MOSCOW - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's visit to China would further boost the two countries' cooperation in both bilateral and global issues, a Russian expert has said.

At the invitation of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Putin will pay an official visit to China on Tuesday and Wednesday and attend the 16th regular meeting between the two countries' premiers.

President Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders will meet Putin to discuss bilateral relations and international and regional issues of common concern.

Sergei Luzyanin, deputy director of the Far East Institute of the Russian Academy of Science, told Xinhua in a recent interview that Putin's visit would first of all enhance the two nations' interaction in world issues.

"They would discuss global issues, including the situation in the Middle East. Moscow and Beijing have a similar approach to the situation in Syria," Luzyanin said.

"They secured the stabilization there by vetoing UN resolutions on Syria and preventing NATO from intervening," Luzyanin said.

Besides cooperation in the UN Security Council, Russia and China have developed important interactions within BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the G20, the expert said.

"Russia and China are equally concerned about the threats from Afghanistan such as drug trafficking and the possible overflowing of instability to Central Asian countries," he said.

The scholar also said both Moscow and Beijing are preparing for a possible second wave of the financial crisis that looms over Europe.

"The first strike of the crisis in 2009 left Russia and China with different experience," he said.

Russia and China have learnt from that experience how important the flexibility of financial regulations was and both began experiments to avoid depending too much on the volatile U.S. dollar.

"These let us believe Russia and China won't be the passive observers of the second wave of the financial crisis should it really come," Luzyanin said.

As for bilateral ties, Luzyanin said the China-Russia comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership has been currently at its best time ever, which allows the two countries to conduct various joint projects ranging from technical to cultural areas.

Luzyanin said the reciprocal years of tourism between Russia and China in 2012 and 2013 will also help strengthen bilateral ties, as tourism plays not only a cultural but an ever increasing economic role.

"In the last three years, as the number of Russian visitors to China has amounted to over 2 million, a new economic phenomenon has appeared -- some Russian business started to mushroom in China in the form of joint ventures or independent small-sized companies. I think tourism inevitably contributes to the other areas of economy," the Russian pundit said.

Luzyanin said Putin will also touch upon Russia-China trade during his visit.

Bilateral trade has been growing. The two countries have planned to further expand annual bilateral trade to 100 billion dollars in the next three years from $ 60 billion?in 2011. For Russia, it has also been trying to diversity its exports to China.

Besides trade, Putin is expected to use the visit to woo more Chinese investment.

"Putin might discuss with his Chinese hosts about cooperation on gas and oil projects, aviation, space exploration, hi-tech industry, as well as the program of co-development of Russia's Far East and China's northeast regions," the expert predicts.