Golden opportunity to hone world-defining China-Russia partnership

BEIJING - Premier Li Keqiang hosts his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, Tuesday in a gathering of enormous significance to the further deepening of bilateral cooperation.

Li and Medvedev will hold the 18th regular meeting of the Chinese and Russian heads of government, the first since China's new leadership took office in March, and the latter is also scheduled to meet President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders.

Coming in the wake of an impressive buildup of diplomatic momentum between the two countries - Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin have met five times this year - the latest step of China-Russia interaction opens yet another opportunity to lift bilateral ties to an even higher level.

Particularly, the two neighboring giants are now blessed with a golden moment to steer their practical cooperation into greater depths and breadths, so as to further enrich and strengthen the fabrics of their strategic partnership.

With each being the other's most important strategic partner, the China-Russia relationship has grown into a paragon of major-country relations on today's world stage. It is distinguished for high mutual trust, fruitful bilateral cooperation, and deep sentimental attachment between the two nations.

More can be achieved. For starters, the two countries still boast a huge wealth of potential yet to be tapped in their practical cooperation on both national and sub-national levels, especially in such areas as trade, investment, energy, advanced technology and aerospace.

A more robust and productive China-Russia partnership, needless to say, serves the interest of both countries. Yet the global dimension of the bilateral relationship bears no less significance. It meets both the economic and the political needs of the world.

China and Russia are both hefty emerging-market economies. With the developed world still hobbling and the global economy healing in the aftermath of the latest international financial crisis, their development matters. So does their development-boosting practical cooperation.

On the political front, both of them are permanent members of the UN Security Council and staunch champions of the UN Charter, and they hold similar views on an extensive range of regional and global affairs.

Of fundamental importance is the fact that the pair represents an alternative path aside from the Western way. In a nutshell, the world is too diversified and complicated for the Western model to be universally applicable.

Nevertheless, poorly advised observers or ill-intended sensationalists may use the latest episode of China-Russia amity as fresh grist for a worn-out anti-West conspiracy theory, but such speculations are nonsense.

Every sober mind understands that drastic changes of the world order are a ready recipe for chaos and thus unlikely to benefit any member of the international community.

The vision shared by China and Russia is for all nations to learn from and adapt to each other and join hands to build a truly fair and just world order: Hegemony gives way to equality, cooperation replaces confrontation, and the diverse nations across the world coexist peacefully and prosperously.