A shipment of Sinopharm vaccines at Nikola Tesla Airport in Belgrade in January 2021.
Photographer: Oliver Bunic/BloombergChina’s Billions Help Xi Make Useful Friends in Eastern Europe
The president is visiting Europe, and it’s no surprise his itinerary includes Serbia and Hungary.
It’s 10 a.m. and the high-speed train leaves Belgrade’s new, glass-and-steel station right on time. Thirty-six minutes later it pulls into Serbia’s northern city of Novi Sad, the first completed section of a 350 kilometer-long (217 mile) upgrade going up to Budapest in Hungary.
The route is the kind of European modernity that Serbia has coveted for years. Yet the line — being built by China — also represents something more political: how Beijing is helping transform a corner of Europe when much of the continent now views it as a strategic rival.