Russia and China will continue to develop military-industrial cooperation, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov met on Thursday with the chief of the general staff of the Chinese military forces, General Chen Bingde, who is currently visiting Moscow with a delegation of Chinese military officials.
“A sincere exchange of opinions on the state and perspectives of the development of relations between the Russian and Chinese armed forces has taken place, as well as on urgent international and regional problems,” reads the Russian Defense Ministry’s official statement, which was released upon the conclusion of the meeting.
The statement also reads that the two sides had stated that relations between the Russian and Chinese ministries of defense” have reached a high level and continue developing at a rapid pace,” Interfax reports. The officials also expressed their interest in the continuation of the mutually beneficial cooperation in the military and the military-industrial sphere.
The ministry’s statement gave no other details, but Russia’s Chief of General Staff Army General Nikolai Makarov said earlier on Thursday that Russia hoped to hold a joint military exercise with China in the nearest future.
“I think that the signing of the memorandum on a joint naval exercise will be a natural result of the meeting,” the general said. He also added that Russia valued China’s opinion on major regional and international problems, as the growing number of top-level meetings between Chinese and Russian authorities attest to. Markov went on to say that Russia respected China as a great power, as there was not a single political issue in the world that could be solved today without China’s cooperation.