China’s Rising Influence in the Western Balkans and How the West Should Respond
In the Western Balkans, China blends several operational domains to sway the region toward Beijing and expand itself in Europe. Unlike Russia, which employs disruptive active measures like cyberattacks and disinformation through proxies and intermediaries, China embraces “sharp power” tools centered on defense transfers, selective investments in critical infrastructure, and technological dependencies in surveillance and monitoring. In many ways, Serbia welcomes Chinese influence and serves as a so-called “ironclad strategic partner”. To counter China’s rising influence, the US and NATO allies must adopt proven methods that strengthen security and adapt to the challenges of hybrid war.
Military and Defense
China’s military engagements in the region include arms and weapons sales, technology transfers, and dual-use telecommunications infrastructure, especially in Serbia. Chinese military sales to Serbia outpace other regional arms relationships. While the Western Balkans constitute a small share of this percentage, Serbia is now China’s primary military client in Europe. To complement its recent purchase of French Rafale fighter jets, Mistral air defense systems, and Airbus C-295 transport aircraft, China is supplying Serbia with FK-3 medium-range air defense missile systems, CH-92A and CH-95 combat drones, and 18 FT-8C laser-guided missiles. Moreover, in July 2025, Serbia and China held Peace Defenders joint military exercises in Hebei, China, including special operations forces to strengthen interoperability.
In addition, technology transfers from China assist Serbia in completing sophisticated military projects. One project is ‘Pegaz’ (Pegasus), which is facilitated by China’s state-owned Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. The project will reconstitute Serbia’s 353rd Intelligence Surveillance squadron to specialize in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) drone operations. China-Serbia defense exchanges include military training sessions for Serbia’s 250th Air Defense Missile Brigade on Chinese air defense systems.
Serbia embraces China for several reasons. First, Belgrade views it as a dependable security partner that does not interfere in its domestic politics. Second, China-led defense and security cooperation resonates in Serbia as China opposes Kosovo’s sovereignty and independence and objected to NATO military intervention in Serbia in 1999, including the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Third, the growing bilateral military relationship reflects Serbia’s attempt to diversify suppliers and strategic partnerships beyond traditional Western and Russian sources. For China, the relationship extends technological dependencies in ways that could undercut NATO and position it as an alternative security partner beyond Serbia.
Serbian defense cooperation also involves engaging with NATO, reflecting its tradition of balancing both East and West. Since 2006, Serbia has been a Partnership for Peace (PfP) member, and in 2015, it joined the Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP). These programs allow Serbia to improve interoperability with NATO and participate in, for example, the multinational “Platinum Wolf” exercises, which are focused on humanitarian and peacekeeping operations. In addition, Serbia participates in the Defense Education Enhancement Program and the NATO-recognized Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) Training Center. While these security partnerships promote defense reforms consistent with Euro-Atlantic integration, Serbia’s commitments are pragmatic and non-binding.
Information, Technology, and Surveillance
China’s messaging emphasizes Beijing as a reliable and benign non-interventionist partner. Huawei is playing a significant role in the digital transformation of the Western Balkans. This is especially the case in Serbia, where Huawei is a key player in several telecommunications projects. The scope of Chinese surveillance deployments is quite far-reaching. For example, in Serbia, at least 40 municipalities have installed video cameras and pedestrian and traffic monitoring systems using $32 million in equipment from Chinese firms Hikvision and Dahua. In 2019, both companies were among 28 Chinese entities blacklisted by the Trump Administration due to security and technology risks and their roles in human-rights abuses.
Moreover, as part of Belgrade’s Safe City project, Serbian police installed thousands of Huawei “smart” cameras that feed into law enforcement database systems for automated public monitoring. Procurement and installation in Serbia are facilitated by Macchina Security, a discreet company that imports Chinese surveillance. In addition, in 2020, Serbia launched a Huawei Digitalization and Innovation Center in Belgrade to develop digital skills, search for cyber talent, and support Serb tech companies using Chinese technologies. Huawei operates a “One Thousand Dreams” initiative to attract young people and promote academic exchanges with schools in China.
Telekom Srbija has a $150 million contract with Huawei to expand broadband, landlines, and fiber optic networks. Huawei is an equipment donor and commercial contractor for Serbia’s National Data Science in Kragujevac, where China supplied a $2 million grant to access the city’s second data center. Huawei has also signed contracts to develop and expand the center’s artificial intelligence platform and cloud storage for state utilization.
There were reports of Serb police sending Chinese surveillance tools and technologies into the north of Kosovo, where Serb municipalities and parallel structures use blacklisted Chinese Dahua cameras and digital recorders to monitor public institutions. A 2021 contract worth €39,000 installed 200 cameras and several digital video recorders for installation in public spaces and schools in at least eleven municipalities in the north of Kosovo. These surveillance operations circumvent the Kosovo Police since they are purchased and installed by Serbian-affiliated businesses not registered in Kosovo. However, in 2023 and 2024, Kosovo Police removed more than 50 surveillance cameras from Zubin Potok and North Mitrovica
In contrast to Serbia, Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia joined the US-led Clean Network Initiative, banning Chinese companies from involvement in their e-government systems. Although Serbia has welcomed Chinese surveillance, NATO member Montenegro and Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina remain open to integration with China’s systems. Chinese media content is filtered through pro-Russia outlets to promote preferred economic and political themes and downplay transparency and human rights. Confucius Institutes and other academic exchanges reinforce and promote Chinese state authoritarianism.
Recent studies confirm expanding China’s efforts to embed China-friendly narratives through media and digital infrastructure cooperation, as local governments remain receptive and Chinese funding in digital and telecommunications increases over time. Chinese state media outlets China Global Television Network, China Central Television, Xinhua News Agency, and China Radio International distribute preferred content throughout the Western Balkans. China-supported content is also distributed via regional cable operators and online portals in Serbian, Albanian, and Croatian.
Furthermore, China facilitates media-content sharing agreements between Xinhua News Agency and outlets in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, promotes “journalist” visits to China, distributes pro-Beijing “documentaries,” and disseminates media items reinforcing China’s official positions. An International Republican Institute survey reported public views of China were primarily positive in the region compared to select EU member states.
How the West Should Respond
To counter Chinese influence, the US should work with European allies to provide funding alternatives for commercial and military/cybersecurity projects to dissuade Western Balkans countries from falling for Chinese infrastructure financing schemes and defense transfers. Proposed reforms require a strategic mix of security-sector modernization and financing initiatives. The US and partners should build on Western Balkans Investment Framework (WBIF), the US Development Finance Corporation (DFC), and Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGI/PGII) financing models to strengthen military and defense infrastructure resilience with a focus on secure communications, NATO interoperability, cyber threat intelligence and information sharing, regional military and security cooperation training centers, and IT and data storage.
Foreign military financing must be connected to reforms in defense procurement transparency, export control compliance in artificial intelligence and machine learning systems, and adoption of NATO cybersecurity protocols. Corridor-based financing models can be adapted to defense logistics corridors across the Western Balkans; for example, rail lines, ports, and airbases that are dual-use in commercial and military applications. This would ensure that US and EU-backed projects enhance NATO operational mobility, interoperability, and readiness in Southeastern Europe.
To insulate procurement and financing against corruption and elite capture, Western Balkans governments should look to Ukraine’s ProZorro/DoZorro open-contracting data standards (OCDS). OCDS provides globally recognized standards that digitize tenders, public machine-readable data, and empower watchdogs to identify irregularities. OCDS-compliant procurement measures with multilingual interfaces and API-level transparency make it harder for China’s state-led deals to circumvent scrutiny and easier for US CFD/EIB-backed bids to compete on quality as opposed to political access and influence. Organization for Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that Ukraine has shown material savings, higher competition, and civic oversight across legal systems.
OCDS would improve transparency in the acquisition of surveillance systems, drones, and counter-drone operations, and dual-use technologies in a region susceptible to corrupt contracting practices and political meddling. Also, transparent tendering limits the ability of localized political elites to privilege Chinese and Russian defense suppliers while enhancing NATO interoperability by making procurement data and information visible and benchmarked against transatlantic alliance standards and guidelines. OCDS-oversight would build the resilience of Western Balkans defense ministries and security forces against Chinese and Russian influence operations seeking to exploit vulnerabilities and insert dependencies into defense industrial sectors and critical military infrastructure.
OCDS creates a more level and competitive playing field. Technical merit and compliance with NATO standards should be benchmarks for evaluating bids as opposed to informal political access and influence. US, UK, and EU counter-unmanned aerial systems, communications networks, and platforms would be preferred by quality and design. At the operational level, implementing OCDS would strengthen military force readiness by mitigating delivery delays and cost inflation while also providing legislatures, government auditors, and non-governmental organizations with a vantage point into whether promised defense capabilities are being procured. This approach would boost the credibility and legitimacy of Western Balkan states within NATO and strengthen the case for future alliance membership, as they would be much less vulnerable to malign influence by Chinese and Russian defense providers.
Furthermore, extending the scope of NATO’s Science for Peace and Security Program to provide advanced drone and ISR training would offer viable substitutes to the Chinese CH-92A and CH-95 systems in Serbia. SPS is funding the Ai4CUAV project to enable the detection, classification, and tracking of killer drones. Export controls modeled on the US Entity List could be jointly applied by the EU to Chinese defense contractors, limiting their ability to transfer sensitive dual-use technologies.
And where Serbia hedges via Chinese defense purchases and technology transfers, NATO/EU should offer modular interoperability packages—humanitarian/CBRN, ISR, cyber defense—that give immediate capability gains in exchange for verifiable vendor-risk mitigation and transparency benchmarks. Specifically, NATO’s Defense and Related Security Capacity Building (DCB) provides advisory and practical assistance to partner countries that include CBRN, ISR, and cyber training. Also, the JCBRN Defense Center of Excellence offers training courses for NATO members and partners in CBRN/humanitarian modules. For governments already restricting untrusted vendors (e.g., MOU 5G security in Kosovo and Albania), preferential access to Global Gateway/PGI pipelines and Millennium Challenge Corporation-style compacts can be fast-tracked to reward reforms and crowd in private capital.
Another consideration would be to adopt the corridor-based consortium financing model in the G7 Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGI/PGII) on Africa’s Lobito Corridor. The project is a large-scale infrastructure and logistics initiative with a rail linkage system connecting the port of Lobito in Angola with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia to export critical minerals, expand regional market access, modernize trade and transport logistics, and develop and finance digital access and energy initiatives. This approach, which blends development banks with commercial lenders and private operators under transparent standards, can be applied to priority projects in the Western Balkans (Corridor VIII; Belgrade–Niš upgrades). This offers the Western Balkans a practical template for connecting critical minerals and transport value chains with a rules-based and transparent financing model.
In cybersecurity, the region needs incentives for alternatives to Huawei-enabled surveillance and monitoring systems and Chinese-built and supported AI and data centers. Western digital projects should fund NATO-compliant data facilities and regional cyber and threat intelligence training centers. The Western Balkans Cyber Capacity Center in Podgorica offers trainings in cybersecurity, cybercrime, and cyber diplomacy for civil servants, CERT members, police, prosecutors, and critical infrastructure operators. While it would be a significant effort to mitigate the risk of Chinese technology penetration, the Adriatic Charter and the Regional Cooperation Council could be expanded to include cyber threat intelligence and information sharing. The European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats training programs should include Balkan security officials to equip them with skills to detect and dismantle Chinese-aligned cyber surveillance in law enforcement operations.
Conclusion
China’s campaign in the Western Balkans is entrenching its influence with security and defense partnerships, technological penetration, and information and media manipulation. This is different from Russia’s more active measures in the region, as China cultivates dependencies in multiple domains. Serbia is central to this campaign since China seeks to weaken European and American cohesion and undermine NATO and EU standards. The risk is that China’s defense transfers, monitoring and surveillance tools, and infrastructure projects create vulnerabilities that could undercut NATO interoperability. With open contracting data standards, American and European institutions can outpace China on governance, sustainable systems, and quality. An approach that combines defense and security with information resilience will deter the Western Balkans from the Chinese influence model and anchor the region on American and European initiatives.
