On the evening of May 16, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin spent several hours in informal discussion at Zhongnanhai, enjoying tea and walking on the grounds of the former imperial garden, located adjacent to the Forbidden Palace in Beijing. Among other matters, they discussed physical economic development and Ukraine.
Xi and Putin issued that day the “Joint Statement between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation on Deepening the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of Coordination for a New Era on the Occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations Between the Two Countries.” This remarkable, 8,000-word document is overflowing with projects and proposals, and lays out concrete integration of Chinese-Russian policy, physical economy, culture, connectivity, and a high degree of coordination of military policy.
It elaborates concretely the policy of the Feb. 4, 2022 Joint Statement of Russia and the People’s Republic of China on International Relations Entering a New Era, which develops the drive for Chinese-Russian coordination, and the creation, effectively, of a new world economic order. This is a tectonic shift.
The document states, near the beginning: “The two sides emphasized that the development of a comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination between China and Russia in the new era is in line with the fundamental interests of the two countries and their peoples, is not a stopgap measure, is not affected by a temporary event, and has strong endogenous driving force and independent value.” It stresses that the two countries are ruled by true international law, and that “neo-colonialism and hegemonism completely go against the trend of the times.”
We provide machine-translated selections from the document, currently only available in Chinese.
China and Russia, it says, will:
”—-Continue to expand the scale of bilateral trade, optimize the trade structure, deepen cooperation in the fields of service trade, e-commerce, digital economy, and sustainable development, and jointly maintain the stability and security of the industrial and supply chains.
”——Continuously improve the level of investment cooperation between the two countries, jointly promote the implementation of major cooperation projects, protect the rights and interests of investors, and create fair and just conditions for investment.
”——Accelerate the formulation and approval of a new version of the “China-Russia Investment Cooperation Plan Outline” in 2024, fully promote the implementation of the “Outline” and enhance the effectiveness of bilateral investment cooperation.
”——….Jointly promote the implementation of large-scale energy projects by Chinese and Russian enterprises.
”——Based on the experience of projects that have been successfully implemented and are being implemented, deepen cooperation in the field of civilian nuclear energy, including thermonuclear fusion, fast neutron reactors, and nuclear fuel closed cycles, …and explore a comprehensive approach to nuclear fuel development … and co-construction of nuclear power plants.
