BEIJING, December 5 (Itar-Tass) — Wen Jiabao, Premier of the Council of State of the People's Republic of China (PRC), begins his visit to Russia on Wednesday. He will participate in the 17th regular meeting of the Heads of Government of the two countries. The meeting will follow sessions of three intergovernmental commission on cooperation in various fields.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will meet in Moscow on December 6. A statement issued by the PRC Foreign Ministry reads, "During the visit, Wen Jiabao will hold talks with the Russian side to touch upon matters aimed at giving greater scope to all-embracing strategic partnership and interaction between the two countries. The sides will also exchange opinions about regional and global matters of mutual interest".
The implementation of the accords, reached at the level of the Heads of State at the summit held in Beijing in June this year, will be the central item on the agenda. The talks are also to deal with matters concerning trade-and-economic, scientific and technical cooperation, interaction in the fuel-and-energy sector, and in implementing investment projects.
As Sergei Razov, the Ambassador of Russia to China, told Itar-Tass in an interview given ahead of the Chinese Premier's visit, "Big events in the internal life of Russia and China -- the political leadership changeover in the Russian Federation and Party leaders' changeover in the People's Republic of China -- have not affected the development of bilateral relations". "This is an added proof that Russia-China interaction is of stable and non-opportunistic character while the high intensiveness of contacts at all levels has again demonstrated the striving of the sides to maintain the momentum of development in bilateral interaction," the RF Ambassador said.
"The awareness that the broadening and deepening of the mutually beneficial bilateral relations fully meet the basic interests of our peoples has been for many years the keynote of Russia-China contacts at all levels, with 2012 being no exception in this respect," he pointed out.
Razov said cooperation in the energy sector had been actively developing in 2012. This cooperation is an important component of the relations of strategic interaction and partnership between Russia and China. "The Russia-China dialogue on energy played the key role in the dynamic development of interaction. The dialogue at the end of the year is transforming into a full-format intergovernmental Commission on Energy Cooperation. Work on a number of large-scale joint energy projects has been going on in recent years within the scope of the dialogue, the Ambassador pointed out.
In the outgoing year, Russia and China continued to interact under numerous projects in the fields of transport and communications, aircraft construction, the exploration of outer space, in scientific and technical cooperation, and in technical military spheres, the Russian Ambassador said. "It is possible to point out mounting mutual interest and an increasing scope of contacts in the industrial sphere, in co-production arrangements, technical re-equipment of Russian enterprises, and in other segments of interaction," the Russian diplomat said. Cooperation is most promising in pharmaceutical, medical, chemical, and shipbuilding industries, in transport engineering, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, he pointed out.
"The two countries' Industry Ministries set up a special working group to coordinate work in this area," he added.
Wu Enyan, a scholar at the Institute for the Study of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia of the PRC Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out, in particular, in an article published in the newspaper "Huanqiu Shibao, "Irrespective of the fact that the foreign policy model of China will continue to be fashioned on the basis of domestic economic development interests, the PRC will seek to maintain good, friendly relations with Russia and promote all-round cooperation".
The leaders of Russia and China express confidence that by 2015 the two countries will be able to bring trade turnover up to at least $100 billion and double the scope by 2020, the scientist recalled. He pointed out, "Russia and China set ambitious tasks to themselves in development of trade-and-economic cooperation". The expert pointed out, "The PRC's steady economic growth is undoubtedly having a favourable effect on the development of bilateral trade contacts".