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US-China relations
ChinaDiplomacy

China sends ‘message to Nato’ with Xi’s visit to Belgrade embassy bombing site

  • The Chinese leader’s attendance at 25th anniversary commemoration is a ‘subtle signal’ to the US and its Western allies, observers said
  • Beijing has repeatedly invoked the embassy’s destruction to attack Washington and the security alliance for trying to contain China’s rise

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After the 1999 airstrike on the Chinese embassy as part of Nato’s campaign against the former Yugoslavia, protesters marched on the US embassy in Beijing, with banners warning then president Bill Clinton that “those who play with fire get burned”. Photo: AFP
Shi Jiangtao
Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to join the commemorations of the 25th anniversary of one of the darkest moments in recent US-China ties, at the former site of China’s embassy in Belgrade, which was bombed by Nato forces on May 7, 1999.

Three Chinese journalists were killed in the strike, part of Nato’s military campaign in the former Yugoslavia, setting off a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Washington as well as the biggest anti-US protests across China in decades.

The US and its Nato allies insisted the “entirely unintended” strike had meant to target a Yugoslav military facility and the embassy had been misidentified in a “tragic mistake”, but many in China – including government officials – remain unconvinced.

China has maintained close ties with Serbia, since siding with the former Yugoslavia against Nato’s air campaign in the 1990s, and Xi’s anticipated visit – as part of his European tour – will be his second to the site.

During a state visit to Serbia in 2016, Xi visited the location which featured a commemorative plaque, unveiled on the 10th anniversary of the bombing by the mayor of Belgrade and the Chinese ambassador.

Portraits of the three journalists killed in the bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade on display at an exhibition established in Beijing in the weeks after the incident. Photo: Reuters
Portraits of the three journalists killed in the bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade on display at an exhibition established in Beijing in the weeks after the incident. Photo: Reuters

Zhiqun Zhu, a professor of international relations and director of the China Institute at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, said Xi’s latest visit is highly symbolic and serves two purposes.

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