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CHINESE President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin sent congratulatory messages yesterday to mark the inaugural semester of Shenzhen MSU-BIT University, the first joint Sino-Russian university.

Xi said education is a major impetus for the development of a country and a key bond to promote exchanges between different peoples.

There have been close contacts between universities from both countries in recent years as China and Russia undertook in-depth cooperation in education, said Xi, adding that the cooperation had played a positive role in promoting mutual understanding between the two peoples as well as the development of the Sino-Russian comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination.

“Under an agreement reached by President Putin and I, the establishment of Sino-Russian Shenzhen MSU-BIT University is an important achievement in bilateral cultural and people-to-people exchanges and is of great demonstration significance,” Xi said in his message.

He encouraged education officials and teachers from both countries to look to each other’s advantages and the potential for cooperation to speed up future development of the university, build a high-level university and train top-quality talent, thus contributing to Sino-Russian educational cooperation and bilateral friendship.

Educational cooperation is a key component of the Russia-China strategic partnership, Putin said in his message. Direct contact between universities in both countries has expanded year by year; the scale of student exchanges has been improved and high school students from both countries now have a tradition of holidays in the other country’s national resorts.

He said the Russia-China university, founded on the basis of two well-known universities from Beijing and Moscow, will further enhance friendship and understanding between the two peoples and that graduates from the university will become sought after in Russia, China and around the world.

Shenzhen MSU-BIT University, in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, is a university jointly founded by the Shenzhen government, the Beijing Institute of Technology and Russia’s Lomonosov Moscow State University.