Русский
Vladimir Putin has met with Xi Jinping, the Chinese President, at the BRICS Summit in Kazan.
This is what they had to say:
Putin:
“Chinese comrades and friends,
I extend a warm welcome to all of you here in Russia, particularly in the Republic of Tatarstan, in Kazan, the capital of the Republic. This region is distinctive, fascinating, and rapidly developing within our nation. The people of this region, known for their industriousness and talent, can indeed take pride in their significant achievements and developmental progress.
I would like to extend my personal congratulations once again to you, my dear friend, to all our Chinese friends, and to the amicable Chinese people, on the recently celebrated anniversaries. I refer to the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and the establishment of diplomatic relations between our countries.
Over the past 75 years, Russian-Chinese relations have attained the level of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation. We can assert with complete confidence that these relations have become a paradigm of how inter-state relations should be constructed in the modern world. Our multifaceted cooperation is characterised by equality, mutual benefit, and an absolutely non-conformist nature.
After last year’s record in mutual trade, Russia and China have maintained dynamic economic growth and economic interaction despite the negative external impact. According to our data, bilateral trade increased by 4.5% in January-August. Chinese statistics are slightly different, but on the whole, the positive trend persists.
The agreements reached at our talks in Beijing in May and the meeting on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Astana are being consistently implemented. We are successfully executing joint projects in energy, industry, high technology, transportation, agriculture and many other domains.
A new logistics centre has been built here in Tatarstan, named after Deng Xiaoping. This centre facilitates cargo transportation between our countries.
Humanitarian ties are also growing stronger, and cultural events are taking place as part of cross-year programmes. A total of 40 such events are planned on both sides. Mutual tourist flows, sports and educational exchanges are growing as well. As I was getting about the Kremlin yesterday, I saw large groups of Chinese tourists right there, in the heart of Russia, at the Kremlin in Moscow, as has been invariably the case in recent months and years.
Russian-Chinese cooperation in global affairs is one of the main stabilising factors in the international arena. We intend to further expand coordination at all multilateral platforms to ensure global security and promote a fairer world order.
We value the traditionally high level of Russia-China cooperation within BRICS. Over the years of our joint work, the group’s influence and prestige has considerably grown. We intend to further strengthen that entity, and we did everything we could in this regard while Russia was chairing it.
I am glad of this opportunity to meet with you before the summit, to make sure we are on the same page and discuss the bilateral agenda and international issues.”
Xi:
“Mr President, my dear old friend,
I was delighted to receive your invitation to come to the ancient city of Kazan to attend the 16th BRICS Summit. This is our third meeting this year. The BRICS Summit is taking place in Kazan, and I learnt a lot about this city. I know that this summit is of great importance. I found out that, 400 years ago, the Great Tea Road, which connected our countries, also passed through Kazan. Chinese Wuyi tea was brought to Russia via this route.
At the beginning of this month, we exchanged congratulations on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of our diplomatic relations. Over the past decades, China-Russia relations have withstood the test of a changing international situation, come a long way and acquired an unprecedented character. We have taken the right path of building relations between great powers on the principles of non-alignment, non-confrontation, and non-direction against third parties.
In this new era, you and I always pay greater attention to bilateral relations and monitor them personally.
Both countries are committed to the spirit of eternal good-neighbourliness and friendship, as well as comprehensive strategic interaction and mutually beneficial cooperation, and constantly enhance and expand multifaceted strategic interaction and practical cooperation in all areas, thereby giving a powerful boost to national revival and modernisation, making a major contribution to the well-being of the two nations and the protection of international justice.
During this unprecedent tectonic transformation, unseen for centuries, the international situation is undergoing serious changes and upheavals. However, this cannot shake my conviction that the strategic choice of the two countries in favour of firm mutual support, the deep centuries-old friendship between our countries, and China and Russia’s sense of duty as great powers are inviolable.
BRICS is perhaps one of the most important platforms to consolidate the broad developing world and emerging market countries. It is a system-forming factor in the creation of equal, orderly multipolarity and generally accessible inclusive economic globalisation.
The BRICS Summit will be crucial for the promotion of cooperation within the greater BRICS. We appreciate the enormous work done by Russia as part of its chairmanship, which has largely facilitated the successful beginning of cooperation within the greater BRICS. We praise it.
I look forward to a substantive discussion with my BRICS colleagues, first and foremost with you, on further development of our association, which will allow us to consolidate our positions and send a positive signal of solidarity and cooperation, but also to expand large-scale strategic interaction and practical cooperation within the group, hence opening up additional opportunities for the Global South countries and making a greater contribution to the cause of building a community of common destiny for humanity.”
Analysis & Implications
There is a great deal of warmth in the personal relationship between Putin and Xi, which your informant can personally judge for having seen them together on stage at previous bilateral events. Putin, for example, will often play the piano and Xi sing old Soviet-era songs (Xi’s wife was a popular singer). I have also seen them crack jokes. These are glimpses of a partnership that goes beyond purely practical matters and are rarely seen in the public eye. The warmth of this can be seen in their mutual address: “My dear old friend” for example.
We have extensively covered Russia-China bilateral at Russia’s Pivot to Asia over the year, with our most recent detailed analysis being the Russian Foreign Minister’s comments concerning geopolitical relations just two weeks ago. That can be viewed here and contains details of some of the joint projects Russia and China are involved in.
Bilateral trade is expected to reach about US$240 billion this year, although the level of growth has been hampered by trade finance interference caused by Western sanctions. However, this means that while 2024 trade levels of 4.5% have been achieved, were solutions found, bilateral trade growth would in fact be far higher. Those solutions are on the horizon and potentially viable from mid-2025 and certainly by 2026. The unnatural depression created by Western sanctions can be mitigated against, suggesting a growth rebound could also shortly occur.
There are three main factors suggesting this is the case. First, Russia changed its banking laws in August to permit, for the first time since the Imperial era, foreign bank branches to actively trade in Russia. Chinese banks have expressed interest in this, as we described here. What is really interesting about this is that the banks concerned are not major banks. They are smaller, regional banks, with little to no international exposure. This means that any Western sanctions would prove ineffective against them, and they are subsequently likely to be repositioned to focus purely on Russia-China trade services in Ruble and RMB Yuan and nothing else. There are several smaller Chinese banks that could fulfil this role, with connectivity being based on SPFS/CIPS financial settlement systems.
Secondly, the BRICS Pay platform is now up and running, all that is now required is a national roll out in both Russia and other participating countries. It will take time to physically get the system into banks and retailers, however the platform exists and is operational. It is only a matter of time before BRICS Pay – which completely avoids the SWIFT payment system but offers a similar, even better (faster and less expensive) service – becomes commercially available.
Both Putin and Xi know these advances are coming. As a result, Russia and China have been heavily involved in infrastructure development, being the third dynamic. There are a plethora of projects in hand, from River Transport Connectivity to cross-border Free Trade Zones, new cross-border Bridges, the development of key Russian cities such as Omsk as China logistics centres and the expansion of border crossings to expand capacity.
These are just a handful. In addition there are other infrastructure projects involving third party countries such as Mongolia and Kazakhstan also designed to improve connectivity and expand trade capacity.
This has not been discussed much by the usual Belt & Road Initiative analysts (many of which are European based and may be under political pressure not to research the subject) but Russia has probably been the largest recipient of Chinese outbound investment in 2024. The reason behind these projects – and there are many others – is because both Russia and China are preparing for even larger volumes of trade. If the technical innovations kick in and prove workable, it is not implausible that Russia-China bilateral trade could push towards US$500 billion by 2030.
Further Reading
Putin – 2025 Economic Growth to be in Russia, China, India and Saudi Arabia
