The Buzz | China’s top diplomat to visit Russia for strategic talks

China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, will visit Russia for the 16th strategic and security consultation between the two countries starting today, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
Yang, director of the Communist Party’s central committee for foreign affairs who sits on the 25-member Politburo, will also visit Slovenia and Croatia, ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said in a statement posted on its website. The trip will end May 27.
Beijing and Moscow have been seeking to further bolster bilateral ties, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying in March that relations between the two countries were the “best in history.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping called for further collaboration on nuclear power between the two countries on Wednesday as he and Russian President Vladimir Putin watched the launch via a video link of a cooperation project building four nuclear reactors in China.
In a phone call at the end of 2020, Xi and Putin vowed to strengthen “strategic coordination” as the world enters “an era of global turbulence,” in a reference to the challenges posted by the U.S.