Russian President Vladimir Putin recently stated in his State of the Union address to the Federal Conference that Russia has established relations with most countries in the world on the basis of mutual respect. He said that Moscow has always prioritized expanding exchanges with its closest partners in the BRICS, SCO, CIS and Ji'an. Putin emphasized that the development of logistics and transportation corridors will create a reliable infrastructure framework for the Greater Eurasian Partnership.

Putin put forward the idea of establishing a "Greater Eurasian Partnership" in his State of the Union address in 2015. He said at the time that thanks to the principled agreements reached in the docking of the Eurasian Economic Union and the Belt and Road Initiative, the establishment of a free trade area with Vietnam, and the deepening of cooperation between Russia and ASEAN, certain prerequisites for further deepening the integration of the Eurasian economy have been formed. Putin reminded that in terms of purchasing power parity, Eurasian countries account for almost one-third of the world economy. He proposed that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, and ASEAN partners jointly create a possible economic partnership. The Russian President stated that the initial partnership can focus on protecting investments, optimizing cross-border cargo transportation procedures, jointly formulating technical standards for next-generation technology products, and opening up services and capital market access to each other.

The Greater Eurasian Initiative should be based on the principles of equality and consideration of common interests

The initiative will not abolish the existing regional integration process, nor will it contradict it. The Eurasian Economic Union has successfully served regional trade. The Belt and Road Initiative is successfully implementing many cross-border economic and infrastructure projects worldwide. The recently reached "Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement" (RCEP) has created conditions for trade liberalization among countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Andrei Kortunov, Director-General and Bureau Member of the Russian Council of International Affairs, said that the Greater Eurasian Partnership regards ASEAN, Eurasian Economic Union, RCEP and other regional integration structures as ready-made components of the future Eurasian unified economic mechanism. And node. The task of "partnership" is to assemble these components and nodes without compromising the existing effective mechanisms.

The most important part of the Eurasian economic integration is the establishment of modern logistics and transportation corridors, which will help the development of trade on the Eurasian continent. This is the focus of Putin's State of the Union address this year. He said that the Moscow-Kazan highway will extend to Yekaterinburg and the project will be implemented within three years. Putin pointed out that, taking into account the existing Moscow-St. Petersburg highway, by 2024, a safe high-speed transportation from the Baltic to the Urals will be built throughout Europe.

The Moscow-Kazan highway will become part of the "Europe-Western China" large-scale transportation corridor, with a total length of 794 kilometers, and will cost 650 billion rubles (approximately 55.35 billion yuan). This is a complex and expensive engineering technology project. Ma Youjun, chief expert of the Northeast Asia Strategic Research Institute of the Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences and chief expert of Heilongjiang University's Sino-Russian Comprehensive Strategic Cooperation Provincial and Ministry Co-construction Collaborative Innovation Center, said that China can participate in the construction of this highway, considering its existing technological and financial strength.

"With the determination of the'China-Russia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of Cooperation in the New Era' and the advancement of China's Belt and Road cooperation, especially after the new crown epidemic, China's economic development has become an important engine leading the regional economic development. Putin also I have always emphasized that I hope to use China to blow the sails of Russia’s economic development. I think China can play an important role in the construction of this highway, including China’s technical and financial support. The construction of this highway in the future will be important The construction of the Belt and Road Initiative will play a huge role in promoting economic and trade cooperation, tourism cooperation and cultural cooperation between the two countries. I think the "Europe-Western China" international transportation corridor is very important for the future cooperation between Russia, China, and China and Russia. It can also play a constructive role in stabilizing the regional situation and enhancing the international resource and political cooperation between China and Russia. Transportation cooperation in 2021 will become an important support for leading China-Russia cooperation."

At present, most of the goods from China to Europe are transported by sea through the Suez Canal. For many years, people have thought that this is the most ideal way of logistics. Although it is very time-consuming-it takes 40 to 45 days to get a container from the eastern port of China to Hamburg, but the cost of shipping is very low. In addition, there is a railway transportation route that can shorten the transportation time of goods from China to Europe to two weeks. But rail transportation has always been much more expensive than sea transportation.

But recently, the reliability and economic benefits of maritime transportation have been questioned. The cargo ship "Longci" stranded in the Suez Canal and blocked traffic on the waterway for several days. As a result, international trade suffered billions of dollars in losses, which shows that the supply chain needs to be diversified. In addition, the shortage of shipping containers and ships caused by the epidemic has increased the transportation cost of a 40-foot container from US$1,500 to US$8-9 thousand. Market participants said that even at this price, chartering is very difficult. In this case, it is clear that new transportation and logistics routes need to be developed.

Why are China and Russia increasingly emphasizing financial independence?

In addition, the need to accelerate the integration of the Eurasian economy has become more and more urgent. The volume of trade between China and the United States is declining due to the contradiction between the two countries (in 2019, China’s total imports from the United States decreased by 33 billion U.S. dollars and exports decreased by 62 billion U.S. dollars), while China’s trade with other countries is increasing. In 2019, China's exports to the EU increased by 23 billion U.S. dollars. In 2020, ASEAN countries will become China's largest trading partners. Although the epidemic has led to an overall decline in trade in 2020, the bilateral trade volume between Russia and China has remained above 100 billion U.S. dollars, a decline of only 2.9%. Expert Ma Youjun said, therefore, further deepening the integration initiative will have more and more economic, social and cultural significance.

“Russia’s Greater Eurasian Initiative is actually aimed at China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and is also an important plan for promoting regional economic development. China is Russia’s largest trading partner and has accounted for about 16% of Russia’s trade volume for 10 consecutive years. The Asia-Pacific region, especially East Asia, has become one of the important engines leading the development of the world economy. Russia has also been actively expanding the Asian market and strengthening cooperation with China in the Asia-Pacific region. In 2020, China will sign RCEP with ASEAN, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. The agreement, coupled with ASEAN surpassing the United States and Europe to become China’s largest trading partner, allowed Russia to see the huge business opportunities contained therein. It hopes that through cooperation with China and regional economic integration, Russia’s economy can catch the express train of Asian economic development, and as soon as possible Integrating into the wave of world economic integration. This can play a huge role in promoting Russia’s economic development and improving Russia’s economic environment, especially in reducing the impact of European and American sanctions on Russia. The future integration of Russia with China and ASEAN countries will not only be reflected in the future integration of Russia, China and ASEAN countries. Trade integration also includes transportation facilities construction, service trade and investment cooperation. If Russia can successfully join RCEP, it will become an important driving force for the further development of RCEP, and it can play an irreplaceable role in regional cooperation, especially trade integration. "

As Russia develops in the global value chain, participating in the Asian trade initiative will become more and more important to ensure the competitiveness of Russian products. Therefore, in the future, we can look forward to strengthening negotiations on the docking of trade systems within the framework of regional organizations. In this way, the Greater Eurasian Partnership can become a conceptual "umbrella" within which unified rules of the game are created for all participants in the Eurasian continent. Editor/Xu Shengpeng