Chinese president Hu Jintao vowed here to boost China-Russia trade to 60 to 80 billion US dollars by 2010.

According to statistics from China's Commerce Ministry, bilateral trade reached 21 billion US dollars at the end of last year.

Hu made the remark last week in a joint interview from Russia's Itar-Tass News Agency and Channel One TV station prior to his visit to Russia.

To achieve such a goal, the Chinese president proposed the two sides make concerted efforts in five aspects:

Firstly, Hu said, China and Russia should optimize current bilateral trade structure and offer bigger market access for marketable products from their countries, especially for mechanical, electrical and high-tech products.

China and Russia should endeavor to achieve a successful transfer of growth mode for bilateral trade and take effective measures to safeguard the trade order to create favorable conditions for the healthy development of bilateral trade, Hu said.

Secondly, China and Russia should expand cooperation with mutual benefit in the energy sector and fully implement the agreements reached between the two nations in the sector and launch relevant cooperative projects as soon as possible, Hu said.

The Chinese president also called on promoting cooperation in the high technology field between China and Russia and accelerating the implementation process of high-tech industrialized cooperative projects to improve the quality and level of the cooperation.

The exchange of technological personnel should also be further promoted to help improve the industrial structure and technological innovation both in China and Russia, Hu said.

Fourthly, the two sides should also expand cooperation in investment and encourage Chinese and Russian enterprises to invest in the infrastructure, resource exploration and processing fields, Hu said, noting that investment environment should be further improved and the legal interests of investors better protected in both countries.

Finally, Hu also proposed to expand trade cooperation along the border areas between China and Russia, saying that relevant Chinese regions will strengthen trade cooperation with Russia's Far East and Siberia regions.

China welcomes Russia to play an active role in the development scheme to revitalize China's northeast old industrial bases and western region, Hu added.

China and Russia share strong complementarity in their economies and have huge potential to develop bilateral trade relations, Hu said, expressing the belief that China and Russia will definitely score more accomplishments in trade cooperation based on mutual trust and pragmatic and win-win principles.

Source: Xinhua