The Islamist regime governing Syria sent its top diplomat to Beijing on Monday for meetings with Foreign Minister Wang Yi in which the Chinese Communist Party invited Syria to join its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a debt trap scheme for impoverished countries.
The visit represented a breakthrough in relations between the nascent regime in Damascus and China, which openly supported dictator Bashar Assad. The al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) ousted Assad in December 2024; its leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is now the president of Syria.
Sharaa made a historic visit to the White House last week – the first Syrian president to ever do so – and cement support for sanctions relief and post-war reconstruction from President Donald Trump. Trump told reporters following the meeting that it went positively and that he “liked” Sharaa, describing him as a “tough guy.”
At the time Sharaa seized power in Syria, he was known by the jihadist name “Abu Mohammed al-Jolani” and the United States had an outstanding $10 million reward available for information leading to his arrest. Most American sanctions and rewards related to Sharaa have since been lifted.
According to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang primarily discussed economic opportunities for both of them and combatting terrorism. Both SANA and China’s Global Times emphasized Wang’s insistence on receiving assurances from Syria that the government would not support terrorism. Rather than discussing HTS, the Islamic State, or al-Qaeda, however, Wang reportedly lectured Shaibani not to support the “East Turkistan Islamic Movement,” (ETIM) a terrorist organization that does not exist.
“During the talks, Wang said China respects the independent choices made by the Syrian people, and stands ready to actively consider participating in Syria’s economic reconstruction,” the Global Times shared. “He also raised the issue of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), calling on the Syrian side to take effective measures and remove security obstacles to the steady development of China-Syria relations, per a readout released by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.”
An alleged “expert” speaking to the Global Times claimed to the newspaper that emphasis on ETIM was necessary because “if ETIM is allowed to maintain a long-term presence in Syria or even packaged as part of a so-called ‘legitimate government’, it will pose a major challenge to the global counter-terrorism consensus.”
ETIM is an alleged jihadist terrorist organization made up of ethnic Uyghurs fighting against Chinese occupation of East Turkistan. Once listed on the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list, the U.S. government removed it on the grounds that “for more than a decade, there has been no credible evidence that ETIM continues to exist.”
China nonetheless continues to use ETIM as an excuse for its occupation of East Turkistan and ongoing genocide of its indigenous people, which include horrific practices such as the imprisonment of thousands in concentration camps, enslavement, torture, indoctrination, forced sterilizations and abortions, and other atrocities. Beijing often pressures Islamic countries to denounce ETIM as an assurance that the country will not advocate for the human rights of the majority-Muslim Uyghurs, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic people caught up in the genocide.
Shaibani also echoed other problematic Chinese communist talking points during his visit, according to SANA, including accepting China’s false claims of ownership over the nation of Taiwan and praising genocidal dictator Xi Jinping’s “global initiatives.”
The Syrian Foreign Minister celebrated the meeting in a statement on Monday, declaring the talks “constructive” and suggesting that China has “broad prospects for supporting Syria’s reconstruction efforts.”
Speaking to reporters during a regular briefing on Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning invited Syria to join the BRI, a global infrastructure program in which China offers impoverished countries predatory loans for overpriced infrastructure projects, greatly indebting them, then using this financial interest to manipulate its politics.
“China welcomes Syria to take part in the Belt and Road cooperation and the two sides need to step up cooperation under multilateral frameworks, including the UN and the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum,” Mao said. “China stands ready to work with the international community to make contributions to Syria’s security and stability.”
Mao also described the war that toppled Assad as a “choice made by the Syrian people” that China will respect.
“The two sides need to respect each other’s core interests, uphold non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, carry forward our traditional friendship, calibrate the course of China-Syria relations, and bring the bilateral relations back to the right track,” she insisted.
The Trump administration has made reducing the malign influence of the BRI a priority, indicating that any closer ties between Syria and China could jeopardize American investments in Sharaa’s reconstruction project. Sharaa made clear in his White House visit that he hopes America will be an active partner in helping rebuild the nation’s war-torn cities and Trump gave him more reason to expect that to be the case.
“He’s a very strong leader. He comes from a very tough place. Tough guy. I like him,” Trump told reporters. “I get along with the president, the new president in Syria, and we’ll do everything we can to make Syria successful, because that’s part of the Middle East. We have peace now in the Middle East.”