| Russia’s economic and trade ties with China can be traced back to the13th-14th century. As China evolved from a feudal society to Old China and finally to the People’s Republic of China in1949, and the Tsarist Russia evolved to the Soviet Union and finally collapsed in1991, the two nations have experienced a time-honored history of economic and trade cooperation. Although they went through several tough periods, the bilateral economic and trade cooperation has seen steady development in the last two decades, and the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership keeps making progress. In the past two decades, the international situation kept changing and Russia experienced large changes and transformations. Facing the complicated and changing international and domestic situations, China and Russia have been trying their best to eliminate various distractions and difficulties.China and Russia are both huge political and economic powers around the world. The current political situation is relatively stable; the economic and trade cooperation is deepened between the two countries; bilateral trade volume keeps increasing (According to Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, the trade volume between China and Russia increased from3.90billion US dollars in1991to75.09US billion dollars in2012and68.33US billion dollars in2013. Besides, the growth rate of the bilateral trade volume also mainly stayed stable.); bilateral foreign investment also sees a good development trend. The thousands-of-meter border line between the two countries offers the bilateral economic and trade cooperation a unique geographical advantage. The two countries share more than twenty ports, including road and railroad ports, planned cooperation zones and trade zones. China and Russia share a long history of regional economic cooperation, which brought great opportunities for the revitalization of northeast old industrial base in China and the economic and trade development of Russian Far East area. With the development of foreign trade and the deepening of regional integration, both sides have broader resources and space to allocate and utilize them. This plays an essential role in improving bilateral relations and developing economy in both countries. Both sides should take advantage of the exceptional condition of geographical position in order to build a broader trade development platform for both sides. Besides, political exchanges and cooperation between the two countries also make great achievements through visits between top leaders and the establishment of the new cooperation mechanism. Economic advantages also cannot be ignored. After Putin took office, he continued to promote the development of bilateral relations and in2001; the two sides signed "the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation" and proposed the establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization together. Since the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, political relations between China and Russia have stayed a good development momentum and achieved an unprecedented high level. Now, the two countries are the most important strategic partners for each other and have both put great emphasis on diplomatic construction with each other. Economic complementarity has always been the basis of the economic and trade cooperation between the two countries, especially in the field of energy cooperation in recent years. The increasing amount of GDP of both countries contributes to better trade and investment environment, which ensures further economic and trade cooperation space. In recent years, China has maintained a healthy, stable and rapid economic growth and expanded foreign economic cooperation and potential investment, making itself the largest potential market in the world. This is the important basis for the development of economic and trade cooperation between China and Russia. Russia has rich resources, a solid foundation of science and technology and high-quality human resources. The bilateral economic and trade cooperation between China and Russia is largely depends on recovery rate of Russia’s economy. China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s president Vladimir Putin witnessed the signing of a long-delayed$400billion natural gas deal on Wednesday, after more than ten years of negotiations-at the end of Putin’s two-day visit to Shanghai. The volume of this deal is almost two times as large as that in May,2014. With Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization in2012, foreign trade laws and regulations between the two countries have also been improved, which will effectively reduce trade frictions.The political and economic cooperation between China and Russia has made great process after the normalization of bilateral relations in1989, but there are still some problems to tackle. The trade structure between the two countries is relatively limited, especially the exports from Russia to China. Also, the level of commodities is relatively low, lagged behind by that of Sino-American, Sino-Japanese and Sino-Europe Union trade. Among all the products exported to Russia from China, a vast majority of them have been labor-intensive products such as textiles and clothing, footwear, household appliances and other consumer goods. By contrast, due to the limitation of its industrial structure Russia’s exports to China are mainly raw materials and resource products, the proportions of high-tech products and mechanical and electrical products have been kept falling. From the import and export data, it is particularly clear that China has been in a state of trade deficit and there is an obvious imbalance in the economic and trade cooperation between the two countries. Moreover, although Russia has joined the WTO, its legal system is still keeping pace with the international level. So, the imperfect trade system cannot provide the economic and trade cooperation between China and Russia with a system guarantee. Because of the problems like trade barriers, defaulted debts, the interests of companies from both sides were influenced. A lack of comprehensive legal system especially in foreign trade has a negative effect on the economic and trade cooperation.Therefore, how to utilize the existing advantages and deal with the major problems in economic and trade cooperation is what both Chinese and Russian scholars are faced with. Through analyzing the history of Sino-Russian economic and trade cooperation, especially the period after the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, and foreign trade data in the past twenty years, this paper briefly discusses the advantages and existing problems in development of trade and trade cooperation between the two countries and gives corresponding solutions. Within the trade structure of Sino-Russian trade is mainly made up of the second industry, it is mainly made up of the second industry while the tertiary industry only represented a small proportion. At present, the tertiary industry is a major force in the consumption of Russian market. There is a strong need for the tertiary industry. So, China’s current export structure needs to be transformed in order to keep close pace with the development of the Russian economy and the rising living standard of Russians. This kind of needs is a great opportunity and provides a solid foundation for China to enter the Russian market, but Chinese enterprises also should prepare themselves for this opportunity. Expanding areas of cooperation is a major way to maintain sustainable and stable development of Sino-Russian economic and trade relations and improve the level of cooperation. In recent years, the two countries have been actively exploring and opening up new areas of cooperation, and have made certain progress in large projects cooperation. China and Russia are both in the process of transition, in the aspect of bilateral economic and trade cooperation, it is not only necessary, but also is a must to give full play to the government’s guidance and policy impetus. Strengthening port management and promote orderly economic and trade relations will be one of the most significant fields for the two governments. The high-level meeting mechanism between China and Russia has been established for more than a decade. There are several meetings between heads of state and the prime ministers of the two countries, to discuss issues of mutual concern. The two countries agree that the current relation between the two countries is the best in all history. The focus of the cooperation between the two sides is gradually move from political security to economic and trade cooperation. The two sides are trying to largely increase the total amount of trade and investment. After planning, the two parties are facing the practice phase. Finally, Before Russia’s accession into the WTO, in order to jointly build normative trade system between China and Russia, the two countries faced a lot of difficulties with only one of them as a member of the WTO. After Russia’s accession into the WTO in2012, the two countries are under the same foreign trade system framework, including most-favored-nation treatment, national treatment principle, transparency principle, free trade principle and the principle of fair competition, etc.By using the method of analyzing literature and empirical analysis, this paper collected the contemporary Chinese and foreign academic works and thesis on the economic and trade relations between China and Russia. The main focus is put on collecting documents, reports, explanations of policies and researches issued by the Russian federal government and relevant research institutions; collected and analyzed the data about export commodity structure of both countries in the past decade, especially the commodity composition of Russian imports from China and the commodity composition of Russian exports to China (both listed by chapter according to the HS codes) in the year of2013, trade balance and trade deficit of the two countries since2007, and the GDP amount of both countries. On the basis of existing researches and analysis, this paper innovates in the following aspects. Firstly, the economic and trade cooperation between China and Russia is seen as the research object, and conducts systematic and comprehensive analysis summaries on the history of economic and trade cooperation, the present development situation, various advantages the two sides share, problems existing in the development and offers solutions on those specific major problems. Also, through analyzing the latest information and data and intergrading theories with practices, the research in this paper is more specific and persuasive. |
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