Beijing, Moscow call for building multipolar world - China FM.

20/9 Tass 65

BEIJING, September 20 (Itar-Tass) - Russia and China have common
approaches to and views on the development of the modern international
architecture, Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Cheng Guoping said at a
press conference devoted to RF President Dmitry Medvedev's forthcoming
visit to China.
"China and Russia are important strategic partners. We successfully
develop not only bilateral cooperation, but also interaction on important
international problems," the diplomat said. Beijing and Moscow "call for
the building of a multipolar world, as well as for the development of a
just and harmonious world," he stressed. "Both countries are against any
state or country establishing their hegemony in the world and settling
problems with the use of force," Cheng noted.
He added that thanks to their close interaction Russia and China are
playing an important role in the settlement of such important
international problems as the settlement of the situation around the
Iranian and North Korean nuclear programmes, as well as in the settlement
of the Afghan problem.
China and Russia first came into direct contact about 1640 in far
eastern Siberia. From 1640 to 1729 they gradually worked out tenuous but
stable diplomatic and commercial relations (for example the Treaties of
Nerchinsk and Kyakhta). Their relations became a serious problem after
1858 when Russia annexed the Amur River basin and Vladivostok. The People'
s Republic of China and the Russian Federation currently maintain close
and cordial diplomatic relations, strong geopolitical and regional
cooperation, and significant levels of trade.
In 2001, the close relations between the two countries were formalised
with the Treaty of Good-Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation, a
twenty-year strategic, economic, and arguably an implicit military treaty.
A month before the treaty was signed, the two countries joined with junior
partners Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in the Shanghai
Cooperation Organisation (SCO). The PRC is currently a major Russian
customer of imports needed to modernise the People's Liberation Army, and
the foremost benefactor of the under construction Russian Eastern Siberia
- Pacific Ocean (ESPO) oil pipeline.
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