Center

Sino-Russian business ties

By Bian Ji (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-06-17 08:57

More than 10,000 business people from over 80 countries and regions in the world took part in the 17th China Harbin International Fair for Trade and Economic Co-operation (CHTF), which started from Thursday in Harbin, capital of Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

The fair is the largest regional economic and trade fair targeting the Fast East region of Russia.

This year's fair opened under the backdrop of the Year of Russia 2006 in China and thus shouldered many key activities between the two countries.

As a comprehensive fair, it incorporates business activities, meetings and forums, projects promotion, technological co-operation as well as cultural exchanges during its five-day schedule.

The first Russian-Chinese bilingual website in Chinawww.partnery.cn, kicked off its operation during the event.

The website is approved by the Information Office of the State Council and the Heilongjiang Government and is operated bywww.northeast.cn.

It aims to introduce the situation of politics, economy, history, culture and customs in China to Russia and also shoulders the responsibilities to release the economic and trade, technological and tourism information.

"CHTF has already become a bridge and important platform for the economic, trade and technological co-operations between China and Russia as well as Northeast Asia," said Qian Yunlu, secretary of the Heilongjiang Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the "Russian Business Day," a key component of the fair on Thursday, Kamil Itskhakov, presidential envoy in the Russian Far East, said the CHTF provided a good opportunity for business people as well as government officials to communicate on future co-operation.

And this year, more than 500 business people and government officials from the Russian Far East regions came to the fair, bringing about 100 projects to seek potential partners in China, he said.

Many of the projects are in the fields of development of natural resources.

"The Far East regions abound in natural resources, the two countries have huge potential in future co-operation in this field," he said.

Itskhakov is upbeat about the two countries' goal to achieve a bilateral trade volume of US$60 billion by the year 2010.

"Co-operation fields between the two countries keeps expanding and the latest trend is regional co-operation under the support from the national-level authorities," he said.

At the end of the "Russian Business Day," business people from Heilongjiang Province and Russian Far East regions, signed 32 contracts with the total contractual volume reaching more than US$2.48 billion.

The contracts covered machinery and electronics manufacturing, forestry, minerals and energy industries.