Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Uzbekistan for a state visit on Wednesday night, Chinese state media reported, to be followed by meetings with several foreign leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Xi earlier left Kazakhstan where he had made his first trip to a foreign country since China all but shut its borders due to COVID-19 two years ago.
Uzbekistan will host a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a China- and Russia-led regional security body, this week that will be attended by Putin, Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan, India's Narendra Modi and a number of other leaders.
The summit will be held in the Uzbek city of Samarkand on Thursday and Friday.
(Reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
