Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin jointly signed and released on Tuesday a Joint Statement of the President of the People's Republic of China and the President of the Russian Federation on Pre-2030 Development Plan on Priorities in China-Russia Economic Cooperation at the Kremlin.

In the statement, the two sides agreed to firmly uphold the principles of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit, realize long-term independent development of the two countries, promote high-quality development of China-Russia economic and trade cooperation, inject new impetus into the comprehensive promotion of bilateral cooperation, maintain the momentum of rapid growth of bilateral trade in goods and services, and commit to significantly increase bilateral trade volume by 2030.

The two sides pledged to carry out economic cooperation in multiple key directions, including expanding the trade scale, optimizing the trade structure and developing e-commerce and other innovative modes of cooperation.

They have committed to improve financial cooperation and steadily increase the proportion of local currency settlement in bilateral trade, investment, loans and other economic and trade transactions to meet market demand.

They will consolidate all-round energy partnership and strengthen long-term cooperation in key areas of energy, according to the statement.

They called for promoting exchanges and high-quality cooperation in technology and innovation to ensure high-level development of technology in the two countries.

In addition to upgrading industrial cooperation, they also pledged to enhance agricultural cooperation to ensure food security of the two countries.

(Cover: Workers from China and Russia shake hands after the two ends of the Blagoveshchensk-Heihe highway bridge are joined, May 31, 2019. /Xinhua)