Chinese President says will align with Russia in global affairs

February 3, 2015, 10:10 am

Even as Washington and its allies intensified their harsh rhetoric against Moscow, Chinese President Xi Jinping has vowed that Beijing will step up cooperation in global affairs with Moscow in 2015.

Xi said China will aid Russia in preparing for the BRICS Summit in the Russian city of Ufa in July where the two nations will jointly maintain emerging economies’ interests and promote global economic governance reform.

Xi met visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday in Beijing.

The leaders of five of the world’s largest emerging markets are showcasing a new $100 billion currency reserve fund and $100 development bank. The BRICS have evolved from the original term coined in 2001 by then-Goldman Sachs Group Inc. economist Jim O’Neill to describe the growing weight of the largest emerging markets in the global economy.

Meanwhile, Chinese and Russian officials are preparing to jointly commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII this year.

They should use it to “celebrate the historic contribution the two countries, as main battlefields in the east and west, made in the war, and to maintain postwar peace and security”, Xi told Lavrov.

US President Barack Obama said in December that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not change his “nationalist, backward-looking” policy until the full force of economic sanctions against Moscow hit home.

Military tensions between NATO and Moscow have escalated steadily since April, when the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea reunited with the Russian Federation following a referendum a month earlier.

The United States accuses Russia of arming and supporting pro-Russian forces fighting in the predominantly Russian-speaking areas in eastern Ukraine. Moscow calls the accusations “groundless.”

Meanwhile, on Monday, Lavrov said “cooperation between Russia and China is important for the world’s peace and stability”.

Lavrov is in Beijing for a regular trilateral meeting among the foreign ministers of China, Russia and India.

TBP and Agencies