The vice-premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China Li Keqiang met Russian deputy prime-minister Igor Shuvalov and president of the Skolkovo Foundation Viktor Vekselberg. Li Kequiang and other high ranked Chinese officials and businessmen took part in the Sino-Russian Trade and Investment Forum, held in Moscow on April 28, set by the Russian economic development ministry. A key session of the forum were devoted to innovations issues, and was moderated by the Skolkovo Foundation.
"We’ll make the biggest industrial park in Russia and we see China as a strategic partner in our plans, by unifying scientific and technological potential of Russia and Chinese competencies in technology transfer,” Viktor Vekselberg said. At the Forum he also stated at the Foundation plans to extend its cooperation further, both with the association of high-tech centers of the Torch scientific and technological park of Tsinghua University and with the Beijing Zhongguancun science, technology and software business incubator zone, widely known as the “Z-Park”.
As it was stressed at the Forum by Igor Shuvalov, bilateral trade target between the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China was at $83 billion as of 2011, which is about 10 per cent of the total Russian foreign trade operations. And, as the Russian deputy prim-minister said, by 2015 it might reach a total amount of $100 billion per year. His Chinese peer Li Keqiang suggested, that to enhance the growth the two countries should focus on “strategic fields, with state-owned enterprises being encouraged to jointly work toward areas such as large machinery and equipment, infrastructure, energy, space, nanotechnology, the high-end manufacturing sector and bio-medicine,” as the Xinghua agency reported.
As Stanislav Naumov, Skolkovo’s vice-president in charge of government relations said to the Xinghua agency, the both parties “do not exclude an opportunity to create a joint direct investment fund (within existing structure of investment cooperation), which will be used to finance “breakthrough projects, which satisfy needs of Russia and China, and even beyond the year 2020 perspective”. Igor Shuvalov said at the Forum that a bilateral investment fund, being created by the Russian Direct Investment Fund and the China Investment Corporation (CIC), has a target capital of about $4 billion to be further channeled into joint projects.
Stanislav Naumov moderated the Forum’s session, entitled “High-Tech and Innovations”, attended by Russian and Chinese businessmen (including top managers of the ZTE Corporation and Lenovo), some key officials, involved in bilateral cooperation in the sphere of technologies, as well as well as representatives of state agencies in charge of support of innovations. As Naumov mentioned, the Skolkovo foundation is interested in conducting research, using Chinese high-tech parks’ testing base. And, as he also said, first experiments are more likely to focus on the energy efficiency technologies.
Earlier in April Skolkovo and a well-known state-backed Torch Program, which provides facilities for tens of Chinese high-tech incubators, have signed a protocol of understanding to enhance cooperation between the two organizations.