Serbia is playing a dangerous game with the West. While the European Union and the United States are pursuing a partnership with and EU membership for Serbia, Serbia is cultivating a rapidly expanding relationship with China — buying weapons systems from Beijing and participating in its insidious Belt and Road Initiative.
It’s time for Washington and Brussels to put the choice to Belgrade: It can have either the benefits of membership in Western institutions or short-term gain with strings attached from Beijing, but not both.
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This spring, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic confirmed that Belgrade bought a variety of missiles and drones from China, despite Serbia’s partnership with NATO. The two countries held the joint Peace Defenders-2025 special forces exercise in July. Integrating Chinese-made weapons is a security threat, not least because Beijing has been known to leave backdoors into its equipment that can later be exploited.
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Meanwhile, Chinese tech company Huawei has supported camera surveillance in Serbia’s three largest cities, with Vucic and Chinese President Xi Jinping announcing plans for an “intergovernmental technology committee” to expand Serbia’s access to AI and other advanced technologies. These sales could become concerning openings for Beijing to access European data or gain leverage over an aspect of European defense.
On the path to EU membership, Serbia has the potential to become a new Chinese economic proxy and transshipment hub within an organization that eliminates trade barriers between members. China’s economy depends on parasitic trade practices — capturing supply chains, overproducing goods at unsustainable prices, and dumping surplus goods abroad in waves that wipe out local competitors. The EU’s lack of strong trade barriers and anti-dumping regulations already makes it deeply vulnerable to China.
The Serbia-China free trade agreement, signed in October 2023, allows China to export cars, photovoltaics, lithium batteries, and more to Serbia tariff-free. The deal stands in addition to the record 29 agreements signed by Xi and Vucic in 2024 to enhance legal, regulatory, and economic cooperation between the two countries. Bilateral trade between the two countries has grown rapidly, with China reaching its spot as Serbia’s second-largest trading partner in 2024, with a trade volume of $7.4 billion. Germany, however, remained Serbia’s top trading partner, with the EU as a whole still comprising about 60% of Serbia’s total goods trade.
Though the European Commission has already warned that Serbia’s EU accession would require Serbia to withdraw from bilateral free trade agreements, entangled trade relationships, investments, and political support could limit EU efforts to create barriers to China.
Chinese investments may prove particularly hard for EU officials to excise, particularly if China-linked companies have already purchased assets legally registered as “Serbian.” According to Vucic, China has been Serbia’s largest investor since 2020, with investments increasing 30-fold over the past decade and totaling nearly $20 billion. Chinese investments in Serbia are frequently made under the umbrella of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and include critical infrastructure projects, such as the Belgrade-Budapest Railway and acquisitions in critical sectors, like energy. Chinese mining investments in Serbia also perpetuate Chinese influence over global minerals supply chains.
Beijing’s largesse is especially attractive to Vucic because, unlike aid and deals from the West, it does not come with expectations that Serbia will practice democracy at home or protect the civil liberties of its citizens. And, despite performative declarations of EU aspirations, Serbia is backsliding toward autocracy. Democracy monitor Freedom House reports that Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party “has steadily eroded political rights and civil liberties, putting pressure on independent media, the political opposition, and civil society organizations.”
Serbia has faced massive anti-corruption protests since 2024, when the collapse of a railway station canopy killed 16 people. The disaster shocked the public and fueled allegations that corruption had led to substandard construction at the station, a flagship government project carried out by Chinese companies. In response to the widespread protests, a Chinese spokesperson reaffirmed China’s belief in Vucic’s ability and right to “protect [his country’s] independence” and national stability.
Moreover, Chinese investment has brought concerns about dangerously low labor protection standards to Europe. In 2025, the U.S. barred a Chinese factory operating in Serbia from exporting tires to the U.S. due to repeated concerns about forced labor and worker abuses.
And yet, Vucic continues to promise Western leaders that Serbia has not strayed from the path to EU accession.
The last thing the EU can afford is another increasingly authoritarian member state that prioritizes Beijing’s interests to the detriment of the Western alliance. Political friction with Hungary under the autocratic former Prime Minister Viktor Orban has already set up a major hurdle to consensus-driven EU policymaking.
The U.S. also needs to recognize that Serbia’s cooperation with China on investment, technology, and defense poses a risk to Western security. Multiple Chinese companies with ties to Serbia — including entities linked to the China Communications Construction Company, involved in building at the railway station in Novi Sad — are designated for U.S.-imposed sanctions and export and trade restrictions. Together, these programs aim to block U.S. investment in Chinese companies that pose a risk to the U.S. and to block such companies from acquiring sensitive U.S. goods and technologies.
However, the particular programs used to target these companies do not prevent all trade, collaboration with, or interaction with these businesses.
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Chinese military-industrial complex sanctions also do not automatically apply to subsidiaries in the way a more commonly thought of designation would — leaving a loophole that malign actors may exploit. Should China rapidly establish Serbian investments and shell companies, U.S. regulators may struggle to manually designate risky companies. U.S. companies, meanwhile, may struggle to conduct proper due diligence and avoid entanglement with Chinese companies. This, in turn, increases the risk that Chinese companies of known concern could gain access to sensitive technologies through Serbian subsidiaries. This same risk applies in other enabling jurisdictions as well.
Serbia’s careful juggling of China and the West is not just diplomatic theater. Its deepening military, technological, and economic ties with Beijing give China a growing foothold in Europe. The West must confront this reality now — before Belgrade’s balancing act turns into a strategic checkmate.
Ivana Stradner is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Elaine Dezenski serves as senior director and head of the Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP), and Angela Howard serves as a research analyst with CEFP.
