Russian president arrives in China for G20 summit

HANGZHOU, China -- Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in this eastern city of China on Saturday night, kicking off a tightly scheduled trip headlined by the 11th summit of the Group of 20 (G20) major economies.

During his stay in Hangzhou, he will also meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping as well as a number of other national leaders participating in the G20 gathering, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, British Prime Minister Theresa May and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

In addition, he will join Xi, Brazilian President Michel Temer, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and South African President Jacob Zuma for a leaders' meeting of the emerging-market bloc of BRICS.

The latest round of China-Russia high-level interaction is widely seen as a new opportunity for the two neighboring partners to join efforts to further promote the reform of international financial and economic systems.

The longer those reforms are postponed, the higher the risk of new crises and instability is in the world economy, Andrey Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a Moscow-based foreign policy think tank, told Xinhua earlier.

The China-Russia relationship has long been running at high levels. During their last meeting in Beijing in late June, the two leaders vowed to unswervingly deepen the comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination between the two countries and beef up mutual support and trust.

"We see each other as close allies, so of course we always listen to each other. By this I mean we keep in mind each other's interests," Putin told Xinhua in an exclusive interview in St. Petersburg on June 17.

Meanwhile, bilateral trade has ridden out a rough path, witnessing a 1.8 percent increase in the first half of this year.

"Thanks to efforts by both sides, the China-Russia trade stopped falling in the first half of this year and began to grow," Chinese ambassador to Russia Li Hui said in early August.