China and Belarus: A Strange Friendship

China is a friend of Belarus. At least, that's what the Belarusian government television regularly reports. Such a close friend that for a 2.5-hour conversation with Comrade Xi, one avid traveler, Lukashenka, is willing to spend almost 20 hours on a plane round trip. Although even these 2.5 hours are rather an overestimate: after subtracting "hello", "goodbye" and translations from Russian to Chinese and back, there was less than an hour of pure conversation left.