On the afternoon of November 18, 2005, Chinese President Hu Jintao, who was attending the 13th Leaders' Informal Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Pusan, ROK, met with President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and both sides exchanged in-depth views on bilateral relations and other issues of common interest in a friendly atmosphere.

Hu indicated to Putin that this year witnessed fruitful development of bilateral strategic cooperative partnership. China is satisfied with achievements in bilateral cooperation in various areas. Both sides issued the China-Russia Joint Statement on the International Order in the 21st Century and expounded their joint proposals on major international issues. They successfully held the first joint military exercise and launched bilateral consultation mechanism on strategic security and cooperation mechanism between legislatures. The 10th China-Russia Prime Ministers' Meeting scored important achievements. He emphasized that China attaches great importance to bilateral relations and would like to make joint efforts with Russia to push their strategic cooperative partnership to a new level.

Hu noted that China gives top priority to expanding cooperation with Russia in economy, trade and other areas and would like to take active measures to increase imports from Russia, deepen cooperation in such areas as energy resources, electromechanics and infrastructure construction, especially large programs, realize mutual benefits and bring tangible benefits to both peoples.

Hu said that China attaches great importance to the up-coming activities of "Year of Russia" in China and "Year of China" in Russia and the Chinese organizing committee is composed of representatives from all walks of life and has conducted related preparations in an all-round manner. It is hoped that both sides will keep closer consultations and take all things into consideration so as to jointly do a good job in these two important activities and build up mutual understanding and traditional friendship between both peoples.

Putin indicated that bilateral cooperation has made headway in all areas, which shows strong aspiration of both sides to strengthen their friendly relations. Russia makes highly positive comments on the active attitude of the Chinese leaders and government to push for development of bilateral relations. Like China, Russia is deeply convinced that to continuously develop bilateral strategic cooperative partnership conforms to fundamental interest of both peoples. He noted that Russia has always maintained active attitude towards developing cooperation with China in the area of energy resources and would like to work with China to push cooperation for new achievements. He added that Russia hopes to strengthen bilateral cooperation in the area of humanities. His country would like to work with China to actively prepare for activities of "Year of Russia" in China to be held next year and "Year of China" in Russia in the year after next and take this as a new platform for Russian and Chinese people from all walks of life to enhance understanding and trust, and strengthen cooperation and friendship so as to deepen bilateral pragmatic cooperation.

Both heads of state stressed that the two sides should support enhanced exchanged between their neighboring regions, coordinate their respective regional development strategies, encourage neighboring regions to conduct exchanges and mutually beneficial cooperation in various forms and bring benefits to both peoples.

Both heads of state also exchanged views on the regional situation, indicating that they will continue working with all countries of this region to safeguard regional peace and stability.