BEIJING – RUSSIAN PRIME minister Vladimir Putin arrived in China yesterday to try to strengthen a relationship forged by Russian oil exports to Asia’s largest energy consumer.
Russia, which this year sealed Chinese oil contracts valued at $100 billion, is now negotiating an agreement that would make China OAO Gazprom’s biggest customer for natural gas. Its communist neighbour currently buys no Russian gas.
The two countries, which were on the brink of war 40 years ago despite a shared ideology, are deepening ties based on mutual economic gain.
Bilateral trade totalled a record $56 billion in 2008, a six-fold increase in six years, according to Russia’s Federal Customs Service.
"Political ties are very good, probably the best since China's communist revolution in 1949," said Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of Moscow-based Russia in Global Affairsmagazine.
“There’s never been such closeness in position on major international issues, and there are no more territorial disputes.”
China and Russia, the world’s third and ninth largest economies respectively, hold two of the five permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council as well as membership in the nascent BRIC group that also includes India and Brazil.
The former enemies, who share a border more than 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles) long, broke a three-decade diplomatic deadlock in 1989 when the then Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, visited Beijing.
Mr Putin (57) is set to meet Chinese president Hu Jintao and prime minister Wen Jiabao in two days of talks, starting today. He will also attend a meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, a regional group that also includes four former Soviet republics in Central Asia.
– (Bloomberg)