- How do you assess the current state and prospects of relations between Ukraine and China? 

- Ukraine is following closely the developments in the world. We are impressed with a powerful rapid progress in the development of modern China that made your country one of the world leaders. This is a great example of achieving good results by focusing on one’s goals and believing in one’s own strength. China has achieved a lot, and we certainly learn from our Chinese friends. 

Ukraine considers China one of the leading countries of the world, which has good international reputation. The Republic of China for us is a strategic partner, one of the guarantors of nuclear security of Ukraine. Therefore, active development of relations with China is one of our foreign policy’s priorities. Moreover, we consider fruitful economic cooperation with China one of the key factors of successful modernization of Ukraine’s national economy. 

We highly value our friendship and partnership. In a short time Ukraine and China managed to intensify their dialogue and fill it with specific cooperation projects of mutual benefit. The potential of Ukrainian-Chinese cooperation is huge.  Furthermore, it is huge in virtually all sectors – economy and trade, science and technology, agriculture, humanitarian relations and cultural exchange. 

We firmly aim to expand the scope of our cooperation and of course, we have proposals that we will discuss with the Leader of the PRC. I am convinced that we should use our active political dialogue to future develop the potential of Ukrainian-Chinese relations to the benefit of our peoples. 

- In September 2010, you made a state visit to China. Already in June this year, President Hu Jintao will arrive in Ukraine. Would you tell us about the goals of that activation of official visits at the highest level? 

- You are right – highest-level contacts between our countries are developing very intensively. I would put it this way: with no other country in the world do we have such a positive dynamics of relations. This can be considered a real breakthrough in cooperation. I would like to remind that the first time we met with President Hu Jintao was last April, at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. Already at our next meeting in Beijing in September 2010, we managed to give a strong impetus to the whole complex of our bilateral relations. 

During my visit to China last year, we reached understanding and important agreements with President Hu Jintao. In particular, we expressed our mutual wish to raise the relations between our countries to the new level of strategic partnership. We can confidently say that this goal has been reached. 

I am sincerely happy to receive President Hu Jintao on a state visit to Ukraine, and sincerely hope that visits by Chinese government leaders, managers of Chinese companies and enterprises, representatives of China’s business community will be regular and successful. We also welcome the expansion of cultural, humanitarian, scientific and educational contacts between our peoples, and will continue our work in this direction. 

- While in Beijing, the two Heads of State expressed readiness to take steps to enrich bilateral cooperation strategy with content, and make every effort to establish strategic partnership between the two countries. Please tell us, what have the two countries done in these 9 months in that direction? How far are the sides from officially declaring the establishment of strategic partnership? 

- Judge for yourself: in Beijing last year, we agreed to develop jointly a declaration that would consolidate the strategic nature of relations between our countries. As of June 17, the text is ready, and we will sign it in Kyiv with President Hu Jintao. I believe this event to be our very important common success. 

In fact, we approach reaching a new level of relations between our countries. This will allow focusing joint efforts on implementing large-scale mutually beneficial cooperation projects. Of course, we have lots of work implementing the declaration. We will use all the existing mechanisms for that, including the recently created Intergovernmental Cooperation Commission. 

- Please, tell us, what important results the Ukrainian side is expecting from the scheduled Hu Jintao’s visit to Ukraine? 

- I have already told you about the main event, which President Hu Jintao’s visit to Ukraine will be dedicated to. In addition, we plan to sign a whole range of documents relating to specific cooperation projects in energy, chemical industry, agriculture, etc. The potential of our fruitful cooperation is incredibly rich, and our common task is using it for the benefit of our peoples in as many joint projects, as possible. 

- At present, the development of economic relations between Ukraine and China is behind the dynamics of political cooperation. What are your plans of boosting the bilateral trade-economic relations? Which specific areas are particularly promising? 

- I agree with your comment. Our mutual potential for economic, scientific, technical and technological cooperation is still underused. That is why we will intensify contacts between our governments and between different regions of our countries. 

We want our economic, investment and trade cooperation primary focus on innovative approaches and introduction of high-tech. Ukrainian-Chinese industrial parks are already working on that, and we want to intensify this work. We have interesting offers of cooperation in exploration and mining of natural resources, oil extraction, metallurgical and chemical industry, aircraft building, agriculture, agricultural machinery building.

We are working now to expand the list. During President Hu Jintao’s visit we will sign contracts aimed at implementing the agreements we reached in Beijing. Of course, we hope that the newly created Ukrainian-Chinese Business Council will play its role too. 

Of great importance for further development of investment and trade-economic cooperation between our countries is the development of new modern mechanisms of such cooperation, new financial instruments to guarantee Chinese investment in Ukraine. We need to work these questions through. 

In general, the potential of Ukrainian-Chinese cooperation in all areas is so significant, that it makes us optimistic about the future. Friendship between the peoples of Ukraine and China is the main guarantee of successful strategic partnership between our countries.

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