The leaders of China and Russia yesterday hailed flourishing ties, which they said were defying the economic crisis, after Cold War-era relations marked by mutual suspicion.
“In the midst of the global financial crisis, we are actively developing a practical cooperation in every sphere,” Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) told Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at the start of a state visit.
“China will always look at its relations with Russia as a priority of its foreign policy,” Hu said.
“In a time of deep and complex changes, the future development of the Russian-Chinese strategic relations ... is particularly important,” Hu said.
Putin said that the relationship was now strong enough to overcome the effects of the crisis.
“Despite the global financial crisis, relations between our countries are immune to economic or political ruptures,” Putin said.
The positive rhetoric is a marked change from the from the Cold War era when the Soviet Union and China clashed for supremacy in the Communist world.
Yet bilateral trade has now taken a major hit from the economic crisis, falling 42 percent to US$7.3 billion for the first quarter of this year compared with the same period last year, Russian officials said.
Putin, who had made expanding trade with China a priority for Russia, did not mention these figures, saying only that bilateral trade reached US$56 billion last year.
The Russian strongman also welcomed the Chinese delegation’s “very successful” participation at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) earlier this week in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.
SCO is a regional grouping of Russia, China and four Central Asian countries that has been seen as a potential counterweight to Western-led international organizations like NATO.
The two leaders were to oversee an intergovernmental meeting yesterday and Hu was scheduled to meet Russian President Dmitry Medvedev later in the day.
Diplomatic ties between the two permanent UN Security Council members have been founded on a common stance on issues from Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs to the Middle East, Sudan and non-proliferation.
Russia and China are also part of a four nation group of emerging economic powers that includes India and Brazil and this week displayed its ambitions in a first summit meeting attended by Hu and Medvedev.
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