It is not an easy job to govern China, I am aware of that. There are crises and emergencies all the time, we might not even be aware of some. But I am afraid we'll have to wait and observe precisely what the government is up to.
It is not an easy job to govern China, I am aware of that.
Any politician who respects China's government should tell it openly what is in his heart. It is disrespectful to keep quiet about such issues - both vis-a-vis the government and the people concerned.
China is at a different stage of development, human rights are violated here much more often. And still, we see improvements even here.
We should use this public sphere and redefine - beyond China's borders - what a government is allowed to do, where its powers end and where the realm of a citizen's privacy begins.
At the moment about 350,000 students return to China from abroad each year - 350,000 young and educated people. I know about them because they know me and often ask me in the street if they can take a selfie with me. These folks are creative and ironic, and the government can ultimately not control what is going on in their heads.
Even if there have been setbacks during these past years, China is changing. China's society is opening.
The leadership knows that you cannot solve the issues of China's future with the means of the past. The demographic consequences of the one-child policy, the build-up of the welfare state, the jobs for 7 million university graduates every year, the immense corruption: Even some Western governments would have to scramble to find solutions to such problems.
In China, we don't have any contemporary art museums. Until a few years ago, we didn't even have a gallery.
People are tired of working longer hours for lower wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not being able to afford a college education for their kids - all while the very rich become much richer.
Of course, no state accepts [that it should call] the people it is imprisoning or detaining for political reasons, political prisoners. They don't call them political prisoners in China, they don't call them political prisoners in Azerbaijan and they don't call them political prisoners in the United States, U.K. or Sweden; it is absolutely intolerable to have that kind of self-perception.
We conducted talks on border issues with our friends in the People's Republic of China for 40 years. There were also issues related to specific territories.
Now we characterise Russian-Chinese relations as a strategic partnership, even a special strategic partnership. We have never had such a level of trust with China before. China is our major trade and economic partner among foreign states. We implement joint multi-billion projects. We cooperate not only within the UN Security Council, which is logical, as both China and Russia are permanent members of the UN Security Council, but also within such regional organisations as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, BRICS, etc.
Now we are talking about concluding a free trade agreement between the Eurasian Economic Council, recently established in the post-Soviet space, and China. A similar agreement was concluded a short time ago with Vietnam. Then, we will coordinate, at least we are ready to do this, the Chinese concept of the Silk Road Economic Belt with our newly-created regional organisation. So, do you understand how diverse, multi-faceted and deep Russian-Chinese ties have become over the last couple of decades? And we resolved the border issue.
If there were any in China and Russia in this connection, though we both made some compromises. But these were compromises between friendly countries. I think it is almost impossible to achieve such compromise in other ways.
After all, China is our largest trading partner. As I said, country-wise, Russia trades the most with China. That is my first point.
We have wide-ranging joint projects in the nuclear energy sphere, logistics, machine building and trade as a whole [with China].
We have good joint projects in the helicopter and aircraft manufacturing industry. We are considering cooperation and are actively cooperating in space. There are good prospects there [with China].
The level of our political trust [with China] is also very high. We have similar positions on major international issues or even, as diplomats say, our views are identical. We often have shared positions on key issues of the modern international agenda.
We have very close humanitarian contacts [with China], wide-ranging youth exchanges, educational and regional contacts, and all of them continue to develop.
We are expanding and improving the infrastructure of our relations. You must have heard about China's plans to participate in building a high-speed railway line between Moscow and Kazan in the Volga region, in central Russia. And then we plan to extend it to Kazakhstan and on to China.
Under our regional cooperation projects, we are building roads and bridges. The scope of regional cooperation [with China] is constantly growing.
We have every reason to say, and I note this with great satisfaction, that a truly friendly relationship has evolved with China, and in many key areas these relations, without any exaggeration, have a strategic character. As we say, the strategic character of privileged partnership.
Don't forget I started looking at China a long time before any of those races happened. I always thought go east, not west.
The comics of course, help the movies, because all of the comic fans want to see the movies. And the most amazing thing about it is these movies seem to appeal to young people, to old people, and to people all over the world. They're as popular in China and Latin America as they are here. That's really amazing and gratifying.
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