On June 30, the Russian-Chinese Friendship Society (RCFS) together with the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of China and Contemporary Asia held a grand meeting devoted to the 22th anniversary of the Russia-China Treaty of Good-Neighbourliness. It was held in the RCFS assembly hall. With a blessing of the chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations, Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk, the event was attend by Hieromonk Kirill (Peregudin), a staff member of the DECR secretariat for the affairs of the diaspora.
The treaty was signed on 16 July 2001 in the Kremlin by Russia’s President V. V. Putin and President of the People’s Republic of China Jiang Zemin to become a program document defining the development of China-Russia relations in the new age. On 28 June 2021, President Putin and President Xi Jinping, during their video-conference, made a joint statement officially declaring the prolongation of the Treaty.
The grand meeting was opened by RCFS chairnan and first deputy speaker of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly I.I. Melnikov who pointed to the special features of the Russia-China friendship as ‘in their cooperation there are no forbidden zones and the strengthening of bilateral strategic interaction is not aimed against third countries and is not prone to the influence of the changeable international environment and situational changes in third countries’.
In his speech, the Minister Plenipotentiary of the PRC in Russia, Mr. Sun Weidong, stated, ‘the Chinese side is satisfied with the dynamic development of the Chinese-Russian relations and is full of confidence in its prospects. The Chinese side welcomes the readiness of departments, analytical centers and scientists in the two countries to foster exchanges and cooperation, to make proposals for developing China-Russia relations, perfecting the global control and struggling with hegemony and encourages their efforts to give a new breath to the Treaty’.
The key report to the grand meeting was made by K.B. Babayev, director of the Institute of China and Contemporary Asia and vice-chairman of the RCFS. He summed up the current developments and analysed the present state of the bilateral dialogue noting, ‘The Treaty has not only restored the suspended basic legal basis of the bilateral relations (it was suspended in 1980 after the 1950 Soviet-Chinese Treaty expired) but laid it down for many years ahead. The undoubted value of this Treaty is its comprehensive, integrated nature, its coverage of actually every sphere of bilateral interaction. As the developments of the year have shown, the Russia-China relations based on the provisions of the bigtime Treaty and creatively developing them continue strengthening and moving forward’. The Treaty, he said, presented to the whole world a new model of bilateral relationships between the two great powers as it is based on justice and equal rights, respect for the sovereignty and each other’s traditional values, on the de-ideologized approach to the each other’s cultures and government systems. ‘It is difficult to image now that the two once largest powers of the communist block teach the whole world a de-ideologized notion of international relations. Today, precisely Russia and China give an example of how relations between two major countries are built without any influence from ideology, with full respect for each other’s traditions and history’.
The assembly was also addressed by the deputy director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs First Asia Department, V.V. Fadeyev. He stressed that the adoption of the Treaty also helped to deepen the cultural and humanitarian contacts: ‘Now they are actively restored amid the uplifting of sanitary-quarantine restrictions in China. Work is underway on a Roadmap for broadening the bilateral humanitarian cooperation. A key contribution to it is made by institutes of ‘people’s diplomacy’ with the prior role belonging to friendship societies and the Committee of Peace, Friendship and Development created at the initiative of the leaders of the two countries’.
Along with leaders of national and regional friendships societies and the Institutes of China and Contemporary Asia, the meeting was attended by Russian and Chinese students of the Moscow State Lomonosov University, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and representatives of the Russian mass media. From the Chinese side the event was attended by representatives of the Chinese Embassy and Chinese organizations working in Moscow.
