BEIJING: A third-order member of China's political structure, who will visit Russia this week, will become the country's first Politburo Standing Committee member to leave the country since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The head of the country's legislature, Li Zhanshu, will travel for 11 days and stay in South Korea, Mongolia and Nepal, according to state-run Xinhua news agency.
He will attend the 7th Eastern Economic Forum in Russia for a visit that begins on Wednesday.
Since the start of the pandemic, President Xi Jinping and other top officials have not left the country, and Xi's strict zero-Covid policy has severely restricted travel in and out of the country.
Of the 25 members of the larger politburo, only Yang Jiechi, the party's head of foreign policy, has traveled outside China since the pandemic began.
A few weeks before the party's National Congress, which introduces a new leadership every five years, Lee traveled to Russia. Xi Jinping is predicted to win a third term, becoming the first Chinese leader since Mao Zedong to do so.
Li's visit to Russia also coincides with the highest level of geopolitical tensions between the US and China in the past forty years, heightened by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in August.
On the other hand, the West has imposed sanctions on Moscow as a result of the invasion of Ukraine in February.
Amid increasing Chinese aggression in the Taiwan Strait, Japan's defence measures are "necessary"
UK drops behind India to rank as the sixth-largest economy in the world