The promotion of cooperation in power production, high technologies and joint space exploration are central to the agenda of the Russian-Chinese summit talks in Moscow on Monday and Tuesday. Russia and China position themselves as two influential forces in a multi-polar world, so Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s visit to Moscow, the Voice of Russia’s Konstantin Garibov feels, is due to check the two countries’ geopolitical positions against each other and consolidate them.
It is for the first time in decades that Moscow and Beijing have had no major political problems to sort out. It is against that background that bilateral ties have been developing in a most secure way. Russian and Chinese companies see each other’s markets as more promising and are set on squeezing their traditional foreign competitors out of the markets. Small wonder that the Chinese Prime Minister is accompanied by business elite officials who are after lobbying their interests at the summit political level. The Russian partners are prepared to reciprocate, since the Asian business vector is growing central to their activities in the forthcoming years.
But, perhaps, key to their economic cooperation is power production. The two countries’ oil and petrochemical companies not only prospect for and develop oil fields, for instance on SakhalinIsland, but also jointly refine and sell oil products. Coming up for discussion in Moscow are fresh energy projects that are due to ensure energy security of Russia as a major oil and gas supplier, and of China, a country with a growing need for energy resources. The parties to the forthcoming talks will concentrate, among other things, on Russia’s assistance for the development of China’s nuclear power production and on major deliveries of energy equipment for gas-main pipelines.
Other priorities are cooperation in the join exploration of the Moon and Mars, industrial cooperation in developing a new-generation plane and in building a joint aircraft-building corporation. Russia’s businesses see great prospects for cooperation with their Chinese partners in setting up industrial parks to manufacture high-tech products for third countries’ markets. The Head of the Russian-Chinese Centre for trade and economic cooperation Sergey Sanakoyev feels that the talks in Moscow will help the two sides consolidate their geopolitical positions:
"Political interaction and strategic partnership make it possible for Russia and China to promote their trade and economic relations a lot more intensively and at a higher level. The huge potential for political interaction should by all means be used to ensure that trade and economic cooperation of the two countries will correspond to the role that Russia and China play on the world scene. It is to attain that objective that the Russian-Chinese political and business talks are held."
Yet another objective to achieve during the summit talks in Moscow is to consolidate Russian-Chinese interaction on the international scene. The proximity of the two countries’ positions on a majority of regional problems is an important prerequisite for a joint quest for ways to settle these problems.
