Chinese top legislator Wu Bangguo met Russian State Duma (the lower house of parliament) Chairman Boris Gryzlov on Monday and co-chaired with him the first meeting of the cooperation committee of China's National People's Congress (NPC) and the State Duma.

 

During talks with Wu, the chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, Gryzlov said Wu's visit was a major event in Russian-Chinese parliamentary exchanges.

 

He said the State Duma attached great importance to developing friendly ties with the NPC, enhancing parliamentary exchanges at all levels and in all areas, and making new contributions to the strategic partnership between Russia and China.

 

Wu, for his part, spoke highly of the parliamentary exchanges between the two countries, saying that in the past decade since China and Russia established the strategic partnership, the fastest growth of bilateral ties in history had been witnessed.

 

China and Russia had exchanged high-level visits regularly, seen their mutual political trust ever deepening, and offered understanding and support to each other on major issues of respective concern, Wu said.

 

Bilateral economic and trade cooperation and humanitarian exchanges were growing at a fast pace, and the two countries shared the same or similar positions on major international and regional issues, he added.

 

The growth of China-Russia relations had brought tangible benefits to the two sides and two peoples, the Chinese top legislator said.

 

On parliamentary exchanges, Wu said the cooperation committee, set up during Gryzlov's visit to China last June, was the highest-level regular meeting mechanism the NPC had ever established with foreign parliaments. The committee's first meeting marked the startup of this mechanism, he added.

 

Wu described this year as being important in the growth of China-Russia ties and made a four-point proposal on strengthening cooperation between the NPC and the State Duma.

 

First, Wu said, parliamentary cooperation needed to be oriented towards better serving the strategic partnership between China and Russia, providing the legal guarantee for the development of bilateral ties and supervising the implementation of legal documents signed by the two sides.

 

Secondly, legislative exchanges should be enhanced to improve the quality of legislation and ensure smooth economic and social development, Wu said.

 

Thirdly, exchanges in the humanitarian sphere should also be boosted to foster better understanding between enterprises of the two countries and promote personnel and inter-party exchanges, he said.

 

Fourthly, the two countries should enhance coordination in international and regional parliamentary organizations to promote regional and global peace and stability, he said.

 

Gryzlov agreed with Wu on his assessment of bilateral ties and the proposal to boost the parliamentary cooperation.

 

Russia and China were each other's biggest and most important neighbors, and developing bilateral relations and parliamentary cooperation was in the interests of both countries, Gryzlov said.

 

He expressed belief that the cooperation committee of the State Duma and the NPC would elevate the level of parliamentary cooperation between the two countries and promote the development of the Russia-China strategic partnership.

 

The committee was established last June in Beijing. The committee convenes annually in China or Russia.

 

Wu arrived in Moscow from the Volga River city of Volgograd on Sunday to continue his four-day official goodwill visit to Russia.

 

(Xinhua News Agency May 30, 2006)