President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev: Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, colleagues,
First of all, I would like to say that I am very happy for this new opportunity to meet with President of the People’s Republic of China Hu Jintao here in Moscow.
I am very glad that today, we have been able to continue the work we began two days ago in Yekaterinburg. I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank our Chinese friends for the significant input they made in the success of two summits: the SCO and BRIC summits.
Our talks, which took place during the President of the PRC's state visit, were friendly, constructive, and trust-based. These attributes characterise our strategic partnership and cooperation between China and Russia. They also characterise our mutual desire to develop our relations on the basis of neighbourliness, trust, and mutual interests.
Ahead of the 60th anniversary of Russia-China diplomatic relations, Mr Hu and I have laid out the practical challenges and key directions in further developing our bilateral relations.
We had a fairly in-depth discussion of our trade and economic relations, which currently are very good. In recent years, our trade turnover has grown significantly, reaching last year 55 billion USD. Today, our main focus was on the measures that must be taken in order to avoid, or at least mitigate, the negative consequences of the global financial crisis, which has an impact on our bilateral ties.
Our key challenge is not only to maintain the level of interaction that currently exists between our two nations, but also to provide new momentum to particular areas of cooperation.
In this context, we talked at length about changing the structure of commodity turnover, opportunities for increasing the share of machinery and technical products, the share of high-tech products in our commodity turnover structure.
Another very important challenge that has recently gained relevance is that of using national currencies in mutual settlements. We agreed to take additional steps in this direction, which may include adjusting our current agreements or giving corresponding instructions to the heads of relevant agencies, such as the finance ministers and the heads of our central banks.
We also spoke at length about our investment cooperation. Russia and China both want to develop this important area of cooperation. Many Chinese companies are working actively in Russia and investing significant funds in energy projects. We must also develop in other directions, such as deep processing of timber, infrastructure, including border territories’ infrastructure, so all of these directions are part of our bilateral investment cooperation plan.
Naturally, we spoke about cooperation in energy, and fuel and energy sectors. We expressed a high opinion of the way this dialogue is progressing today, including through the mechanism that the Chinese President and I invented a year ago. This mechanism has allowed us to embark on some new, advantageous projects. Examples of this include intergovernmental agreements in the oil sector and corresponding documents signed between our national companies. This transaction with a net worth of 100 billion USD was the largest contract ever signed between our countries.
Today, we spoke about using this experience in other forms of energy cooperation, such as gas or coal mining. I think that we may get good results by applying this experience elsewhere.
Another important point of discussion was the contacts between our border territories and interregional ties. Today, they represent a significant share of our total trade turnover. The policy document on cooperation between Russia’s Far East and East Siberia and the northeast of China should operate as an effective instrument. Work in these regions will continue in order to create an even better framework for cooperation. In addition, we must continue to work together on other important issues of trans-border cooperation, such as environmental protection and other issues.
Our humanitarian cooperation is becoming more substantial as well. Not long ago, national theme years were organised in China and Russia. Currently, China is holding the Year of the Russian Language, and we will soon organise the Year of the Chinese Language in our country. The Festival of Chinese Culture will be opening in the Bolshoi Theatre today, to honour the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between our countries. In addition, we will be holding other events in the humanitarian sphere. This is a very good foundation for cooperation between our countries and our peoples, and we will continue on these issues as a priority.
We exchanged views and we found that we shared a great deal of common ground on international issues. We discussed many relevant topics. Our discussions began in Yekaterinburg and continued during the state visit by the Chinese President. We discussed regional problems, regional challenges such as the situation on the Korean peninsula and North Korean nuclear programme. Before that, we spoke about the situation in Afghanistan, as we are all concerned about security and stable development in Central Asia.
The similarity of our approaches to these issues is reflected in the joint statement on the outcomes of the visit.
In conclusion, I would like to once again thank President [of the PRC] Hu Jintao for his exceedingly trust-based and goal-oriented attitude throughout his visit to our country. I feel certain that our talks regarding all these issues will lead to good results, thanks to our desire to be considerate of mutual interests, our good will toward one another, and our mutual trust. I am also certain of our ability to implement all the plans that we have made.
(In Chinese) Thank you.
President of People’S Republic of China Hu Jintao (as translated from Russian): Ladies and gentlemen, friends,
I am happy for this new opportunity to meet.
In our talks with President Medvedev, we had a long, sincere exchange of opinions regarding the ongoing development of Chinese-Russian relations, international problems, and regional issues that are of mutual interest to us. We reached an understanding on a wide range of matters.
We went through the results of Russia-China relations over the course of 60 years, beginning from the time when we first entered into diplomatic relation. Given the difficult, deep-seated processes taking place in the world today, we both feel that the dynamic development of our countries' partnership and strategic cooperation is important for the development and prosperity of our nations. They also contribute to peace and stability in the region, and in the world overall.
This year, as we celebrate the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Russia, we have new, promising directions for our bilateral ties. In this regard, we have defined new areas for further development; we have confirmed our readiness to strengthen political ties, to deepen strategic cooperation, to expand mutually beneficial cooperation, and to promote the stable, healthy development of our strategic partnership, which has reached this new milestone.
We discussed specific measures for mitigating the negative impact of the global financial and economic crisis, and we believe that deepening our practical cooperation is particularly important in overcoming the challenges that our countries face.
In the spirit of mutual benefit, we are ready to take practical cooperation between China and Russia to a new level.
We have also agreed to put an emphasis on promoting our cooperation in trade and economy, energy, science and technology, and military technology areas. We have agreed to increase the share of trade in machinery and technical products and high value added products between our nations, and to optimise our trade structure. We are also committed to strengthening our financial and investment cooperation, and maintaining the momentum of a stable expansion of the scale and quality of our bilateral trade and economic ties.
We are paying special attention to our regions’ growing needs to enhance cooperation. We are about to set up a cooperation programme between the northeast China and Russia's Far East and Eastern Siberia, in order to launch and implement trans-border and infrastructure projects in our border regions, to the benefit of both our nations.
We gave a high appraisal to the progress in China and Russia's energy cooperation. We will call on our two nations' companies to fully implement our bilateral agreements.
It is important to complete the construction of our oil pipeline within a reasonable amount of time, to step up talks on cooperation in the gas sector, to tap into our potential in nuclear and electrical energy, and to achieve further success in energy cooperation.
We fully agree that holding the Year of the Russian Language and the Year of the Chinese Language will broaden our humanitarian exchange horizons. We are ready to use this foundation to further strengthen the cooperation and friendship between our two peoples, which should be passed on from generation to generation.
We feel that China and Russia's cooperation in international matters is very fruitful, and we have confirmed our readiness to improve our coordination and reciprocity in international, regional, and multilateral formats, and in the interest of maintaining peace and stability in our region and in the world as a whole.
(In Russian) Thank you.