On December 20, Russian President Putin's annual year-end press conference was held. Over the years, the press conference has become an important platform for Putin to communicate directly with the public. This year's conference is of particular significance, as it has been the first one since Putin was re-elected as Russian president.

Russian media and people are most concerned about domestic issues. When speaking of national projects, the Russian president noted that the country couldn't ensure GDP growth without changing the economy's economic structure. He said: “We need a breakthrough, we need to leap into a new technological order. Without this, the country has no future.”

At the beginning of his new term, Putin signed a decree setting Russia's development targets, which include 50 percent of the growth in Russia's per capita GDP and the country entering the world's top five biggest economies in six years. According to estimates, to achieve this goal, Russia's GDP growth rate needs to reach at least four percent.

Although the current Russian economy has already gone out of recession, the future is not optimistic. Last year, Russia's economic growth rate was only 1.8 percent. In the first three quarters of this year, it dropped to 1.6 percent even at a time of rising oil prices. This shows that Russia's traditional economic development model, which relies on the energy industry, is not able to spur growth as much as before.

After his inauguration ceremony in May, Putin began to carry out new reforms in order to increase government financial revenues and reduce expenditures, thereby promoting the government's investment capacity, such as to raise the retirement age and value-added tax.

These policies potentially threatened the interests of many people. As a result, the reform on the retirement age triggered protests across Russia, which eventually forced the government to revise the plan. In the future, how to maintain a balance between reforms and social stability is one of Putin's most tricky tasks.

In terms of foreign policy, relations between Russia and the West remain a significant focus. On the one hand, Putin continues to criticize the Western world. He said that there was “No Logic” in the imposition of sanctions on Russia over the Skripal case. He reiterated that the U.S. military presence in Syria was illegitimate, and as the U.S. is withdrawing from the INF Treaty, it is hard to imagine what will happen next.

On the other hand, Putin reasserted that Moscow was ready to develop ties with Washington. Commenting on President Trump's decision to pull the U.S. troops out of Syria, Putin said that he generally agreed with his American counterpart that progress had been made in defeating Daesh.

Generally speaking, since Putin's new term, Russia's foreign policy has been more pragmatic than in the past. Even though Russia and the West still take different sides on issues surrounding the Middle East and Ukraine, Putin tries to avoid direct conflicts with the West and hopes to rebuild their relationship. Russia has continued to signal its willingness to improve relations with the United States. Although the relationship between two countries has not yet departed from a downward pattern, Putin and Trump have met for their first bilateral summit this year.

Russia-Europe relations are ahead of Russia-US relations. Putin has exchanged visits with German Chancellor Merkel and French President Macron this year. The construction of two natural gas pipelines – “Nord Stream-2” and “TurkStream”, which connect Russia and Europe, is also progressing in an orderly manner. In his new term, returning to pragmatic diplomacy and improving relations with the West will be the focus of his foreign policy.

When asked about his comment on China's 40 years of reform and opening-up policy, Putin spoke highly of the changes that have taken place in China. He also said that the bilateral trade volume between Russia and China is close to 100 billion U.S. dollars, which is a significant achievement.

As Putin commented, China-Russia relations have made great progress in recent years. The two presidents meet five to six times each year on various occasions. The two countries have similar positions on most international issues.

At present, the U.S. unilateralism is rising again, and the China-US relations are experiencing difficulties due to trade frictions and some other issues. This has given a new historical context for China-Russia relations. The two countries share common interests in promoting multilateralism and maintaining international peace and stability.

In terms of economic and trade, the two countries' cooperation on energy is deepening. Agriculture and e-commerce have become new areas for cooperation.  Moreover, a lot of progress has been made in terms of military and security cooperation, as the two sides held joint military exercises in the South China Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the Baltic Sea.

The development of the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination means the bilateral relations are in the "best period of history". Next year, China and Russia will celebrate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of their diplomatic relations.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that next year the two countries will continue to increase high-level exchanges, deepen pragmatic cooperation in various fields, and push the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination to a new level. At a new starting point of history, China-Russia relations will be met with‍ new opportunities.