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Relations Between Serbia and China and Their Impact on Serbia’S Continued Democratization, EU Integration and Cooperation with NATO and the Member States

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Relations Between Serbia and China and Their Impact on Serbia’S Continued Democratization, EU Integration and Cooperation with NATO and the Member States RASHOMON Analysis of Bilateral Relations Between Serbia and China and Their Impact on Serbia’s Continued Democratization, EU Integration and Cooperation with NATO and the Member States Belgrade | July 2019 This study has been published with the partial support of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Views and opinions expressed in this publication do not represent views and opinions of NED. CONTENTS Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 1 Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................................... 3 Current political context in which relations between Serbia and China are being analyzed .............................................................................................................................................. 6 Relations between Serbia and China ....................................................................................................... 12 Bilateral relations between Serbia and China .......................................................................... 12 Business-economic trends in Serbia ............................................................................................ 19 Economic relations between Serbia and China ....................................................................... 21 Military and security relations between Serbia and China ................................................ 27 Serbia in the Belt and Road Initiative ......................................................................................... 36 Conclusions and recommendations ......................................................................................................... 38 About CEAS ......................................................................................................................................................... 42 INTRODUCTION Rashomon – the new report of the Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies (CEAS) on bilateral rela- tions between Serbia and China and their impact on Serbia’s continued democratization, EU integration and cooperation with NATO and the Member States has been produced as part of the project „Encouraging Debate on Euro-Atlantic Integration“, supported by the National En- dowment for Democracy (NED) from the USA. CEAS was among the first analytical organizations in Serbia to have reported in somewhat greater detail on China’s intensified presence in the region of the Western Balkans and Serbia and the importance of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in its report Basic Instinct – The Case for More NATO in the Western Balkans (published in 2017, also supported by NED). Relations between Serbia and China can be analyzed from several aspects, not infrequently mutually opposed, depending on what are considered to be Serbia’s principal short-term, mid- term and long-term goals, relevant and legitimate geopolitical circumstances and trends, and the likely peaceful and sustainable outcomes of outstanding regional issues. The sequence of steps to be taken to realize the priorities may be viewed from several angles as well. Therefrom the title Rashomon – after the cult film by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. In Rashomon, CEAS views bilateral Sino-Serbian cooperation and its desirable evolution, trends within BRI, and other regional and global topics from its standard angle – for Serbia to stay in a peaceful and democratic way on the track of European integration and strengthen cooperation with NATO and the Member States, while at the same time intensifying bilateral cooperation with other global actors in a way which would not jeopardize these goals. This, in turn, would contribute to the further improvement of fragile democratic practices and enhance Serbia’s resilience so as to together with its partners resist new global but also local influences on liberal democratic practices, from populist to corrosive and malignant ones. Research carried out in preparing this report involved using publicly available professional literature and data, reports of foreign and domestic analytical organizations and think tanks that CEAS routinely follows, as well as publicly available information on the websites of the ministries and the Government of the Republic of Serbia, the Chamber of Commerce and oth- ers, and quotations from foreign and domestic media. In the course of this research, CEAS also conducted interviews with officials of the Republic of Serbia, businessmen doing business in Serbia, experts dealing with Serbia, diplomats and Western policy makers on Serbia and the Western Balkans1. The survey was conducted in the period from 1 July 2018 to 30 June 2019. It is common knowledge that all CEAS reports on specific topics contain a somewhat lengthier chapter on geopolitical and internal circumstances which are the context of their analysis. That is the case with Rashomon as well. The markedly dynamic international and regional scenes, the noticeable lack of transparency regarding investment and loan arrangements between China and Serbia, and, for legitimate reasons surrounding the Belgrade - Pristina dialogue, the non-availability of information on the Sino-Serbian position on this important topic, certainly make it more difficult to analyze current and predict future relations between Serbia and China. 1 The Western Balkans covers the territory of Albania and the former Yugoslavia, excluding Croatia and Slovenia. RASHOMON 1 The great interest in the growing Chinese presence in the region of Southeastern Europe and its BRI initiative, which encompasses mainly Central European countries, (CEAS considers these terms political and not only geographical), exhibited by policy makers in the political West and the donor community over the past several years has resulted in numerous reports and state- ments on this trend as well. Going over the relevant sources they have been following, the CEAS team observed that anal- yses of Sino-Serbian relations mainly focused on: the BRI initiative itself, China’s loans for strategic projects and investments in Serbia, and to a certain extent its influence in the media and political spheres, rightly described as sharp, and not soft power. Somewhat less analyzed have been processes of intensified Sino-Serbian cooperation in the military, military-technical, security and telecommunications areas, and, more recently, also of inter-party cooperation of the leading party in Serbia, which is partly accounted for by the dynamic developments and the publication of the mentioned reports. These processes may be adversely reflected on the attained level of democratic oversight of the security system in Serbia and the complementarity of its policies and methods with OSCE, EU and NATO standards and practices, and the level of protection of human rights and of the personal data of the citizens of Serbia, namely could further undermine the fragile democratic practices in Serbia and continued EU integration and the strengthening of cooperation with NATO. That is why in Rashomon CEAS predominantly focuses on precisely these trends, seeking, as ever, to make the report complementary to other relevant sources. This accounts for the nu- merous quotations pertaining to major recent developments in Sino-Serbian relations, the EU steel quotas imposed on Serbia because of the Chinese steel plant and to aspects of military and security cooperation. Rashomon specifically recalls the fact, quite often neglected when Sino-Serbian relations and the interests of China in the region are analyzed, that during its bombing campaign against the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), NATO among other also hit the Chinese Embassy. Three Chinese nationals were killed and over twenty persons sustained injuries on that occa- sion. The Embassy’s military attaché, who is believed to have been in charge of the intelligence unit in the building, was returned to China in a state of coma. In the spring of 2019, Serbia commemorated by a series of events the twentieth anniversary of the deeply traumatic NATO bombardment of the FRY. In the course of 2018 and 2019, pro-government media in Serbia, and in particular the Russian Sputnik and its agency in Bel- grade, launched an intensive debate, one quite questionable from the scientific standpoint, on the effects of NATO bombardment on human and environmental health, and supported the setting up of several different „fact finding“ commissions. It is a less known fact that numerous Chinese factors were involved in this exercise, as well as in the interpretation of the causes of and motives for the campaign. Account being taken of the foregoing, as well as of the fact that China is a member of the United Nations Security Council (UN SC) which has not recognized the unilaterally declared indepen- dence of Kosovo, and that the UN SC adopted Resolution 1244, under which, apart from the Military Technical Agreement between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and NATO, the KFOR mission was established under a NATO mandate, and that Rashomon is being published 2 RASHOMON in anticipation of the resumption of negotiations between Belgrade and Prishtina, CEAS took under particular consideration these very important aspects which definitely articulate Chinese interests in the region and consequently affect Sino-Serbian relations. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Relations between Serbia and China can be analyzed from
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