Valdai Club

Valdai Club’s Russian-Chinese conference in Shanghai is over, but the dialogue between the two countries continues. Many participants in the Shanghai event said that the Club is a great platform to cooperate and communicate directly. While speaking at the closing ceremony of the conference, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Club Andrey Bystritskiy pointed out that the presentations and discussions demonstrated sincerity of the experts and their ability to openly discuss the most important issues of bilateral relations along with those of world development. Which means that the dialogue is ongoing.

During the final session of the Russian-Chinese conference of the Valdai Club, dedicated to the role of traditional culture in the modern world and relations between Russia and China, the participants stressed that both countries are great cultural powers, but the cultural ties between them need to be improved. Among the top twenty books sold in China, there is no single Russian one. The same can be said about the weak presence of Chinese culture and literature in Russia.

Issues of mutual perception of the elites, media and societies of China and Russia were discussed at the fifth session  of the Valdai Club’s Russian-Chinese conference. Experts pointed to the mutual influence of society and the media. Media can hardly affect society, if there is no request for this or that interpretation on its part.

The agenda of the first day of the Valdai Club’s Russian-Chinese conference, which kicked off in Shanghai on April 25, was extraordinarily intense, including four sessions, dozens of interviews and discussions on the sidelines. The sheer number of participants – more than 50 officials and leading experts from Russia and China and more than 30 speakers – demonstrates that the two sides need dialogue and, according to Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club, “want to move together along the path of cognition and prediction of changes in the international environment.”

Although the United States counted on conflict between Russia and China, cooperation between the two is growing. Participants in the closed sessions of the Valdai Club Russian-Chinese conference, which takes place in Shanghai on April 25-26, discussed the most significant areas of cooperation between Russia and China against the background of international pressure, the consequences of transformation of the Chinese economy, and the common tasks of the two countries in the construction of Greater Eurasia.