MOSCOW, October 26 (RIA Novosti) – Russia has nothing to fear from the fast-growing China, but could benefit from this cooperation, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in a televised interview Saturday.
In an interview with Vesti on Saturday on Russia 1 TV channel, Medvedev said Russia should cooperate with Beijing in high-technology areas, adding that China, the world's second largest economy, was not a dangerous neighbor but Russia’s “strategic partner.”
Earlier this week, Medvedev paid a two-day visit to natural resource-hungry China during which it was announced that state-owned oil giant Rosneft signed an agreement with China’s largest state refiner Sinopec to supply 10 million tons of oil a year for a decade.
A separate deal announced in Beijing said that Rosneft and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) agreed on the launch schedule principles for the Tianjin oil refinery.
“These technologies are ours, to a great extent. And this is good. It means that they will work and we will work,” Medvedev said.
The refinery, which a capacity of 16 million tons, will be launched in 2019–2020, Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin said. The Russian company will become the sole oil supplier to the refinery in accordance with quotas, he added.
Last month, China overtook the United States as the world’s largest net importer of oil, and Russia has been looking to increase supplies to its energy-hungry neighbor.
