Valdai Club

Russia has been trying to develop equitable and transparent cooperation with all Asia Pacific countries in a bid to jointly work on new markets.

With this goal in view, the Russian government has prepared a program to support Russian exports and to lift barriers hindering trade and investments in the Asia Pacific region.

The Russian president Vladimir Putin has set the task of developing a system of economic partnership between the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

At the initial stage, this provides for signing a comprehensive trade and investment protection agreement that would take Russia’s growing ties with the world’s most rapidly developing markets to a new level. In addition, special methods should be proposed to regulate the new economy markets and coordinate cooperation in high technologies. This is an agenda that will largely influence the future development of global trade. Issues of economic partnership are routinely discussed with experts and business people.

The SCO and ASEAN countries are huge and growing markets where the middle class will expand rapidly in the medium and long terms, raising the demand for high quality products and services. Taken together, this is sufficient ground for serious in-depth dialogue and cooperation.

Russian-Chinese relations can be described as large-scale and system-wide interaction based primarily on the provisions of a joint statement that was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, as well as the proposed coordination of the Eurasian Economic Union and the Silk Road Economic Belt. Concrete infrastructure projects in the region will serve as the basis for coordinating these projects.

Another set of related issues concerns mutual protection of investments and trade facilitation through simpler border procedures. The idea of coordinating the above two projects is a spearhead into the future, which is why we should focus on drafting practical agreements in high-tech spheres such as ICT, healthcare and education, electronic commerce and energy efficiency.

The Eurasian Economic Commission has launched preparations for Russian-Chinese talks on a non-preferential trade agreement that would remove several system-wide barriers that hinder the access of Russian products to the Chinese market.

The world is not standing still; major technological changes are underway in all spheres of the economy. In light of this, we need to develop mutually beneficial cooperation and coordinate rules to regulate new markets.