Syria’s Assad visits China seeking funds

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad waves at supporters as he leaves a polling station in Duma city, outskirts of Damascus, Syria, on 26 May 2021. EPA-EFE/YOUSSEF BADAWI HANGZHOU, China – Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad begins on Thursday his first official trip to China in almost two decades, where he will ask a longtime ally for financial support to help rebuild his devastated country. China will become one of only a handful of countries outside the Middle East that Assad has visited since the 2011 start of a war that has since killed more than half a million people, displaced millions more,…