A genuine bilateral relationship
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Over the past two decades, Sino-Russian summits have become the norm. Good relations with Beijing are one of the major and most valued assets of Moscow's foreign policy today. China ranks, along with the United States and the European Union, among Russia's most important partners. Sino-Russian relationship is based on the principles of reciprocal respect, sovereign equality and mutual benefit. This is nothing short of a small miracle. Moscow and Beijing have established this formula and have been living up to it, even as China's power steadily increased and Russia faced enormous difficulties after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev's visit to China is likely to promote further this pragmatic course, at the heart of which is economic exchange - especially energy.
Even though the price of Russian natural gas remains a sticky issue for China, Gazprom is hopeful that by 2015 it will start exporting gas to China. If built, the capacity of the "Altai" pipeline will be comparable to Russia's North and South Streams to Europe. Rosneft will begin exporting oil to China through a spur in its new East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline from next year and will enter into a joint venture with China National Petroleum Corporation to build an oil refinery in Tianjin, the biggest Sino-Russian project so far.
Besides, Lukoil, Russia's leading privately owned energy company, plans to pump gas to western China from its Uzbek gas fields. Because of these and other moves, Russian energy exports, until recently almost exclusively directed toward Europe, will become diversified, and China's fast-growing economy will get access to its neighbor's vast oil and gas resources.
China has emerged as a self-confident Asian and global player, and Russia lays great stock on cooperating with it on regional security issues. The importance of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will probably rise in the near future, and it could help resolve the terrorism issues in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and disentangle the mess over the Iranian nuclear issue. The situation in Central Asia, from the Ferghana Valley to the Pamir Mountains, also calls for closer coordination between Moscow and Beijing.
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