Exclusive | China’s top diplomats in ‘unprecedented’ back-to-back Europe trips amid tensions with US
- Politburo member Yang Jiechi is expected to visit Greece, Spain and potentially Portugal next week, according to diplomatic sources
- He will arrive days after Foreign Minister Wang Yi finishes his tour in an effort to ‘make sure that Europe is a strategic partner for China’, analyst says
Yang Jiechi, director of the Communist Party’s foreign affairs office, will travel to Greece and Spain, according to the two diplomatic sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A member of China’s powerful Politburo, Yang is also understood to be planning a potential stop in Portugal.
He is also expected to help lay the groundwork for President Xi Jinping’s upcoming special summit with European Union leaders in mid-September.
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“Clearly, Yang is much closer to Xi [than Wang is] and is the highest foreign policy representative, so [his trip] means a lot,” said Mikko Huotari, executive director of the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies. “This double effort [by Wang and Yang] is to my knowledge quite unprecedented. The timing is clearly to make sure that Europe is a strategic partner for China.”