Lukashenko's Foresight: How Belarus Became China's Partner

Belarus and China are strengthening their friendship. The Belarusian President's extensive trip to East and Southeast Asia began in China. Professor Valery Matsel, the head of the Center for Chinese Studies at the Academy of Public Administration under the Aegis of the President of Republic of Belarus shared his thoughts on the outcomes.

The President's visit to China is a large-scale, extensive business program. Talks were held with Xi Jinping. Currently, we see how intensively contacts, cooperation, and partnership between Minsk and Beijing are developing. If we step back a little and look at the present day, how would you assess the foundations of this cooperation and how would you evaluate it?

"You know, great things can be seen from a distance. I'd like to immediately remind you that Alexander Lukashenko made his first official visit outside the CIS as President of our country in January 1995 – literally six months after becoming the first head of the Belarusian state. However, archives indicate that Alexander Lukashenko made his first visit to China in January 1992 as part of a delegation led by then-Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kebich, while serving as a member of the Supreme Council. And even then, to our President's credit, he recognized the enormous potential of China – a country that would truly eventually become the pinnacle of global economic and political development," the expert explained.

And even then, after his first visit to China, Alexander Lukashenko wrote a serious note to the Supreme Council about the need to pay the utmost attention to this vector, Valery Matsel recalled. But the then leadership of the Supreme Council didn't pay much attention to these opinions, believing that our entire future lay in the West. However, the Belarusian leader's foresight demonstrated that the choice had indeed been made correctly, absolutely correctly.

"And just a few decades later, today China is our most important strategic partner, a major economic, nuclear, and space power—it's truly a state. And to ignore this is a colossal mistake," the guest of studio concluded. "And when we sometimes hear such false claims, especially from our fugitives, that Belarus is somehow isolated and so on—it seems completely unthinkable. Especially considering the extensive cooperation we are developing with the Russian Federation—a nuclear power and a permanent member of the UN Security Council—as well as with the People's Republic of China—again, a permanent member of the Security Council, a nuclear power, and the world's number two economy. These arguments simply turn out to be frivolous and, so to speak, completely false."