Serbia's cooperation with China has been the best as the two countries enjoy rock solid friendship and trust, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's upcoming state visit to the European country.
The Serbia president made the remarks in an exclusive interview with the China Central Television (CCTV) in Belgrade on Tuesday.
Vucic hailed the real friendship between Serbia and China.
"That time we were discovering each other. Now we know that there is a real friendship that's been established. Since then, we developed substantive trust between the top leadership of both countries. But I believe that there is a big change. We have never had anything against Chinese, never, ever. But now we like and we love Chinese people here, and we have nothing bad to say about our cooperation with China and Chinese state and Chinese people," he said.
"There were thousands of attempts from outside of the country in order to persuade us, to convince us that taking loans from China will create a dubious situation for fiscal systems of Serbia. But as you can see, an average public debt to GDP ratio in Europe now is 89.5 percent. And in Serbia it's 47 percent. We have no problems. We have always been cooperating in a very best manner with China," said the president.
The Serbian president hopes that more Chinese people will come to visit the country to better understand it.
"Apart from creating this trust and confidence in each other's decisions, in each other behavior within international public political arena. We developed our economic ties, trade ties and now it's time to go to another stage, a strategic partnership or how do we see a common future together. And at the same time, it's a also about people connecting to each other. That is, I believe, our task. And we expect more Chinese people to come to Serbia. I believe they feel at home here, and we like them and hope that this will bring more initiatives, different kind of initiatives, more businesses, more tourists, more people that would get to know many things about Serbia, Belgrade's history," said Vucic.
Xi will pay state visits to France, Serbia and Hungary from May 5 to 10.
Serbian president sees cooperation with China as best amid rock solid friendship, trust
Serbian president sees cooperation with China as best amid rock solid friendship, trust
