Brnabic: Xi's visit historic, a great honour to Serbia

BELGRADE - Serbian Parliament Speaker Ana Brnabic said on Tuesday Chinese President Xi Jinping's two-day state visit to Serbia would be historic and a great honour to the country.

"Historically, our relations with PR China are better than they have ever been, symbolising our steely friendship and, evidently, many more things that are ahead of us in the China-Serbia bilateral cooperation, which will be demonstrated over the next two days," Brnabic told Happy TV.

China is a global superpower and the world's second-largest economy, Brnabic said.

It is growing at an accelerated pace and, without a single doubt, it will soon become the world's number one economy, she added.

China is a superpower both politically and technologically, and Serbia is honoured Xi will visit Belgrade as part of his tour of Europe, which also includes trips to France and Hungary, she said.

As a political superpower, China respects the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Serbia, Brnabic said.

"It defends and protects our interests in the UN Security Council and, for them, Kosovo-Metohija is an autonomous province within Serbia. That way, they also protect international law and the legal order and predictability in the world, so China is one of those political superpowers that, in fact, promote peace, stability, predictability as well as respect of international law and the UN Charter," Brnabic said.

Commenting on negative reporting by some media outlets about Xi's visit and Serbia-China cooperation, Brnabic said the tone of such reports was worse than that of "all Western media put together."

She said China had been the single largest foreign investor in Serbia in the past three years.

"Last year, it invested 1.370 bln euros in Serbia, which is almost a third of the total foreign investments received by Serbia in 2023," she also said.