In the village of Buđanovci near Belgrade, people have been talking for years about the Chinese teams that arrived in the area after the downing of the American "invisible" F-117 plane in March 1999, offering to buy parts of the wreckage that the locals took as souvenirs.
It is not known exactly how many parts of the wreckage they managed to save - large parts are kept in the aviation museum in Belgrade. Zoltan Dani, commander of the rocket brigade that shot down the plane, now a baker after a brief political career, says he still has parts in his garage.
Over the past three years, however, speculation, possibly government-backed, has begun to appear on Chinese social media linking the rescue operation to the American bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade less than two months later on May 7, 1999.
Chinese authorities have never accepted American arguments that the bombing was an accident, and in recent years Chinese media have been covering the anniversary and saying it should never be forgotten.
Chinese President Xi Jinping this week used the 25th anniversary of that attack, which killed three Chinese nationals who were reportedly working as journalists inside the building, as one of the key points of his state visits to Europe.
In an article for a Serbian newspaper, Si spoke about the relationship between Beijing and Belgrade that is growing stronger because it was shaped by "blood and fire" during the attack.
It was a reminder that Beijing sees itself in an era-defining and not always bloodless conflict with Washington, also signaling Beijing's hope that as few European countries as possible side with the US. Especially in Serbia, both Chinese and Serbian officials spoke of opposing American hegemony.
However, despite organizing a trip for the anniversary, the Chinese leader avoided visiting the site of the attack this week. The newspaper "South China Morning Post" assessed that Beijing wants to avoid alienating the US too much.
Xi's tour, which began with a visit to France before stopping in Serbia and Hungary, is his most significant diplomatic trip since meeting US President Joe Biden in California in November.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is already China's closest friend within the European Union, while Beijing is even closer to Serbian leader Aleksandar Vučić. Both also have separate relations with the Kremlin.
Serbia is courted by Moscow, Beijing and the EU, as well as France, which is selling it new fighter jets - but it also has a long-term conflict with the West over Kosovo and is also trying to resist Western influence in other Balkan states.
Although these relations are constantly evolving, Beijing's efforts to create divisions within the West are by no means new, both independently and in cooperation with the Russians.
When the US threatened to use the atomic bomb in 1958 to deter Mao Zedong from invading the remote Taiwanese islands, while also working to deter Soviet action against West Berlin, then-US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan that believes Moscow and Beijing are conspiring to overstretch Western forces and tear the US apart from Europe.
Over the next two decades, it was the US that successfully helped to separate Beijing from Moscow - although Russia and China also did much to achieve this on their own. More recently, Putin and Xi have found common ground again in opposing the West - if anything, Russian domestic media have covered the anniversary of the bombing more aggressively than media in China.
Western attempts to separate China from Russia are again in full swing - but both Germany and France are simultaneously working intensively to maintain open relations with Beijing.
Complex dynamics
This creates a complex overlapping dynamic range. During a visit to Beijing in September 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz coordinated with the Bayden administration to make China's condemnation of the potential use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine a precondition for the meeting, forcing the Kremlin to at least temporarily withdraw its apocalyptic atomic warnings.
But the German leader's second visit to Beijing last month was criticized in Europe and the US for being too conciliatory, partly because of the impression that Scholz was trying to ease China's unease over Germany's strategy for the country announced late last year.
The strategy encapsulates broader European and Western concerns about China's cheap exports, including electric cars, as well as industrial espionage and the hacking of sensitive commercial and other information.
When Xi visited France this week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Europe needed to do more to confront China on several issues, warning that otherwise the European Union would be prepared to "fully use" trade sanctions that has available to ensure that competition remains fair.
French President Emmanuel Macron has used softer rhetoric seeking a more balanced trade relationship, also using Xi's visit to push his vision of a strategically independent Europe dependent on neither Washington nor Beijing.
However, he has also pressed China to reduce non-lethal support for Moscow's war in Ukraine, arguing that the survival of the government in Kiev is vital to the rest of Europe.
The very fact that these talks were conducted largely without much mention of the US is likely to feel like a victory for Beijing. Recent direct talks between the US and China have had overtones of some of the fiercest confrontations of the Cold War. When US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken left Beijing after his last visit, no Chinese official was at the airport to see him off.
Recent history
The latest bilateral meeting between Xi and Biden in California was cordial but highlighted the seriousness of the divisions, with Xi not backing down on Beijing's commitment to "reunification" with Taiwan, and by force if necessary.
US officials have repeatedly announced that Xi has ordered his military to be ready to attack Taiwan by 2027, and are working to deter it.
For Beijing, the value of highlighting the American bombing of the embassy in Belgrade 25 years ago has multi-layered reasons, but Si's main audience is most likely domestic. As of 2021, Chinese bloggers have suggested that the American attack was carried out specifically to destroy parts of an invisible plane that was in her basement. Chinese censors did not remove those allegations.
Whatever the truth, such stories support Beijing's narrative of continued conflict, in which China will at times be forced to take significant risks against the US.
The events of 1999 took place only three years after the humiliation of Beijing in the so-called The "Third Taiwan Strait Crisis," in which US President Bill Clinton sent two US aircraft carrier groups into the waters around the island to block Chinese efforts to intimidate voters in Taiwan's first free presidential election.
For some in China, the 1999 attack - carried out by a B2 stealth bomber that was much better at evading radar than the older F-117s that were downed a few weeks earlier - was seen as another US show of force aimed at reminding Beijing to their capacities. US officials reject such suggestions.
The presence of Sia and the rhetoric of never forgetting the joint suffering of Serbs and Chinese during the war in Kosovo also goes down well in Serbia - and in Russia, which felt humiliated by the US-led actions in the Balkans.
In the wider world, it is another reminder of the still often unpopular era of US-led international interventions, much of it without the approval of the United Nations.
Ultimately, it fits with European, and especially French, concerns about the strike itself.
Immediately after the end of the war in Kosovo, French officials loudly complained that the attack had been planned unilaterally by the US instead of being carried out through a NATO target selection process that might have allowed France and other countries to raise objections.
It fueled lingering concerns in Paris about American dominance in NATO and broader Western strategy, as well as equally lingering American concerns about intelligence leaks from France and other allies.
For many in the US, that one target in Belgrade may now seem like ancient history, an accidental mistake with little wider significance. For China, it is another transgression in more than a century of "humiliation" by the West, which the current government in Beijing, and Xi in particular, continue to send a signal that they hope to dramatically reverse.
The author is a Reuters columnist
Translation: A.Š.
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