diff --git a/Lib/test/test_xml_etree.py b/Lib/test/test_xml_etree.py
index 3092f3b..f61292f 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_xml_etree.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_xml_etree.py
@@ -352,6 +352,8 @@
     'subtext'
     >>> ET.ElementTree(elem).findtext("section/tag")
     'subtext'
+    >>> ET.XML('<root><empty /></root>').findtext('empty')
+    ''
     >>> summarize_list(elem.findall("."))
     ['body']
     >>> summarize_list(elem.findall("tag"))
diff --git a/Modules/_elementtree.c b/Modules/_elementtree.c
index c36af5d..17d5d09 100644
--- a/Modules/_elementtree.c
+++ b/Modules/_elementtree.c
@@ -840,7 +840,7 @@
 
             PyObject* text = element_get_text(item);
             if (text == Py_None)
-                return PyBytes_FromString("");
+                return PyUnicode_FromString("");
             Py_XINCREF(text);
             return text;
         }