was only around 65 percent of GDP at the end of 2023.

It is uncertain how long Serbia will be able to keep up its balancing act. The country faces pressure from the EU to impose sanctions on Russia and distance itself from China. Perhaps if the prospect of EU membership were more credible, the country would rethink its international leanings. For now, Serbia’s alliance with China is serving it well.

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.