This text was prompted by a post from a user on X, but the issue is much broader than a single post, a single summit, or a single American president. It concerns a question that is becoming central to the entire free world: do democracies still understand the nature of the authoritarian systems they are dealing with, or do they continue to view them through their own illusions, their own weaknesses, and their own need to relativize every danger until it is too late?
Anyone who has worked seriously with the Chinese system, especially with mainland China, understands one thing: reality there is not simply what happened, but what the Party says happened. It is not only forbidden to criticize the government. At a much deeper level, it is forbidden to question the Party’s version of reality. It is not presented as a political opinion, but as the only permitted reality.
In that sense, China is not merely a state with a different political system. China is a civilizational, technological, and political project of controlling reality. And that is the point the West has refused to see for far too long.
The problem is not that China has interests of its own. Every great power does. Nor is the problem that China seeks economic growth, influence, resources, technology, and markets. The problem is that China pursues those interests from within a system that does not recognize freedom as a value, but only as a weakness of its opponents. Freedom of speech, the open marketplace of ideas, independent media, academic autonomy, pluralism, political debate, everything democratic societies regard as their strength. Beijing sees and uses as space for penetration, pressure, and manipulation.
That is the fundamental asymmetry of our time.
Western platforms, media, universities, think tanks, social networks, and political debates exist in an open space. In China, such a space does not exist. There is no reciprocity. There is no possibility for Western media, Western platforms, or Western ideas to operate freely in Chinese society in the same way Chinese capital, Chinese narratives, Chinese applications, and Chinese political interests operate in democratic societies. That is not competition. It is a systemic imbalance.
TikTok is, in that sense, only the most visible symbol of a much broader problem. Not every stupid video is part of a Beijing conspiracy, and not everyone who uses TikTok is an agent of Chinese influence. Such banalizations only help those who want to turn a serious debate into a caricature. But it would be equally naive to pretend that a platform shaping the attention, habits, tastes, information flows, and concentration of entire generations has no geopolitical dimension.
If television was once a window onto the world, today algorithms are a window onto reality. And the question of who controls that window, what it amplifies, what it suppresses, what it normalizes, what it radicalizes, and what it turns into addiction, is no longer a marketing question. It is a question of national and civilizational security.
Democracies long believed that openness was enough. That openness would, by itself, defeat closedness. That free markets, free speech, and a free internet would naturally spread liberal values. Something else happened instead: authoritarian systems learned how to exploit the openness of democracies while keeping their own societies closed.
That is how the paradox of the modern world emerged: free societies became vulnerable precisely because they are free, while authoritarian systems use that freedom without the slightest intention of reciprocating it.
The Chinese Communist Party did not have to invent the weaknesses of the West. It was enough to understand and amplify them. Conspiracy theories, anti-scientific nonsense, the radicalization of public space, the erosion of trust in institutions, the delegitimization of the political center, the constant fueling of anger and cynicism, all of this already exists in democratic societies. But authoritarian systems understand that they do not need to defeat democracy directly. It is enough to make it incapable of making decisions, thinking long-term, and believing in itself.
You do not have to demolish a house. It is enough to weaken its foundations.
That is why the question of China is far more serious than trade, tariffs, ports, mines, factories, and loans. These things matter, of course, but they are only the visible part of a much deeper process. The real question is this: can the democratic world preserve its own reality, its own reason, and its own strategic focus at a time when its attention is shaped by algorithms, its public space by hysteria, and its politics increasingly by people who think from one television appearance to the next tweet?
This is the context in which U.S.–China relations should also be viewed. Visits, summits, photographs, handshakes, statements about trade, Boeing, oil, beef, or chips, all of this has its daily political meaning. But behind it lies a far more important message: China thinks in decades, while much of the West thinks in election cycles, approval ratings, media impressions, and short-term political gain.
That is not a small difference. It is a strategic advantage.
Taiwan is the best example. For China, Taiwan is not merely a territorial issue. It is an existential challenge because it proves that Chinese society can be modern, successful, technologically advanced, and democratic. Just as Hong Kong was once an uncomfortable mirror for Beijing, Taiwan today is an even larger and more important one. It undermines the basic propaganda assumption that Chinese prosperity necessarily requires Party control.
That is why time works in Beijing’s favor. China does not necessarily need to go to war immediately. It does not need to launch an invasion tomorrow. It is enough to wait, apply pressure, exhaust, buy time, test American will, deepen doubts about alliances, and wait for the moment when Taiwan concludes that it can no longer rely with certainty on those who, for decades, guaranteed the space for its survival.
In international relations, perception is often almost as important as formal obligation. If Taiwan concludes that American support has become a transaction rather than a strategy, then deterrence has already been seriously damaged. China knows this. Russia knows this. Every authoritarian regime knows this.
And where does Serbia stand in all of this?
Serbia is an excellent example of how Chinese “partnership” functions when a country lacks a sufficiently clear strategy, sufficiently strong institutions, and sufficient self-respect. The problem is not cooperation with China. The problem is when cooperation turns into a model in which domestic laws are bent, procedures blurred, environmental protection treated as a luxury, labor rights as an obstacle, and the public interest as a footnote in an investment contract.
If an investor comes to Serbia, that investor must respect Serbia. If partnership means suspending the state for the sake of the partner, then that is not development. It is the renting out of sovereignty.
That is why the debate about Chinese influence in Serbia must not be reduced to the primitive division of being for or against China. A serious country does not conduct policy based on sympathies, but based on interests. Serbia can and should cooperate with everyone, but only if it knows who it is, where it is going, and what it must never sell: not for a loan, not for a factory, and not for political support in the UN Security Council.
For Serbia, it is crucial to understand that its strategic direction cannot lie somewhere between the world of rules and the world of deals made behind closed doors. We can trade with China. We can build infrastructure with Chinese companies. We can have economic relations. But we must not adopt the Chinese model of treating institutions, the public, the environment, the media, and citizens.
Because that is the greatest risk of Chinese influence: not that we will become China, but that we will begin to think that what has been normalized in China is normal, that the state does not owe explanations, that the public is a nuisance, that criticism is hostility, that procedures are decoration, and that development is an excuse for everything.
That is not development. It is political regression dressed up as infrastructure.
Serbia must not be naive. But neither must it be hysterical. What we need is a cool-headed, sober, Western-oriented policy that understands the world has changed. European integration is not a bureaucratic hobby, but a framework through which a state learns to become predictable, governed by law, and institutionally serious. Euro-Atlantic cooperation is not a question of emotion, but of security architecture in a world in which authoritarian powers are increasingly testing the limits of democratic weakness.
China is not our enemy simply because it is China. But the Chinese model is not our path. Anyone who wants Serbia to succeed must be able to make that distinction.
The greatest danger of the present moment is not only that authoritarian systems are becoming stronger. The greatest danger is that democratic societies are becoming more tired, more shallow, more nervous, less focused, and less capable of recognizing their own interests. While Beijing thinks in generations, we often think in notifications.
That is why the Chinese matrix is not only Chinese. It is global. It emerges wherever reality is no longer verified, wherever knowledge is replaced by impression, wherever politics becomes performance, wherever freedom is confused with chaos, and wherever attention is sold to the cheapest algorithm.
In such a world, authoritarianism does not have to win by force. It is enough for democracies to convince themselves that truth no longer exists, that institutions no longer matter, that everyone is the same, and that every serious policy is merely a boring obstacle to the next viral video.
That is why the struggle against Chinese influence is not a struggle against the Chinese people, Chinese culture, or the Chinese economy. It must be a struggle for our own capacity for judgment. For institutions. For strategic seriousness. For the right of a society to define its own reality, instead of having it curated by algorithms, authoritarian centers of power, and domestic extremists who see chaos as the shortest path to influence.
Serbia must learn how to cooperate with China without adopting the Chinese model, how to cooperate with the West without complexes, and how to engage with the world without the illusion that small nations can afford the luxury of geopolitical illiteracy.
Because in an age in which reality is produced, bought, and distributed, the highest form of patriotism is preserving the ability to see things as they are.
Milan Urošević
