China-Russia partnership based on win-win cooperation, not joint confrontation

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang arrives in Moscow on Sunday for a three-day visit to Russia aimed at further enhancing the globally significant partnership between the two neighboring giants.[Special coverage]

The China-Russia relationship, now at its highest level in history, has become a good example of stable, healthy and mature international relations based on mutually beneficial cooperation.

In Moscow, Li will hold talks with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and address a forum on innovation. The two sides are expected to sign about 50 agreements.

Li's visit follows a historic meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Putin in Shanghai in May, when the two heads of state jointly announced the arrival of a new era for the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination.

Politically, both China and Russia have put developing their partnership high on the agenda. Regular top-level mutual visits over the past 20 years have generated deep mutual trust and close personal friendship between leaders of the two nations.

With no political differences, China and Russia now focus more on practical cooperation. Bilateral trade reached 89.21 billion U.S. dollars in 2013 and China has been Russia's biggest trade partner for four consecutive years. They have also pledged to raise the volume to 100 billion dollars by 2015 and 200 billion dollars by 2020.

To that end, both sides have vowed to make substantial efforts to improve investment environment, deepen cooperation in various spheres and search for new growth points. Besides, cooperation in such areas as security, culture and people-to-people exchanges has also yielded fruitful results.

However, the win-win relationship between China and Russia, which has brought tangible benefits not only to themselves but the region and world at large, is labeled by some as a coalition against the West.

Proponents of this misconception are apparently stuck in the Cold War mentality. Their interpretation of China-Russia amity as a countermeasure to the United States' so-called pivot to Asia and the West's sanctions against Russia is fundamentally anachronistic and wrong.

In fact, China and Russia are just natural partners. Among many other reasons, they hold similar standpoints on international issues, and they each have vast resources the other needs for development.

Those fanning the anti-West theory are just prevented by their confrontational mind-set from seeing the peace and development-oriented China-Russia partnership as it is.