ST. PETERSBURG, June 6. /TASS/. Chinese President Xi Jinping has been awarded a honorary degree of the St. Petersburg State University.

The awarding ceremony was held at the university on Thursday evening. The Doctor Honoris Causa diploma was handed over to the Chinese leader by the university’s rector Nikolay Kropachev. The ceremony was attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin, a graduate of the St. Petersburg State Univesity.

While visiting Beijing in late April, President Putin was awarded a Doctor Honoris Causa degree of Beijing’s Tsinghua University the Chinese leader graduated from in 1979.

The St. Petersburg University has more than 90 agreements with 50 Chinese partners, including the Tsinghua University and the Beijing University. More than 2,000 Chinese students study at the university annually. It has a branch in China’s Harbin and plans to build a joint campus with the Harbin Polytechnic University by 2022.