25 September 2023

A procession of jubilant dancers greeted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday, as he stepped out of an airplane onto a red carpet in China’s eastern economic and e-commerce hub of Hangzhou. 

The visit is Assad’s first to China in nearly 20 years—one that China’s foreign ministry said would take ties between the two countries to a “new level.” On Friday, the Syrian president met his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of the Asian Games, where President Xi announced the establishment of a “China-Syria strategic partnership,” calling it “an important milestone in the history of bilateral relations.”

Beyond closer diplomatic ties, the Syrian president hopes to rake in financial support, with the country’s economy in ruins after more than a decade of war. “It’s a begging trip on the part of the Assad regime, a move of desperation,” Steven Heydemann, a political scientist specialized in Syria, told Syria Direct.

Assad was welcomed back into the Arab League this past spring, after 12 years of isolation. But Syria’s Arab neighbors—such as Jordan—have since grown tired of waiting for him to act on a reciprocal roadmap drawn up for normalization, including reducing the flow of drugs out of the country. This month, the Arab Ministerial Contact Committee on Syria froze its meetings until further notice.

So Assad has turned to China, which, far from the influence of Syria’s multi-million-dollar drug trade, has not made demands Assad is unwilling to fulfill.