BEIJING ( WNAM MONITORING): Russia and China said they were opposed Friday to the “actions and plans of the collective West to militarize” the Asia-Pacific region, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
A statement said Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko met Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong in Beijing.
The two sides are against attempts to deploy NATO-standard military infrastructure in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as actions and plans to “impose Indo-Pacific strategies on it.”
They expressed a desire to strengthen cooperation within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, addressing new security challenges in the region, amid the “proliferation of selective military-political quasi-alliances.”
Rudenko and Sun also discussed various aspects of bilateral cooperation in light of the evolving situation in Myanmar, Afghanistan, the Korean Peninsula and northeast Asia as a whole.
On Thursday, Rudenko also met Assistant Foreign Minister Liu Bin to discuss China-Russia relations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s affairs, the Chinese Foreign Ministry reported.
“Both sides agreed that in 2025, under the strategic guidance of President Xi Jinping and President (Vladimir) Putin, China-Russia relations maintained their momentum of development,” said the statement.
According to Russian estimates, China’s trade volume with Russia is expected to exceed $220 billion in 2025, with the growing economic ties drawing criticism from Western countries since the start of the war in Ukraine in early 2022.
