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Vladimir Putin: The objective of our visit to the People’s Republic of China is to reaffirm the friendliness of the relations between our two countries that was achieved through the joint efforts of the first Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, and Chinese leader Jiang Zemin. We assign importance not just to reaffirming the friendliness and special nature of our relations based on trust but also to outlining the prospects for the development of ties between our two countries for a long time to come. We intend to develop our relations by coordinating efforts on the world stage to tackle security, economic and regional cooperation problems. It is no coincidence that our delegation consists of Russian regional leaders who have established direct contacts with a number of Chinese provinces.

The Chinese leader calculated that we have had four meetings in the last six months. I consider it important that this time the Chinese leadership has given us an opportunity to meet and discuss in person inter-governmental issues with other Chinese officials, the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, Chairman of the State Council and a number of prominent politicians from the People’s Republic of China.

I’d like to highlight the progress we have made in the initial stage of our work, and I am very thankful to our Chinese colleagues for the friendly atmosphere of our talks.

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I believe Russia and China can make a significant contribution to the strengthening of international security. We share the same position on maintaining the existing world balance, which has been vital to securing the situation in which the world community finds itself today. Our Chinese colleagues and we intend to reaffirm this position and strengthen it during our work.

We intend to develop our economic and military-technical partnership and cooperate in the fields of energy, construction, aviation and space. Today, the Chinese leader told me a popular Chinese proverb that says that your neighbour is more important than a distant relative. We share that approach and believe we will be successful because both the Chinese and Russian people are interested in reaching the objectives we are working towards.