Xi, top Russian legislator vow to enhance ties

MOSCOW - Visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping met Chairman of Russia's State Duma Sergei Naryshkin here Saturday on ways to advance inter-parliamentary relations between the two countries.

Xi said the successful formation of the new leadership of China's National People's Congress recently would be a new starting point for enhancing exchanges and cooperation between the legislatures of the two countries and for deepening the sharing of law-making and state-governing experience.

He also proposes expanding exchanges at different levels of the legislatures and exchanges between friendship groups, particularly exchanges between young deputies and legislators so that they could learn from each other.

Xi said that the Communist Party of China has established exchange mechanisms with all political parties in the State Duma, and that the Chinese side is willing to strengthen party-to-party exchanges.

He also expressed the belief that the State Duma would actively support and promote the consensus on bilateral mega-project cooperation reached by Russian President Vladimir Putin and himself during the visit, and provide strong legal guarantees accordingly.

Xi said the two sides need to cooperate closely at a time when the global situation is undergoing profound and complex changes. The China-Russia comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership is built on a sound basis and the two sides should deepen it as they increasingly need each other, he said.

For his part, Naryshkin said Russia and China share identical views on the international order and other major issues and that Russia attaches great importance to its comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership with China.

He noted that President Xi's current visit to Russia had yielded fruitful results as the two sides had signed several deals of cooperation and cemented the basis of bilateral ties.

Naryshkin said all the parties of the State Duma have high consensus on developing Russia-China relations, firmly support bilateral cooperation and hope to continue to enhance friendly exchanges between the legislatures and between the political parties of the two countries.

President Xi arrived in Moscow on Friday for a state visit to Russia, the first leg of his maiden foreign trip since he took office last week.

On Friday, Xi held talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and attended, together with Putin, the opening ceremony of the "Tourism Year of China" in Russia.