Hometown greeting adds human touch

Several days of heavy snow in St. Petersburg, Russia, stopped the previous night - a perfect welcome for the arrival of China's Premier Li Keqiang on Nov 6.

I arrived in the city late on Nov 5 and was greeted at the airport by a huge advertisement for a Russian luxury shopping mall - in Chinese.

I asked Natalie, an airport worker, about it. She told me not to be surprised, because Chinese tourists have become the biggest consumers in the European parts of Russia, and I will see more Chinese advertisements throughout the city.

While staying at a hotel near St. Isaac's Cathedral, one the largest cathedrals in the world, the premier will get a tour of the Hermitage Museum at the Winter Palace, one of the four largest museums in the world.

It seems his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, wants to show the best of his hometown to his Chinese guest.

China and Russia established a mechanism for regular meetings between prime ministers in 1996, and the two leaders held talks in St. Petersburg.

Medvedev was invited to Anhui province, Li's hometown, during his visit to China in 2013. And in 2014 when Li visited Russia the two senior leaders agreed to meet in St. Petersburg this year.

Along the streets of the second-largest city in Russia, the Chinese national flag is displayed in front of every main building, its brilliant red color standing out sharply in contrast with the snow on the rooftops.

Usually a welcoming ceremony of foreign government heads is held in the capital city, Moscow, but on Nov 6 the Russian government gave its Chinese guest the highest level of welcome with a Russian honor guard at St. Petersburg airport.

"That's because we are true friends," a resident named Vasily says, "and friends should talk at home."

I met Vasily in Nevsky Prospect, a 4.5-kilometer-long main street built in 1710. He wears a uniform from the Soviet period and makes himself up to look like Vladimir Lenin to pose for photos with tourists.

"I don't have lots of time for reading news, actually," Vasily tells me, saying he prefers being called Uncle Vasily. "But I can tell from my business. Chinese tourists increased a lot in the past three years, which benefits lots of local people - including me!"

China-Russia trade volume declined last year because of the slowdown of the world's economy. But with the help of multichannel communication, including the regular meeting of governmental leaders, bilateral trade volume rose to $31.7 billion (28.6 billion euros; 25.5 billion) in the first half of 2016, increasing 1.8 percent compared with last year.

"It shows the advantage of the regular meeting," says Jiang Yi, a Russian studies researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The mechanism not only boosts the mutual trust of the two countries but plays an irreplaceable role in developing and implementing bilateral and multilateral cooperation, Jiang says.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in June that Sino-Russia relations had reached their highest level in history, and now Li's visit to Medvedev's hometown illustrates the extraordinarily fine relations between the two countries, and puts more humanity into official work, experts say.

"There are rare examples of such regular meetings, like the one between the Chinese premier and Russian prime minister," says Ruan Zongze, vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies. "Li's visit will definitely extend such effective communication."

renqi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 11/11/2016 page14)