China yesterday vowed to push ahead on economic and diplomatic cooperation with Russia despite Western sanctions against Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine, accenting that the nations’ relations are based on “mutual need.”
“The practical cooperation between China and Russia is based on mutual need; it seeks win-win results and has enormous internal impetus and room for expansion,” Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said in Beijing.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nation also faces a decline in its currency amid an economic crisis fueled by plunging oil prices.
Both are permanent members of the UN Security Council, where they have in the past jointly used their veto power against Western-backed moves, such as resolutions against the civil war in Syria.
Wang told reporters on the sidelines of China’s National People’s Congress parliament meeting that Beijing and Moscow would “continue to carry out strategic coordination and cooperation to maintain international peace and security.”
Wang’s comments signal that Putin, assailed by the West over the annexation of Crimea and the Ukraine conflict, can count on Chinese economic and diplomatic support.
Beijing and Moscow, allies and then adversaries during the Cold War, have over the past quarter-century often found common ground internationally, frequently taking similar stands at the UN.
They have also forged increasingly closer economic ties, with China hungry for Russia’s vast hydrocarbon resources.
Western sanctions have made seeking stable markets an urgent need for Putin, whose economy has been hit hard by the fall in prices for oil, a major source of revenue.
Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), who met five times last year, have a close personal relationship.
Xi last month told visiting Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov that the two nations’ “cooperation grows ever deeper.”
In the economic arena, the two sides would “work hard” to increase bilateral trade to US$100 billion, while intensifying cooperation in the financial, oil and gas and nuclear power sectors, Wang said, after trade between the two totaled US$95.3 billion last year.
Among other results, he said they would begin “full construction” of an eastern natural gas pipeline and also sign an agreement on a proposed western route.
They would “accelerate joint development and research” on long-range, wide-body passenger jets and step up cooperation on high-speed railways, Wang added.
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