China, Russia officials meet in show of unity against EU, US

BEIJING (AP) — The foreign ministers of China and Russia have displayed unity amid criticism and new Western sanctions against them over human rights. Wang Yi and Sergei Lavrov rejected outside sniping at their authoritarian political systems and said they were working to further global progress on issues from climate change to the coronavirus pandemic. Wang and Lavrov accused the U.S. of interference in other countries’ affairs and urged it to rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement, something that the Biden administration has approached cautiously. Wang also sharply criticized coordinated sanctions brought by the European Union, Britain, Canada and the United States against Chinese officials over human rights abuses in China’s far western Xinjiang region.