Vučić at the reception marking China's National Day: "Steel friendship"

BELGRADE -- On the occasion of the National Day of the People's Republic of China, a formal reception was held today at the Embassy of that country in Belgrade.

Source: Tanjug Thursday, 29.09.2022. | 10:55

Close the entire text of the article here

FOTO TANJUG/ JADRANKA ILIC/ nr

Ambassador Chen Bo welcomed the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić.

The reception, which began with the singing of the national anthems of Serbia and China, was also attended by the Prime Minister of Serbia, Ana Brnabić, government ministers including Siniša Mali, Zorana Mihajlović, Nikola Selaković, Aleksandar Vulin, Tomislav Momirović, Nenad Popović, Irena Vujović, Nebojša Stefanović, Darija Kisić, Anđelka Atanasković, Maja Gojković, President of the National Council for Coordination of Cooperation with the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China, Tomislav Nikolić and others.

Among the guests are Ivica Dačić, director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Petar Petković, director of the Office for Information Technologies and Electronic Administration Mihailo Jovanović.

The National Day of the People's Republic of China is China's national day, which is celebrated on October 1, in honor of the anniversary of the founding of the PRC at Tiananmen in 1949 by the proclamation of Mao Zedong. It was officially declared the National Day of China on December 2, 1949, and this was done by the People's Political Consultative Conference of China, which at that time performed the function of the Constituent Assembly.

From 1949 to 1959, a large military parade was organized every year on the occasion of National Day, and after a multi-year break, the next parade was organized in 1984.

Since 1999, parades have been organized every 10 years, and since that year, National Day has become the "Golden week" and the whole week is non-working.

"I am endlessly grateful to the Chinese leadership for the support it provides to Kosovo and Metohija as part of Serbia and to our territorial integrity, and that this has never been called into question, regardless of all the pressures," said Vučić.

As well as our relationship with China and support for the policy of preserving China's territorial integrity and the policy of One China, it has never been questioned, added the President of Serbia. "We can be proud of our friendship. I honestly believe that it is a steel friendship," said Vučić.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Aleksandar Vučić (@buducnostsrbijeav)

President of Serbia said that 10 years ago we did not even dream of how much we could achieve through joint work and cooperation with China. Vučić reminded that during the corona pandemic, China helped Serbia with medical equipment and in other ways and thanked the Chinese for showing that they are our friends in difficult times. He pointed out that China helped Serbia by taking over Ironworks Smederevo when we were previously looking for partners and were losing huge amounts of money on a monthly basis.

"We did not manage to solve the problem until President Xi, at the invitation of President Nikolić, came to Smederevo and promised to help, and since then we have provided security for 5.700 people, but also for at least another 10.000 to 12.000 people who work with the HBIS Smederevo ironworks, which today is Serbia's second export company," said Vučić.

In the meantime, they told us to call for tenders for the copper and gold mine, said Vučić and added that at the time there was a debt of 1.2 billion euros for RTB Bor and that the state wanted to speed it up, assuming that Western countries would not submit offers to this tender.

"They said that they would and we lost a year in the procedures, but again China came to our rescue and today it is our biggest exporter, which contributes to the survival of citizens in the east of Serbia. This is only part of the example since we have many infrastructure projects that we are working on together and Chinese investors who will change the situation in the country," Vučić emphasized.

He reiterated that in New York he had a meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of China, Wang Yi, and stated that then he once again sent an invitation to President Xi for a visit. "Knowing how busy he is in the preparation of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party, we are all eagerly awaiting the results of the congress, to see what the new guidelines are for the Chinese government and leadership and to continue our extraordinary cooperation," said Vučić.

He adds that people from the Presidency have three or four meetings a week with representatives of the Chinese Embassy and that such cooperation does not exist with any other embassy.

"Thank you for your patience and for always having time for our requests. And when we have nowhere to find coal and when we find some kind of objection to better quality Chinese coal, since I guess we have to use lower quality, they then find us Indonesian coal which is of lower quality and again they are helping us to survive the winter. Serbia is your sincere friend, who has never said a bad word about China anywhere, even where we were supposed to be silent, we were not silent, not even in the White House, I spoke well about China, despite all the challenges and hopes of the hosts that they would hear different words. I really think we can be proud of our friendship," said Vučić.