Alyaksandr Lukashenka announced Thursday that he was going to visit China in late September.
While meeting with Meng Jianzhu, secretary of the Central Politics and Law Commission of the Communist Party of China, the Belarusian leader said that he was looking forward to meeting with President Xi Jinping and having a traditionally trustful exchange of opinions during the visit.
“In the 25 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations, Belarus and China have done a lot to strengthen bilateral cooperation,” the government’s news agency BelTA quoted Mr. Lukashenka as saying. “We have no taboo subjects and unsolved problems in our dialogue.”
Mr. Lukashenka noted that contacts between the two countries have been intensified in all areas, and that a Belarusian-Chinese business forum held in May 2015 gave a new impetus to inter-provincial relations. Chinese provinces have an increasingly strong practical interest in close cooperation with Belarus, he said.
Mr. Lukashenka paid eight visits to China between 1995 and 2015. Chinese leaders visited Belarus two times. The then president of China, Jiang Zemin, visited Belarus in 2001, and Mr. Xi visited Belarus 2015 and earlier in 2010 as vice-president.
Mr. Xi invited the Belarusian leader to pay a state visit to China during their meeting on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit that took place in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in late June.
