— President Xi, you are going to pay a state visit to Russia and attend the 23rd St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. This year marks the 70th anniversary of China-Russia diplomatic relations. You and President Putin have often noted that the relationship is at its best in history. Could you give an overall assessment of the current state of our relations?

— At the invitation of President Vladimir Putin, I will soon pay a state visit to Russia and attend the 23rd St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. After I was elected President of the People’s Republic of China six years ago, I chose Russia as the first stop of my first overseas trip. During that visit, President Putin and I jointly opened a new chapter of China-Russia relations. Over the past six years, I have paid seven visits to Russia. Every time I was there, I witnessed the deepening of friendship between our two peoples and the productive outcomes of our cooperation. As China and Russia greet the historic moment of the 70th anniversary of our diplomatic relations, I am glad to pay another visit to your vast and beautiful country with great expectations for a brighter future of our bilateral ties.

Indeed, after seven decades of development, China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination is now at its best in history. Our two countries enjoy strong political trust and can always count on each other’s firm support on issues concerning our respective core interests and major concerns. Guided and underpinned by full-fledged mechanisms of high-level visits and broad-based cooperation, our two sides have conducted substantive, wide-ranging and all-dimensional cooperation of strategic significance. The long-term development of China-Russia relations is blessed by the strong support of our people, who forged a profound friendship as comrades-in-arms in our great, heroic fight against Fascist aggression. Our two sides have also enjoyed close and effective coordination and collaboration in international affairs, thus contributing tremendous positive energy to a complex and fast-changing world.

Today, China-Russia relations are standing at a new starting point and facing new opportunities for growth. Building on our two countries’ shared aspirations for development and revitalization and responding to our two peoples’ shared desire for lasting friendship, we have the confidence and capability to bring our relations to a new era of greater development at a higher level, based on our experience and achievements of the past 70 years.

Our two countries need to stick together as good neighbors and render each other even stronger support. We need to work closely to seek greater synergy between our development strategies, deeper convergence of our development interests, and closer people-to-people ties. We need to find new areas of cooperation with innovative efforts as called for by the times so that our bilateral relations will always be forward-looking, break new ground, and brim with vigor and vitality. We need to play a more constructive role in international affairs with a great sense of mission and a strong commitment to win-win results, thus jointly promoting peace, stability, development and prosperity for all people of the world.

In my upcoming visit, I look forward to charting the course of our future relationship together with President Putin and to seeing that our comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination will stride into a new era.

— China is Russia’s biggest trading partner. What is the expectation for the bilateral trade volume this year? What are the most promising projects in economic cooperation and trade? What measures will China take to strengthen sub-national economic ties? How do you view the problems in bilateral business cooperation?

— Economic cooperation and trade, as a key pillar of our relations, is crucial to the common development and revitalization of China and Russia. Such cooperation has been deepening in recent years, producing fruitful outcomes and setting a prime example of mutually beneficial economic engagement. Our bilateral trade reached a record US$100 billion in 2018. These notable results of our business cooperation are especially valuable given the current complex environment of sluggish global trade and investment and surging protectionism in the world. The government departments of our two countries are taking proactive efforts to bring our trade volume to a higher level and promote high-quality development of bilateral trade.

Our two countries are steadily implementing major cooperation projects in energy, transportation, agriculture, aviation, space and other fields. The crude oil pipeline and its parallel pipeline are operating smoothly. The eastern route of the natural gas pipeline is nearing completion. The Chinese and Russian sections of the Blagoveshchensk-Heihe Highway Bridge and the Nizhneleninskoye-Tongjiang Railway Bridge have been successfully joined. Steady progress is being made in our joint research and development (R&D) of long-range, wide-body passenger aircraft and heavy-lift helicopter. Cooperation on our satellite navigation systems is highly productive. These are concrete examples to show that, through our joint efforts, our economic cooperation has entered a phase of fast development and great promise.

At the sub-national level, various regions in our two countries have seized the opportunity of the “2018-2019 year of sub-national cooperation and exchange” and harnessed various mechanisms for more frequent interactions and greater economic, trade and investment cooperation, which include the China International Import Expo and other business cooperation platforms, and the Northeast China-Russian Far East and the Yangtze River-Volga River cooperation mechanisms. The two sides have signed a Plan on Cooperation and Development in the Russian Far East Region (2018-2024) and a Development Plan for Agriculture in Northeast China and the Russian Far East and Baikal Regions. Constant updates are being made to the list of key investment projects under the Yangtze River-Volga River mechanism. All these are effective platforms for the two sides to leverage our comparative industrial strengths and deepen sub-national cooperation.

Of course, our bilateral business ties are not free from specific issues. But it is worth pointing out that they are the natural result of our deepening cooperation and growing shared interests. The most effective way to address them is to take an innovative and multi-pronged approach to expand cooperation areas and unlock the full potential of our practical cooperation, such as scaling up mutual investment, widening market access, facilitating trade and investment activities, and boosting cooperation in agricultural trade, e-commerce and trade in services. By enlarging common interests, we can upgrade our business cooperation so that it will improve in both quality and quantity.

— Could you share some insights on China’s economic outlook?

— The Chinese economy has achieved tremendous growth since the founding of New China 70 years ago, and especially since the start of reform and opening-up 40 years ago. China is now the world’s second largest economy, the largest manufacturer, the largest trader in goods, and holder of the largest foreign exchange reserves. In 2018, the Chinese economy passed the RMB90 trillion yuan mark and per capita GDP was close to US$10,000. Our 6.6 percent economic growth rate, one of the highest in the world, meant that China accounted for around 30 percent of global growth last year.

In spite of a slowdown in global growth and trade, the Chinese economy has had a strong start this year with key economic indicators kept in a proper range. In the first quarter, our GDP grew by 6.4 percent, sustaining its momentum of steady growth in recent years and representing the 14th consecutive quarter of staying in the 6.4 percent to 6.8 percent range. Domestic consumption remained the main driver of growth. Employment continued to expand, with 4.59 million urban jobs added in the first four months of 2019. Personal income grew faster than the economy. Prices were generally stable, with consumer prices posting a modest growth of 2 percent. Total imports and exports were up by 4.3 percent year-on-year, and China’s foreign exchange reserves stayed above US$3 trillion. Apart from all this, we were able to improve the economic structure, transform the model of development and enhance the quality and efficiency of economic performance, thus strengthening the momentum of steady and robust growth.

The trajectory of our economy toward more steady growth has not changed and will remain so in the long run. Looking ahead, a number of factors will support the steady, healthy and sustainable growth of the economy. These include:

• First, China’s large pool of human resources. China has a population of nearly 1.4 billion, a 900-million-strong workforce, a talent pool of 170 million college graduates and people with professional skills, the world’s largest middle-income population, and more than 100 million market entities.
• Second, China’s strong internal driving forces. The Chinese economy is mainly driven by domestic consumption. In 2018, domestic consumption contributed 108.6 percent of economic growth; in particular, the contribution of final consumption was as high as 76.2 percent.
• Third, China’s growing economic dynamism. China’s R&D spending ranks second in the world, accounting for around 2.18 percent of its GDP. Emerging strategic industries, the sharing economy and other new economic forces are seeing continuous expansion.
• Fourth, China’s mobilization capability. We have in China the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China, the political advantage that comes from being able to mobilize resources for major undertakings, the spirit of a nation united as one, the solid material and technological foundation built through decades of rapid development in the era of reform and opening-up, the enormous resilience, potential and flexibility in development, and the rich experience in macro-regulation as well as ample policy space. We therefore have all the necessary conditions as well as the capability and confidence to deal with any risks and challenges.