Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Mikhail Mishustin in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 20, 2023. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Mikhail Mishustin in Beijing on Wednesday.

Noting that since the beginning of this year, he has met with President Putin twice, Xi said the governments, legislative bodies, political parties and localities of the two countries have carried out in-depth exchanges, and pragmatic cooperation in various fields has developed in a sound and steady manner.

In the first 11 months of this year, the bilateral trade between China and Russia achieved the annual trade volume target of 200 billion U.S. dollars jointly set by the two heads of state, which shows the strong resilience and broad prospects for mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries, Xi said.

He noted that maintaining and developing China-Russia relations is a strategic choice made by both sides based on the fundamental interests of the two peoples.

China supports the Russian people in taking the development path of their own choice, Xi said, expressing the hope of taking the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Russia next year as a new starting point to continuously expand the positive effects of the high-level political relations and jointly move forward in the process of comprehensively promoting economic and social development and realizing national rejuvenation.