Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Kazakhstan next week for a state visit, Interfax reported, in what would be his first trip overseas in more than two-and-a-half years.
Xi accepted the Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s invitation to visit the Central Asian nation on Wednesday next week, the Russian news agency reported, citing Kazakh Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Aibek Smadiyarov.
The two leaders would sign a variety of agreements during the visit, it added.
Photo: AFP
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment.
The trip would mark a return to the world stage for Xi, the only G20 leader who has not traveled abroad throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. While Xi made a brief visit to Hong Kong in July, he has not set foot outside Chinese territory since January 2020.
The timing would be unusual even in pre-pandemic times. Chinese leaders rarely travel abroad in the months of intense domestic politicking before the Chinese Communist Party’s twice-a-decade National Congress, which is set to start in Beijing on Oct. 16. Xi is widely expected to secure a precedent-breaking third term at the gathering.
Yet geopolitical tensions are running high in the wake of US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan last month. China responded by conducting live-fire military drills around Taiwan. Beijing has sought to gain diplomatic support for its position on Taiwan, pushing back on calls by the US and its allies to exercise restraint.
Xi might also attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization scheduled for Thursday and Friday next week in neighboring Uzbekistan. The group, which China sees as a counter to Western alliances, also includes Russia, India, Pakistan and other Central Asian nations.
Niva Yau (邱芷恩), a senior researcher at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, said for Xi Central Asia is the “perfect pivot” for whatever is to come regarding Taiwan and any other developments in East Asia.
Another, more practical reason for selecting Kazakhstan is that it is the most important country for China to continue its Xinjiang policy, Yau added.
“If there’s any country that can make a difference regarding what China does in Xinjiang with the Turkic population there, it would be Kazakhstan,” she said.
It is also a strategic mineral source: Kazakhstan has 40 percent of the world’s uranium, which could become increasingly important as developed countries look to atomic energy as a reliable source of zero-carbon power in the coming decades.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.