China-Russia think tanks work to break economic cooperation bottlenecks

A report jointly written by a Chinese and Russian think tanks said that the current China-Russia Economic cooperation has "six bottlenecks", proposing the two countries should continuously optimize the business environment and create better conditions for economic cooperation between both countries.

The report, Sino-Russian Economic Cooperation Assessment and Prospect: Shared Opinions, which was released on Monday in Beijing, was jointly written by the Russian president consultant team led by Sergey Glaziev, the counselor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the Chinese think tank Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China (RDCY).

It said that the current bottlenecks and problems in China and Russia are small scale and single structure in trade and investment, uneven economic and trade development, limitations in cooperation mode, insufficient market exploration, trade barriers in many industries and the high cost of green finance.

To tackle the problems, the report proposes some solutions, which are deepening political mutual trust; increasing the scale of cooperation in trade, finance and investment; continuing to foster the synergy of the Eurasian Economic Union and the Belt and Road Initiative; boosting scientific and technological cooperation; exploring new potential for e-commerce cooperation and actively carrying out exchanges between think tanks and the private sector.

Wang Wen, executive dean of the RDCY, said China-Russia relations are currently in the "best period of history". They have long maintained a high level of cooperation and are regarded as a model for great-power cooperation, and the two countries are both faced with similar historic missions, he said.

Wang said the RDCY and the Russian team carried out a comprehensive analysis and diagnosis of the cooperation between China and Russia to deepen the comprehensive cooperation between the two, enhance the cultural and economic exchanges, and achieve common prosperity and national revival.

Sergey Glaziev said regarding multilateral and major international issues, China and Russia take similar stances of opposing hegemonism and actively safeguarding the stability of the international community. In maintaining national and regional stability, the two countries have strong strategic trust in each other, and made active cooperation, much of which is through institutional cooperation, such as SCO, BRICS and others.

He said with the promotion of the joint cooperation between the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Eurasian Economic Union, the two countries have made breakthroughs in the areas of economy, society and the humanities, resulting in improvement of relations.

He also suggested that China and Russia should deepen people-to-people exchanges and run a series of exchange activities, such as "China Year", "Year of Russia", "Year of Tourism", "Year of Language", "Youth Friendly Exchange Year" and so on, so as to enhance mutual trust among the two peoples.