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Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s Serbia trip ‘timed to increase tensions’ with West, US envoy says

  • Xi’s arrival and remarks published in Serbia coincided with 25th anniversary of US air strike that killed three Chinese journalists
  • Timing remarks underscores Beijing’s close ties with Serbia since siding with the former Yugoslavia against Nato’s air campaign in the 1990s

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Chinese President Xi Jinping and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic hold talks in Belgrade on Wednesday. Photo: Xinhua
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Serbia on the 25th anniversary of the Nato bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was “timed to increase tensions” with the West, a senior US official has said.
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Xi touched down in the Serbian capital on Tuesday as part of a three-stop tour of Europe, his first visit to the continent since 2019.

His arrival in Belgrade on May 7, the date a US air strike hit China’s embassy in the country in 1999, was seen as a pointed move that would ensure the trip had a geopolitical edge.

“Twenty-five years ago today, Nato flagrantly bombed the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, killing three Chinese journalists—Ms. Shao Yunhuan, Mr. Xu Xinghu and his wife Zhu Ying. This we should never forget,” Xi wrote in an article placed in Serbian newspaper Politika on Tuesday.

Workers stick a Chinese national flag on a billboard in Belgrade on Tuesday. Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to European ally Serbia fell on a symbolic date: the 25th anniversary of the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during Nato’s air war over Kosovo. Photo: AP
Workers stick a Chinese national flag on a billboard in Belgrade on Tuesday. Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to European ally Serbia fell on a symbolic date: the 25th anniversary of the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during Nato’s air war over Kosovo. Photo: AP

In an online briefing on Wednesday to mark the end of his tenure in Belgrade, Gabriel Escobar, Washington’s outgoing special envoy for the Western Balkans, criticised the timing of Xi’s visit.

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