China, Russia pledge to deepen people-to-people exchanges

People-to-people exchanges between China and Russia should be further enhanced to lay a solid foundation for bilateral relations, participants of a meeting of the China-Russia Friendship Committee for Peace and Development have said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, sent separate congratulatory messages to the meeting, which was held from Monday to Friday.

In their messages, both leaders asked to take the meeting as an opportunity to deepen people-to-people exchanges and open up a new prospect for people-to-people diplomacy so as to make new contributions to consolidating traditional friendship between the two peoples, promoting bilateral ties and enhancing cooperation in a variety of areas.

Dai Bingguo, Chinese chairman of the committee, urged participants to go with the general trend of the development of the China-Russia relations, inject dynamism into the committee under new historical conditions and make concrete contributions to the development of bilateral ties.

Boris Titov, Russian chairman of the committee, said that the committee will continue to function as the main channel for Russia-China people-to-people exchanges in an effort to deepen mutual understanding and friendship between the two peoples.

During his stay in Russia, Dai also met with Russian State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin, Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Vice Premier Arkady Dvorkovich.