Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a three-hour summit on the 20th and signed a joint statement to strengthen China-Russia cooperation. It came six days after U.S. President Donald Trump held a U.S.-China summit. The two countries jointly emphasized the need to build a multipolar international order while checking the U.S.-centric order and unilateralism, and Putin promised China "uninterrupted energy supplies."
According to China's state-run Xinhua News Agency, TASS, and Agence France-Presse, the two leaders said this at a joint news conference in the afternoon. Xi said, "The two countries jointly signed a joint statement to strengthen comprehensive strategic cooperation and deepen good-neighborly and friendly cooperation, and a number of important bilateral cooperation documents were concluded." He added that they would also announce a joint statement on promoting a multipolar world and new international relations.
Emphasizing the building of political trust and mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries, Xi said, "The scale of bilateral trade has surpassed $200 billion (about 301 trillion won) for three consecutive years, and trade from January to April this year also increased by about 20%," and added, "We should deepen the alignment between China's '15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030)' and Russia's development strategy before 2030 to advance cooperation in each field."
He went on to stress the need to build a multipolar international order. Xi said, "The world faces the grave harm of unilateralism and hegemonism, and the international community is at risk of returning to the law of the jungle," adding, "We should oppose all forms of unilateral bullying and retrogression of history." He added, "We oppose provocations that deny the achievements of the victory of World War II or seek to glorify or restore fascism and militarism."
Putin promised uninterrupted energy supplies to China. Putin said, "Russia and China are actively cooperating in the energy sector," adding, "Russia is one of the countries that exports the most oil, natural gas, and coal to China, and we are ready to supply all these fuels to the rapidly growing Chinese market in a stable and uninterrupted manner."
Regarding the schedule for the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline project, which was expected to fully resume on the occasion of the summit, Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, "Nothing has been finalized yet," adding, "We need to coordinate the details, but an overall agreement has already been reached."
They also mentioned expanding settlements in their own currencies to check the dominance of the dollar. Putin said, "We have built a stable system of mutual trade protected from external influences and negative trends in the global market," adding, "In fact, almost all Russian-Chinese import and export transactions are conducted in rubles and yuan."
Meanwhile, China plans to extend its visa-free policy for Russian nationals until Dec. 31 next year. Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Guo Jiakun said at a regular briefing in the afternoon that it was "to further activate people-to-people exchanges between China and Russia."