Lukashenko, Xi Jinping held meeting at SCO summit in Astana

President of Belarus Aleksandr Lukashenko has held a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Astana

First of all, the Chinese President warmly congratulated the Belarusian leader on our country’s accession to the SCO and recalled that the parties had jointly outlined plans for a bilateral strategic and all-weather partnership, “Yesterday your country celebrated Independence Day, and today Belarus has become an official member of the SCO. In this regard, I warmly congratulate you.”

The Chinese leader underlined that contacts between the two countries are maintained at all levels, and agreements are being implemented in practice, “I’m deeply convinced that we can contribute to the further development of our relations by leaps and bounds. “

Aleksandr Lukashenko sincerely admitted that he was glad to have this meeting, “Many thanks to you personally, the People’s Republic of China, the Foreign Minister [of China] for the tremendous support that you provided to us when joining the SCO. “

The Head of State stressed that he was very pleased with the upcoming China’s presidency over the SCO, “This means that next year I will have an extra opportunity to visit China. I have written out your initiatives that you are promoting and will continue to promote in the SCO: global security, global development, global civilisation, global management of artificial intelligence. You’ve already noticed both the positive and the negative in AI. We’re ready and able to support all your initiatives in every possible way, especially the initiative to settle the Ukrainian crisis.”

Aleksandr Lukashenko also drew attention to the fact that the Chinese initiative is very consistent with that of Brazil.

China is Belarus’ second trading partner after Russia. In 2023, the bilateral trade reached $8.5bn (134.1 percent compared to 2022), exports of goods and services to China amounted to $2.4bn (130.6 percent against the same period in 2022). Trade in goods totalled $7.7bn (or 132.8 percent), and exports of goods to China stood at $2bn (123.3 percent).

Last year, Belarus was the main supplier of potash fertilisers to China (accounting for over 30 percent), a record 4.2m tonnes were shipped (2.8 times higher than the average annual figure of the last decade). The range of products supplied in 2023 increased from 198 to 285 commodity items.