China "appreciates Serbia's balanced strategy"

China "appreciates Serbia's balanced strategy"

During his meeting in Belgrade on Thursday with Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic, Li Keqiang added that the traditional friendship between the two countries has now reached the highest level.

China believes that cooperation with Europe, including cooperation with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, is in favor of European integrations, the prime minister said.

"We think that each country, whether it is in the east or in the west makes, its contribution to the world's civilization. We will work together to, as you mentioned, 'drink water from the Morava and Danube rivers'. European countries, including Serbia, are welcome to come to China to together drink water from the Yangtze River," said Li.

He expressed satisfaction over the opportunity to visit Serbia and conveyed the greetings of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The Chinese prime minister said the Belgrade summit was very successful, and that cooperation with Central and Easter Europe countries is part of the cooperation with the EU.

According to him, China is still a developing country.

"After the reforms and the opening to the world we are focused on economic development and improving the standard of living. Before us is a long road, and cooperation between China and Europe," he said, adding that the EU is the largest trading partner of China.

Tomislav Nikolic said that China's successful policy is a remainder of how many wrong models Serbia has chosen in governing its state, and how many setback it suffered as a result.

Nikolic said that Serbia is a state that "always stepped aside and let capital decide for itself, without planning what it needed and in what period of time."

China is, as he said, "sobering" for many of the world's countries.

"Some who think they are very big want to minimize the importance of China in Europe... Europe is interested in cooperation with China and along with the old traditional friendship with Serbia, you can speak about new friendships," Nikolic said in conversation with his guest.

"There was a man in our country 200 years ago and he was a prophet, and had never heard of China, but he said: 'People will come from the east - yellow people and will rule the world, and drink water from the Rriver Morava'. It is a Serbian river. Today, they drink and will drink more water and work together. We have gone farther than our prophet could have imagined," the president was quoted as saying.

The Chinese prime minister said there was a large degree of "complementarity" between the two countries.

"There is traditional friendship between Serbia and China. The Serbian side is ready to be a pillar between China and Europe. We have confidence in your bright future," Li Keqiang said.