Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin yesterday hailed “unprecedented” relations with China despite sanctions pressure from the West as he met with his counterpart in Beijing.
Mishustin arrived in China on Monday, attending a business forum in Shanghai on Tuesday before traveling to Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Chinese Premier Li Qiang (李強).
It is the highest-level visit by a Russian official to China since Moscow invaded Ukraine last year.
Photo: AFP
“Today, relations between Russia and China are at an unprecedented high level,” Mishustin told Li after a welcoming ceremony outside Beijing’s Great Hall of the People. “They are characterized by mutual respect of each other’s interests, the desire to jointly respond to challenges, which is associated with increased turbulence in the international arena and the pressure of illegitimate sanctions from the collective West.”
Li hailed the “comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership between China and Russia in the new era.”
“I believe your trip to China this time will definitely leave a deep impression,” he said.
Li said that bilateral trade had already reached US$70 billion so far this year.
“This is a year-on-year increase of more than 40 percent,” he said. “The scale of investment between the two countries is also continuously upgrading. Strategic large-scale projects are steadily advancing.”
Following the talks, ministers signed a series of agreements on service trade cooperation and sports, as well as on patents and Russian millet exports to China.
Mishustin is in China with top officials, including Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who handles energy policy.
China last year became Russia’s top energy customer as Moscow’s gas exports otherwise plummeted due to a flurry of Western sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.
Russian state media reported that Novak on Tuesday told a forum in Shanghai that Russian energy supplies to China would increase by 40 percent year-on-year this year.
Analysts say that China holds the upper hand in the relationship with Russia and that its sway is growing as Moscow’s international isolation deepens.
The leaders of both countries are “brought together more by shared grievances and insecurities than by shared goals,” said Ryan Hass, a senior fellow at Washington’s Brookings Institution and a former White House official. “They both resent and feel threatened by Western leadership in the international system and believe their countries should be given greater deference on issues implicating their own interests.”
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique