President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping (retranslated): I warmly welcome my old friend Vladimir Putin to China!
In recent years, we have maintained close contacts, which plays an important role in promoting Russian-Chinese relations, helps to maintain the high level of cooperation, and contributes to enhancing both international and regional political climate.
Your visit is of particular importance, considering that this year we are marking the 15th anniversary of the Treaty on Friendship, Good-Neighbourliness and Cooperation, and also the 20th anniversary of our decision to establish relations of strategic partnership and comprehensive cooperation.
In the previous two days, we held a meeting in Tashkent, and also took part in the 15th anniversary summit of the SCO and discussed the prospects of developing that organisation with other summit participants. I can express my satisfaction with the results of the summit.
I am determined, together with President Putin, to comprehensively promote and deepen our strategic partnership and cooperation, and to form new aspects for the development of our bilateral relations in the new environment.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr President, my friend,
We meet often and on a regular basis, but as was said just now on the way to this hall, each of our meetings is always substantive in nature. This time, we are meeting not just to mark a formal event – the 15th anniversary of the Agreement on Friendship, Good-Neighbourliness, and Cooperation, which is an important milestone – but also because life itself demands that our peoples work to strengthen and develop our relations.
Over this time, we have filled the agreements we reached 15 years ago with thriving, vibrant and much-needed content for the benefit of our countries and peoples.
We have a substantial agenda for today’s meeting too, of course. As you have just noted, we have colleagues from both sides here today, each of whom is carrying on intensive and I would say very meaningful work with their counterparts, and are having deep-reaching discussions that produce agreements, accords and contracts. This is taking our cooperation forward.
<…>