Beijing talks: Xi Jinping raises Russia-China trade targets

Chinese President Xi Jinping set a new goal to increase trade volume between Russia and China to $250 billion a year; despite the ambitious nature of this goal, Moscow will be able to cope with it, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the President of the Russian Federation told reporters following the talks between the leaders of the two countries.

Earlier, the leaders of Russia and China have set the goal of doubling the trade turnover between the two countries - to bring it from $100 billion a year to $200 billion by 2024. The 100 billion mark was reached in 2018.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping during a meeting in Beijing - RIA Novosti, 1920, 04.02.2022
4 of February, 12:09
Putin and Xi Jinping sign a statement on international relations
On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin is in Beijing, where Russian-Chinese talks were held before the Olympic Games opening ceremony.
"President Xi has already set a new goal for us - $250 billion. For China, this figure is not that big, but for us it is really a very ambitious goal," Peskov told reporters following the meeting of two leaders. He recalled that the trade volume between Russia and China in 2021 had amounted to $140 billion. The previous landmark the countries were striving for was 200 billion.

The presidential spokesman said that "250 billion is quite a realistic figure, given the current pattern of the bilateral relations development." He also drew attention to the document that had been signed as a result of the talks - a joint statement by the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Commerce of the PRC on the completion of work on the development of a roadmap for the high-quality development of Russian-Chinese trade in goods and services.

Peskov emphasized that the roadmap implementation would not only boost the volume and scale of trade, but would also help improve its structure and identify new areas of cooperation. He added that the trade turnover diversification is extremely important in terms of the countries reaching completely new levels of trade interaction.
Source: ria.ru