Russian trip for security chief before Putin visit
Chen Wenqing invited to Moscow meeting as cooperation grows on law enforcement
Top security official Chen Wenqing will visit Russia ahead of an anticipated visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to China next month as law enforcement cooperation between Beijing and Moscow continues to grow.
Chen, a member of the Communist Party’s Politburo and secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, had been invited to attend the 12th International Meeting of High Representatives for Security Issues, the foreign ministry announced yesterday.
Chen would visit Russia from tomorrow to April 28, it said.
His visit will come about a month after 133 people were killed at a concert hall near Moscow in Russia’s worst terrorist attack in recent decades.
Chen was promoted to China’s top security job overseeing police and intelligence during the leadership reshuffle in October 2022. He previously served as state security minister.
In May 2023, Chen spoke at the 11th International Meeting of High Representatives for Security Issues in Moscow, stressing China would promote common international security while continuing to protect its own security.
During that visit, he met Russian spy chief Sergey Naryshkin and the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev. The two sides agreed to deepen cooperation to safeguard their security interests.
These visits took place under the China-Russia law enforcement and security cooperation mechanism set up in 2014.
The bilateral meetings are held annually to discuss issues such as national security and counterterrorism.
China and Russia have moved closer on security in recent years amid tensions with the West.
President Xi Jinping met Putin in Moscow in March last year, and the two leaders discussed issues from bilateral cooperation to the war in Ukraine and Beijing’s proposed peace plan.
Putin reportedly plans to visit China in May as the two countries mark the 75th anniversary of diplomatic ties, but Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said last week he could not confirm the timing of Putin’s visit.
Xi and Putin would also meet this year on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation gathering to be held in Kazakhstan and the Brics summit in Russia with leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov confirmed earlier this month.
Lavrov met Xi in Beijing last week. The two pledged to defend a multipolar world and jointly condemned Western-led “bloc confrontation” in their talks.