Secretary General Mark Rutte bluntly warned against Serbia’s growing defence cooperation with China while acknowledging Belgrade’s sovereign right to pursue it. Unlike most other countries from Eaestern Europe, Serbia is not a candidate for NATO membership.
“Let’s not be naive about China,” Rutte said on 24 November, in an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). “We know that China cooperates with the Russians, North Korea, Iran… What is happening in the Indo-Pacific and what is happening in the Euro-Atlantic area is increasingly connected and intertwined.”
The partnership reached a new level in July, when Serbia and China conducted their first-ever joint military exercise, named Peace Defender 2025, in China’s Hebei Province.
Over ten days, special forces from both countries trained together in drone tactics, firearms handling, tactical manoeuvres, and mountaineering, despite clear objections from Brussels and Washington.
Vučić has also overseen major acquisitions from China, including CH-92A drones in 2020, the FK-3 air defense system in 2022, and additional CH-95 drones.
Rutte noted that NATO monitors these developments carefully, emphasizing that Serbia’s moves cannot be separated from China’s growing military influence.
The NATO chief revealed he maintains direct contact with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and values the dialogue through the Partnership for Peace program.
Yet he explicitly distanced the Alliance from Belgrade’s approach: “In the end, I would really distance myself from what President Vučić is doing with China… There is a more pressing issue, and that is China itself.”
Rutte stressed that NATO’s security concerns now extend beyond Russia: “We have to be safe from anyone who wishes us harm,” he said, citing China’s massive military buildup.
Serbia’s military relationship with China has deepened steadily in recent years. In 2020, Belgrade acquired six CH-92A armed drones. This was followed in 2022 by the delivery of the advanced FK-3 air-defence missile system (the export version of China’s HQ-22). Subsequent purchases included an undisclosed
Serbia officially declares military neutrality and remains an EU candidate country (status granted in 2012), which obliges it to progressively align its foreign and security policy with the European Union. The deepening defence ties with Beijing therefore clash directly with that commitment.
For China, the exercise and arms sales are modest but symbolically important steps in its long-term campaign to gain international military experience and challenge the United States’ global network of bases and alliances.
While the U.S. maintains military facilities in more than 40 countries and territories, China’s only publicly acknowledged overseas base remains in Djibouti (where U.S. forces are also present).
China has become Serbia’s largest source of imports (€5.13 billion in 2024), overtaking Germany in December 2023. A free-trade agreement signed in 2023 and effective from July 2024 has so far primarily boosted Chinese imports rather than the Serbian exports originally promised.
Chinese investment, much of it under the Belt and Road Initiative, dominates mining, steel, energy, tires (Linglong), and major infrastructure projects. Belgrade increasingly presents Beijing as its primary non-Western partner, enabling a multivector foreign policy that maximizes room for maneuver between East and West.
Vuk Vuksanović, a researcher at the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy, told RFE/RL that Serbia’s cooperation with China is fully consistent with its traditional strategy of balancing great powers to preserve maximum independence.
Yet, Serbia’s dream of EU membership – formally opened in 2012 and targeted for 2025–2027 completion – renders this delicate independence untenable, as accession demands wholesale alignment with Brussels’ foreign policy consensus, including sanctions on Russia (which Serbia has dodged since 2022) and a strategic pivot away from illiberal and autocratic partners like China.
Vučić’s government has already faced rebukes from Brussels over Chinese loans’ opacity and debt-trap risks – Serbia’s external debt to China now exceeds 4% of GDP – highlighting the incompatibility: joining the EU’s single market and rule-of-law framework would force a “de-risking” from autocratic ties, eroding the very sovereignty Serbia claims to protect through balancing.
