The move comes as the 2 countries discuss economic cooperation ahead of a bilateral summit in Japan next month.

Sources have told NHK that JBIC is in final negotiations with Sberbank. They say it plans to set up a yen-denominated credit line of 30 billion yen, or about 270 million in dollars.

The goal is to make funds available to Russian businesses so they can buy infrastructure-related equipment from Japanese firms.

Commercial Japanese banks are cautious about lending to Sberbank. It's a target of Ukraine-related sanctions by the US and Europe. But the sources say the yen-denominated loans directly from Japan are not covered by the sanctions.

The credit line is intended to meet an increased level of demand for funding, stemming from closer bilateral cooperation.

According to S.Davaapurev, head of the public relations service of the Gandantegchinlen Monastery, His Holiness’s visit is a religious mission. As a tradition, before leaving Dalai lama will give a media conference at the Ikh Tenger complex. The main events with participation of His Holiness will take place at the Gandantegchinlen Monastery on November 19. However, this will be exclusively religious ritual, not for mass. For the public, Dalai Lama’s teaching will be available on November 20. A scientific conference among scholars is expected as well. No political activity is planned.

The visit program of His Holiness does not provide for any action related to identification of a new embodiment of Bogdo Khaan X, Mongolian religious leader.

"It is very hard for Wechat to expand overseas, unless we can offer wholly different customer experience, but social apps are basically all alike," Ma told a forum at the third World Internet Conference in east China's Zhejiang Province. "In markets dominated by WhatsApp or Line, we can't challenge them."

WhatsApp is the world's most popular instant messenger, with close to a billion active users. WeChat lags behind with around 650 million users, mostly in China.

Tencent, possibly China's premier Internet company, rose to prominence with a messaging service called QQ in the late 1990s and came to dominate China's social networking market with WeChat a decade later, just as mobile Internet took off. China has around 700 million Internet users, most of whom use smartphones.

WeChat has gained a foothold in some overseas markets. It has become the messaging app of choice in Malaysia, but elsewhere users are mainly ethnic Chinese.

The spread of WeChat usually begins in the overseas Chinese community and spreads to friends and colleagues, Ma said.

Last year, on a visit to University of Washington where there are 7,000 Chinese among nearly 40,000 students, Ma found many foreigners, not least the university president, using WeChat. Off campus, WeChat is less popular because the Chinese population is low.

Ma remains interested in expanding overseas and expects Tencent to achieve some success in fields other than social networking, like gaming, payments and Internet of Things.

In China, WeChat is much more than a messaging app. People use it as a tool kit to shop both on and offline, buy air and train tickets, hail taxis, read the news, pay bills, book accommodation, and many other services.

Japanese Environment Minister Kouichi Yamamoto met with China's special representative for climate change, Xie Zhenhua, in Morocco on Thursday. The meeting was held on the sidelines of the COP22 UN climate change conference.

US President-elect Donald Trump has suggested that the United States should withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Yamamoto told Xie that it's unclear what path the US will take, but Japan wants to continue its efforts to tackle global warming.

Xie replied that China learned about environmental policies from Japan and wants to maintain good relations with it.

Earlier, Yamamoto told NHK that it is important for the COP22 meeting to send a strong message regarding the whole world's commitment to the Paris Agreement. He said this would help those who are skeptical about global warming understand the world trend.