Fruitful Meeting

During Kasyanov’s stay, both Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji held talks with him. They discussed the ways to make the China-Russia Good-Neighborly Treaty more effective, exchanged views on how to expand cooperation in the fields of politics, economy and trade, technology as well as human literature, and reached a consensus on a number of issues and signed a series of documents. The two sides agreed that the signing of the treaty is of historic significance and provides guidance for the development of the bilateral strategic cooperative partnership in the 21st century.

During the seventh regular prime ministerial meeting, the two sides signed a series of important documents on bilateral economic and trade cooperation, including Joint Communiqué on the Seventh Regular Meeting Between the Chinese and Russian Prime Minister, Summary of the Sixth Meeting of the Chinese and Russian Prime Ministers’ Regular Meeting Committee, Settlement Agreement on Border Trade Between the People’s Bank of China and Central Bank of Russia, Framework Agreement on US$2 Billion Export Buyer’s Credit Given by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to the Russian Foreign Trade Bank.

After summing up earnestly the lessons and experiences of the past 10 years or so of the development of the Russian and Chinese economies and trade relations, as well as analyzing in depth the future trends, the prime ministers of the two countries agreed that the cooperation for the coming period should be focused on following aspects: optimizing the trade product mix; improving the trade proportion of high-technology, mechanical and electrical and other value-added products; increasing economic, technological and investment cooperation through the formation of joint ventures, joint production and technology transfers; improving trade-related service systems; and enhancing Sino-Russian cooperation in energy. So far, the two sides agreed that state-level administrative departments should speed up the ratification of the strategic pipeline project linking China’s gas rich Daqing area with Russia’s Angarsk so as to move into preliminary designing.

In addition to these, both sides are to strengthen cooperation and coordination in the fields of high technology, energy, natural resource exploration, nuclear energy, finance, transportation, aviation and aerospace, ecology and telecom and information technologies.

Before Kasyanov came to China, he mentioned that both China and Russia should not be satistied with the increase of trade volume only; what is more important is to elevate the quality of Sino-Russian trade to a new high. The fruitfulness and success of this meeting show Sino-Russian economic and trade cooperation is changing from quantity to quality after entering onto a fast track since the sixth regular meeting between the Chinese and Russian prime ministers last year.

Cooperation Mechanism Improving

Sino-Russian economic and trade cooperation went through ups and downs at the beginning of the 1990s. However, the economic and trade cooperation entered into a steady and fast development period since 1996 and reached unprecedented depth and width. The trade volume reached US$6.85 billion in 1996 and continued the pace of high increase in the following three years. The trade volume totaled a record US$10.7 billion last year. This figure stood at US$6.2 billion in the first seven months this year, up 20 percent from the same period in 2001. The steady development of Sino-Russian economic and trade cooperation is due to the successful operation of the regular meeting mechanism between their respective prime ministers.

This mechanism was set up according to the agreement by Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Russian President Boris Yeltsin during the latter’s visit to China in April 1996. According to the agreement, the state and government heads are to hold regular meetings every year focusing on bilateral ties and important international issues of common concern. The main tasks are to manage cooperation in the fields of economy, trade, science and technology, energy, transportation and nuclear energy; help to solve important problems appearing during the cooperation; explore ways to strengthen bilateral economic trade relations, and promote the steady, continuous and fast development of Sino-Russian economic trade cooperation.

The regular meeting committee is the main body of the regular meeting mechanism of the two prime ministers, aiming to prepare for the regular meetings and coordinate the work of its branch committees. Currently the Chinese chairman is Wu Yi while the Russian chairman is Khristenko V.B.. In the four months before the seventh regular meeting, the committee opened three workshops and studied new issues, and did much work and preparation for the coming meeting.

There are eight sub-committees under the China and Russia Prime Minister Regular Meeting Committee. They cover different fields of economy and trade, energy, nuclear energy, transportation, science and technology, aerospace, and banking and information technology. For instance, on May 22, the fifth meeting of China and Russia Economic and Trade Sub-Committee was held in Moscow. Shi Guangsheng, minister of foreign trade and economic cooperation and Russian Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref signed a memorandum on Development and Cooperation and an agreement on the development of a joint website on Chinese-Russian economic and trade cooperation. On July 4, the sub committee of science and technology held its sixth meeting in Beijing, during which the two sides decided to take applied chemistry, biotechnology, genetic engineering, new materials, mechanical and electronic systems as priorities in future science cooperation and to establish the first Sino-Russian high-tech park in Moscow in order to pursue co-research and application of high technology.

It can be said that economic and trade cooperation is the material base of China and Russian good neighborliness, and an important guarantee for the strategic coordination of the two countries. The purpose of having a regular meeting mechanism between the two countries is to establish a cooperative partnership of equality, mutual trust and mutual benefit in the fields of economy and trade through concrete measures. In fact, the seven-year smooth operation of the regular meeting mechanism demonstrates that the economic and trade relationship has entered into the new era of balanced development along with political relations, thus the economic base for the China-Russia Good-Neighborly Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation is more solid than ever.

(Dr. Feng Yujun is a researcher with the China Institute of Modern International Relations)

(china.org.cn translated by Zheng Guihong, September 2, 2002)