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Russian warships sailing close to Taiwan a sign of stronger Russian-Chinese ties - expert

The military cooperation between Russia and China has always been centered around joint exercises and training, Xiao Bin said

HONG KONG, July 8. /TASS/. The appearance of Russian naval ships close to Taiwan may show the political support for China and more profound interaction between the two countries’ armed forces, Xiao Bin, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Science’s Institute of Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies, opined on Saturday.

"It is more likely that the Russian ships were acting on their own initiative and wanted to show political support for China or win China’s support for Russia," he said, as quoted by the South China Morning Post daily.

"It’s using a military operation to express a political stand," the expert added.

Xiao said that military diplomacy is designed to follow up on statements made by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin after their talks in Moscow in March. The daily said that the two leaders announced then that they would deepen the relationship of comprehensive strategic partnership and cooperation between the two countries.

"The military cooperation [between Russia and China] has always been centered around joint exercises and training," the expert told the newspaper. "We could see new items of training, but China and Russia have been doing that for a long time. It’s just that these joint operations are more eye-catching in light of joint drills by Japan, South Korea and the United States in the Asia-Pacific."

Russian naval ships next to Taiwan

On June 27, Taiwan’s defense ministry spotted the Russian corvettes Gromky and Sovershenny sailing along the island’s east coast. The ministry’s statement said that they were heading north to south and then sailed into the open ocean southeast of the port of Suao.

The Russian Pacific Fleet warships - the Gromky and Sovershenny corvettes and the Pechenga medium-sized sea tanker - called at Shanghai on July 5. They will stay there until July 11 and then will proceed with their long-range mission in the Asia-Pacific. On July 7, Admiral Nikolay Yevmenov, Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy, visited the ships at their berth in Shanghai.

Taiwan has been governed by its own administration since 1949, when the remnants of the Kuomintang forces under Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) fled to the island after being defeated in the Chinese civil war. Taipei has since retained the flag and some other attributes of the former Republic of China, which had existed on the mainland before the Communists came to power. Official Beijing considers Taiwan to be a province of the People’s Republic of China.

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