Berliner Zeitung: How Serbia is becoming a Chinese vassal state in Europe - Vučić is the devil we know

The Berliner Zeitung newspaper published an article titled "Beijing is pushing back against Moscow: How Serbia is becoming a Chinese vassal state in Europe". The article was written by Aleksandar Rotert, a political scientist and expert on Southeast Europe. The article is part of an open-source project in which the Berliner Zeitung (BZ) and the Ostdeutsche Allgemeine give all interested parties the opportunity to offer texts with content relevance and professional quality standards.

In the text, the author recalled the fact that Serbia is further strengthening its partnership with the People's Republic of China, and that Beijing, in turn, is gaining increasing influence in Europe. Rotert believes that President Aleksandar Vučić has long since begun to shift his course from Moscow to Beijing.

"Serbia continues to have close intelligence cooperation with Russian services - specifically with the FSB internal service, the SVR foreign service, and the GRU military service. Russia's propaganda activities in Serbia are also very pronounced and are particularly spread through the Sputnik and RT propaganda channels," the text states.

"But when it comes to military-technical cooperation and arms deliveries, Beijing has long since replaced Moscow, as more than 60 percent of Serbian arms imports come from China."

China increasingly present

The author then recalls Serbia's first participation in a Chinese military exercise, the 2023 free trade agreement, and Chinese companies implementing billion-dollar infrastructure and mining projects in Serbia.

The text did not fail to mention the Chinese CM-400 AKG air-to-ground ballistic hypersonic missiles, with a range of up to 400 kilometers, which have recently become the property of Belgrade, or the Chinese FK-3 anti-aircraft systems purchased in 2022.

"According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), small Serbia, with a population of only 6,5 million, ranks 37th in the world in terms of arms imports," the author notes. He adds that Serbia, dating back to the time of the Yugoslav federation, "has a very strong military-industrial complex, thanks to which it can produce a large part of its conventional weapons and associated ammunition on its own."

The text states that Croatia is concerned about the arming of Serbia and that Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković "personally sent a letter to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte about Chinese ballistic missiles on Russian MiG-29 aircraft."

"The Devil We Know"

"Serbia's massive rearmament of all branches of the military – including ten types of drones, including the Chinese CH-95 – began more than a decade ago and has since undermined significant regional disarmament successes: The Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the war in Bosnia in 1995, agreed on comprehensive disarmament measures between the then warring parties – Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia. These measures were successfully implemented within the framework of 'Dayton' until 2012, under the supervision of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). However, since Vučić de facto took power in Serbia that same year, he has gradually massively strengthened the Serbian armed forces."

Aleksandar Rotert then moves on to quoting anonymous sources, which perhaps makes the text more interesting, but also more speculative: "Unofficially, Vučić is considered the lesser evil in NATO: Vučić is the devil we know, said one diplomat who wished to remain anonymous. Many international actors spoke similarly about Milošević in the 1990s. Vučić is (hopefully) not another Milošević, but with his massive militarization of Serbia and aggressive, expansionist rhetoric, he is intimidating small and mostly militarily weak neighbors, especially Belgrade's two main victims: Bosnia and Kosovo. Beijing also does not recognize Kosovo's independence, which further strengthens the Serbian threat."

The text then cites examples of escalation in Kosovo – the conflict between Serbs and members of the KFOR 2023 peacekeeping mission, as well as Banjska, as well as the escalation after that conflict: "Vučić's tanks stopped right at the border. Without the intervention of the then US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, there would have been a new war for Kosovo," the author claims. He adds that the delivery of Chinese hypersonic missiles to Serbia is just the latest link in a long chain of military equipment deliveries.

Russia, Belarus, Serbia

"The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kalas repeatedly criticized Belgrade and Vučić last year and warned: Serbia faces a strategic, geopolitical choice of where it wants to be. Serbia's European future depends on the values ​​it chooses. However, instead of taking the EU's warnings seriously, Vučić attended military parades marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, first in Moscow and then in Beijing. In addition, Belgrade continues to ignore EU sanctions against Russia and allows Moscow to operate civilian air connections between Belgrade and several Russian airports.

During his second visit to Serbia in 2024, Xi said: "Serbia became China's first strategic partner in Central and Eastern Europe eight years ago and is now the first European country with which we will build a common future. Beijing is gradually pushing Moscow out of the Balkans in military and economic terms. Chinese influence in Serbia is growing rapidly, both militarily and economically, and the West is barely noticing it. Serbia is thus gradually becoming a Chinese vassal state. The recently published study by the Bertelsmann Foundation on the state of democracy, in which Serbia - together with Belarus and Russia - is classified as the only autocracy in Europe, also fits into this context."