China and Syria will establish a “strategic partnership”, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Friday on the occasion of a visit to Beijing by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who is trying to get funding for the reconstruction of his country, according to AFP and Reuters, cited by Agerpres.

“Today, we will jointly announce the establishment of China-Syria strategic partnership, which will be an important milestone in the history of bilateral relations,” the Chinese president was quoted as saying by public broadcaster CCTV.

The Syrian leader began an official visit to China on Thursday, his first in nearly 20 years, with what Beijing says is a hope to take bilateral relations to a “new level”.

“We believe that President Bashar al-Assad’s visit will strengthen mutual political trust and cooperation in various sectors between the two countries, bringing bilateral relations to a new level,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Thursday.

China is one of President Assad’s allies, supporting him in the UN Security Council, where he regularly abstains from voting on resolutions against the Syrian government.

But for the Assad regime, Russian military support, both through conventional forces and through Wagner’s mercenaries, was far more valuable, allowing it to turn the tide of the civil war that broke out in 2011.

In fact, Syria was one of only three countries in the world to recognize the independence claims of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine before Vladimir Putin announced the annexation of the regions they partially control last September.

The other two were North Korea and Russia.