“Facing the sea, St Petersburg is a city with a profound history of opening to the outside world. Today, we choose this place to hold the regular meeting between the Chinese and Russian prime ministers, which indicates that both China and Russia are willing to open to each other and adopt a two-way opening-up,” said Premier Li Keqiang while meeting the press with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, after the 24th regular meeting of prime ministers on Sept 17.

Premier Li said that energy cooperation has been playing an important role among the traditional fields of China-Russia cooperation. Previous cooperation between the two countries mainly concentrated on the upstream of energy cooperation, but this regular meeting will discuss how to improve China-Russia energy cooperation and achieve new breakthroughs. "We just witnessed the signing of the petrochemical engineering document of downstream cooperation," he added.

Last year, China fully opened its manufacturing industry and welcomed large German and US chemical engineering enterprises to open solely invested refining-chemical integration projects. "We also welcome Russian enterprises to open solely invested or joint-ventured refining-chemical integration projects in China," he said.

According to Premier Li, it can not only boost the additional value of China-Russia energy cooperation, but will also help double the bilateral trade volume, which is a goal set by the two heads of state, and achieve new results in the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era.

In the joint communiqué of the 24th regular meeting between the Chinese and Russian prime ministers, the two parties agreed to expand all-around upstream, midstream and downstream cooperation in many fields, including oil and gas, electric power, coal, nuclear power, and renewable energy.

Before Premier Li’s visit to Russia, he had sent a clear signal in a published interview by Russia’s TASS News Agency by stating China as both a “world factory” and a “world market”. He said that China will make great efforts to advance market-oriented reform, expand opening-up, strive to perfect marketization and legalization, and to create a more friendly business environment.

While talking to the press, Premier Li said that China and Russia are each other's biggest neighbors, and are both permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. When there are increasingly more uncertain and unstable factors in international politics and economy, further advancing China-Russia bilateral relations will not only help maintain regional stability and development, but will also be conducive to world peace.

Medvedev also said that the multilateralism international rules advocated by China and Russia should be observed, and unilateral sanctions should be opposed. Against the background of rising instability in the world situation and deteriorating protectionism, Russia is willing to deepen strategic communication and achieve pragmatic cooperation with China.