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China honors rules in cooperation with other countries - Lavrov

According to the Russian top diplomat, Moscow and Beijing don’t have any plans of creating a military alliance and Russian President Vladimir Putin had stated this many times

MOSCOW, December 22. /TASS/. China is using its economic power on the international arena abiding by established rules, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Bolshaya Igra (Big Game) program on Russia’s television Channel One.

"China is acting in an absolutely different way on the global arena. China is not trying to humiliate anyone by slapping ultimatums. Yes, China is using its economic might exactly in line with those rules set back in the Bretton Woods time - the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and the World Bank," Lavrov said.

"Probably, the fathers of the current globalization are offended as they are outplayed in line with the rules they established. But this is life, competition, a free market, the rules created in Bretton Woods and which still exist. But they are trying to modernize them like this is happening in the WTO and so on," he noted.

According to the Russian top diplomat, Moscow and Beijing don’t have any plans of creating a military alliance and Russian President Vladimir Putin had stated this many times. However, the two countries are allies in terms of politics and defending international law and polycentric international relations, Lavrov said.

Lavrov noted that Russia and China have a different economic potential, but they have mutually respectful forms of bilateral cooperation as part of the Eurasian Economic Union and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. "We are trying to harmonize these processes under a mutual agreement with Beijing with projects as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative."

Meanwhile, the foreign minister said ASEAN countries are also showing interest in cooperation. "We believe that on the huge Eurasian continent there is the need to join efforts of all countries there - the members of the SCO, the EAEU and ASEAN - and leave the door open for the EU in order to conjugate all integration processes. Otherwise we will lose the chance of using our common natural competitive advantage from countries located on one huge continent," he said.