China and Russia hitting new heights

Cooperation between China and Russia is advancing smoothly, as can been seen by the increase in high-level contact since 2013.

Thursday' s meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, ahead of the 14th summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan, is their fourth this year. Xi has held talks or met with Putin nine times since becoming China's President in March 2013.

Energy cooperation has been the highlight of China-Russian relations. A China-Russia oil pipeline is already pumping oil into China. In May, Xi and Putin put the final touches to a new energy partnership and made substantial progress on the China-Russia East Route natural gas pipeline.

Construction of the Russian part of the pipeline started in eastern Siberia this month. The pipeline will take years to complete, but from 2018, some 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas will reach China every year.

Energy cooperation is not just about oil and gas. In 2013, China imported 24.4 million tons of crude, 27.3 million tons of coal and 3.5 billion kwh of power from Russia.

Alongside successful energy cooperation, there is a fresh impetus in financial areas. China is the fourth-largest source of investment for Russia. Last year, direct investment in Russia hit 4 billion dollars, five times the amount in 2012.

On the horizon are specific plans for joint endeavors in high-speed rail and satellite navigation, with other large-scale projects-- development of a long-range wide-body passenger jet and heavy-lift helicopter, for example--preparing for take-off.

On the trade front, China has been the number one partner of Russia for the past four years. Two-way trade reached 89.2 billion U.S. dollars last year, and plans are afoot to raise the volume to 100 billion dollars by 2015 and 200 billion dollars by 2020.

People-to-people exchange is also on the up. More than 1 million Chinese tourists visited Russia last year, second only to Germans, and in the first quarter of this year, the number of Chinese visitors surpassed even that of Germany.

Keeping up this progress not only benefits the two nations, but can only be positive for world peace and development.