Hundreds of thousands of Chinese residents have expressed a desire to help Serbia cope with the coronavirus epidemic while the European Union is in no hurry to help Belgrade.
This was reported by the Serbian publication Politika, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Address by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to his colleague, Chinese President Xi Jinping with a request for help to cope with the coronavirus epidemic caused massive sympathy from ordinary Chinese.
After two videos with an appeal from the Serbian leader posted by journalist of the Chinese TV channel Ying Chang on the Chinese social network Veibo were watched by 800 million people, a million Chinese citizens joined the page of the Serbian Tourist Bureau on this platform. People wrote words of support and expressed a desire to help the Serbs.
And last Tuesday, the Serbian Embassy opened a page on Veibo; in three days, about 330 thousand Chinese users subscribed to it. Many Chinese citizens reported that they were ready to come to Serbia to help its residents, others began purchasing Serbian goods via the Internet as charity, many were simply wondering where to send monetary donations.
Today, Serbia has become the most popular topic on the Chinese Internet, and not only: as a sign of support for Belgrade and in line with its ideology, one of the state television channels of the PRC showed the old Yugoslav partisan action film “Walter Defends Sarajevo.” Also, the Chinese media are now actively recalling the fact that during the NATO bombing in 1999, the PRC expressed support for Yugoslavia and condemned the aggression, for which the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was bombed, supposedly by accident - then three Chinese were killed: two journalists and the wife of one of them .
We would like to remind you that during the address to the people of Serbia President Vučić came down hard on his Western colleagues from the EU, which block the sale of medicines to the Balkan country.
“Unfortunately, the story of European solidarity remains just a fairy tale on paper,” Vucic noted bitterly. According to him, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced the ban on the export of medicines and medical equipment from the EU. The Serbian president promised that he would find a way to “thank” such friends.