President Isaias Afwerki meets China’s special envoy for Horn of Africa affairs, Hu Changchun, at the Denden Guest House in Asmara on November 5, 2026, in an official photograph shared on X by information minister Yemane G. Meskel. Photo: Yemane G. Meskel (@hawelti) via X
President Isaias Afwerki hosted China’s special envoy for Horn of Africa affairs, Hu Changchun, in Asmara on Thursday, and the envoy again stressed respect for Eritrea’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Yemane G. Meskel (@hawelti), Eritrea’s information minister, posted the official English readout and three photographs from the meeting. He wrote that the talks were held at the Denden Guest House in the early evening and centered on bilateral ties and current developments in the region. Hu, he said, reiterated the People’s Republic of China’s position on the imperative of respecting Eritrea’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The visit follows a preview Mereja Media reported earlier in the week of Hu’s travel through the Horn. Thursday’s meeting is the first public confirmation from Asmara that the envoy sat with Isaias himself. Regional accounts quickly shared the same photographs. Kenya Axis (@kenyaaxis) posted three frames of the meeting and summarized Beijing’s sovereignty line. Girma Telke (@GirmaTelk) shared a photograph with a caption saying China had reaffirmed strong support for protecting Eritrea’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Shabait, the information ministry’s main timeline, spent recent days on newspapers and school stories and did not carry the meeting on its own feed in the hours after the talks. The official account of the encounter therefore rests on hawelti’s readout and pictures. Mereja Media treats that ministry post as the primary Eritrean government version of events.
China has for years framed its Horn diplomacy around non interference and state sovereignty, language Eritrea’s government welcomes as it rejects what it calls external pressure over politics and ports. Hu’s portfolio covers the wider Horn, including Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia and Sudan, but Thursday’s Asmara stop was presented in the Eritrean readout as a bilateral call with a sovereignty message, not as a mediation announcement. The photographs show the two men seated under Eritrean and Chinese flags in a formal reception room at Denden Guest House, with aides along the wall.
For Asmara the sovereignty line matters because Eritrea has long accused neighbors and Western capitals of pressing it over its closed political system and over Red Sea port access. For Beijing the same line fits a wider African message that China does not condition ties on domestic political reform. Neither side published a detailed communique beyond hawelti’s short English note, and no list of deliverables or port projects was attached to the Thursday posts.
No Ethiopian government statement on a parallel meeting with Hu had been issued at the time of writing.
The photographs from Denden Guest House show Isaias and Hu seated for formal talks under Eritrean and Chinese flags.