Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks with Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad on Friday, and said the two leaders would unveil a new \u201cstrategic partnership\u201d. Assad is on his first official trip to China in almost two decades as he seeks financial support to rebuild his devastated country, as well as rehabilitation for his regime from years of isolation over Syria\u2019s civil war. He will attend the opening ceremony of the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou on Saturday. Xi and Assad met in the eastern Chinese city on Friday afternoon, state media said. \u201cToday, we will jointly announce the establishment of the China-Syria strategic partnership, which will become an important milestone in the history of bilateral relations,\u201d Xi told Assad, according to a readout from state broadcaster CCTV. \u201cFaced with an international situation full of instability and uncertainty, China is willing to continue to work together with Syria, firmly support each other, promote friendly cooperation, and jointly defend international fairness and justice,\u201d he added. Relations between the two countries \u201chave withstood the test of international changes\u201d, Xi said. \u201cAnd the friendship between the two countries has been strengthened over time,\u201d he added. The leaders were each flanked by nine aides at a large rectangular wooden table, a CCTV video clip showed, as two flags from each country were set in front of a Chinese painting in the meeting room. China is one of only a handful of countries outside the Middle East that Assad has visited since the 2011 start of a civil war that has killed more than half a million people, displaced millions more, and battered Syria\u2019s infrastructure and industry. China\u2019s foreign ministry has said his visit will take ties to a \u201cnew level\u201d. \u201cChina and Syria have a traditional and deep friendship,\u201d foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular briefing. \u201cWe believe that President Bashar Al-Assad\u2019s visit will further deepen mutual political trust and cooperation in various fields between the two countries,\u201d she added. Assad\u2019s visit is his first to China since 2004. Analysts expect Assad\u2019s visit to China will focus, in part, on funds for reconstruction. It also comes as China\u2019s influence in the Middle East grows. This year Beijing brokered a deal that saw longtime regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Damascus-backer Iran agree to restore ties and reopen their respective embassies. The detente was followed by Syria\u2019s return to the Arab fold at a summit in Saudi Arabia in May, ending more than a decade of regional isolation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks with Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad on Friday, and said the two leaders would unveil a new \u201cstrategic partnership\u201d. Assad…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9838,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}