Discussion keeps the world turning.
Russian President, Vladimir Putin, is currently in Beijing on a state visit, and trade and education are leading the headlines.
But beyond the official handshakes, what is actually happening on the ground?
What are Russian businesses really looking for in China's market?
And when Chinese and Russian students start building real connections, what does that potentially mean for them?
Coming to you live from our studios in Beijing, this is Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly.
Thank you very much for being with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Yushun and Yushan.
First up.
Russian President, Vladimir Putin, is now in Beijing for a state visit, and trade and education are two of the big topics making headlines.
But beyond all the camera flashes and newspaper reports, what's actually happening behind closed doors?
What are Russian businesses really hunting for in China's markets?
And when Chinese and Russian students start getting closer, collaborating and studying together, building actual friendships well, what will that actually mean for their future?
To get past the talking points, Roundtable's Fei Fei sat down with Pavel Kapurysov, chairman of the Russian-Chinese Guild of Commerce.
They dug into his first-hand experience building business across both countries and what this bilateral trade relationship actually looks like when you're in the room making deals, not just reading about them in a press release.
Enjoy their conversation.
Thank you for joining us today for this conversation.
This year has been quite significant when it comes to the relationship between China and Russia.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the China-Russia Strategic Partnership Foundation and the 25th anniversary for the Treaty of Good Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation.
So, from your perspective, how have these kind of long-term political foundations helped create a more stable environment for business and investments between China and Russia?
This question yes, i'm the chairman of guild of commerce and uh, these three decades, this 13, 30 years time, to our uh russian and uh businessmen, to russian investments We can trust to invest our money, to invest our funds, to invest our power, to invest our other resources to develop our business in China or with Chinese partners.
It's very, very important for the real business.
I'll give you one example.
A few days before we in Beijing, in our office of the Russian Guild of Commerce there, we opened the center of representation of the regime government in all of China in Beijing.
So we wanted to say that the resin region, this is big region in the russia.
We're in the Moscow, about 180 kilometers from the Moscow, so not so far.
This region is really trust to Chinese partners.
We have self-confidence so we can prove for the resident region.
Businessmen, technologies enterprises.
This is the green sign to go to China, to go to partners, to do conversation, to know about the possibilities in the China region.
And for China, for Chinese.
Our Chinese partner is signed to To know we can talk about the special conditions in the region, for example for investment or for creating enterprises in the region.
This is the point.
That's from your description.
There have been a lot going on when it comes to this kind of cooperation, economic cooperation between China and Russia.
And in fact, we have figures to tell us that.
For example, the China-Russia trade has remained above more than 200 billion US dollars for three consecutive years, and China continuing to be Russia's biggest trading partner.
When it comes to the complex trade, global trading environment that we are seeing now, how do you think, what steps should the two sides to maintain this kind of momentum when it comes to economic cooperation?
We need to see the China now.
The Chinese model, economic model now, Chinese economic now transfer, change the model from the world's factory to the world's biggest research center, innovation center.
So to cooperation with our Chinese partner.
We need doing the, So we need to synchronize our industries, our technical standards.
That's very important because now our standards aren't equal.
For example, now the medical factories in Chinese medical factories or other countries other foreign countries to enter the Russian medical market need to receive the special documents for medical equipment can be used in the Russian Federation special legalization documents.
And to get this document.
The period is about two or more years and now we, our Guild of Commerce with the Tsinghua University, provide the big project in Russia or in China, in Beijing, for example.
This project started from the last year and we finished one a month before the previous month.
This is very huge project to localization representation the Russia special medical institute of localization medical equipment in China and Beijing and Zhongguanshun.
So now we have adapted procedure for Chinese companies to invite to go to Russian market to get this localization documents to legalize the medical equipment, medical special things for the Russian market.
That's very helpful for Chinese factories who want to go to the Russian market, investments coming from not only Russia but other countries.
There's also an area that China's been focusing in recent years as well.
That is, working on improving the business environment for foreign investments.
And your organization, the Russian Chinese Commerce Guild, has actually helped to facilitate many cooperation projects between Chinese and Russian businesses.
So, from your experiences, what have been the biggest attractions of the Chinese market for Russian businesses?
Okay, thank you for this question.
Now our Chinese partners are our best technological grads.
Russia has a lot of resources. energy resources, a lot of other resources.
But now the biggest problem of our cooperation is the resources trading cooperation.
It's not only my decision, it's the main idea that we need to change our model of cooperation from the direct trading of resources to technological cooperation.
So now we try to do this.
We try to do this in the car sphere and automobile sphere.
Now the factories in russia use the chinese technologies companies like cherry and uh FAW, like this company Geely, and so on.
So to improve our Russian automobile market, because now we don't have enough technologies for this.
So Chinese partners give us a lot of help, including the logistic things, special logistics, special investment and so on.
That's very interesting that you mentioned technology.
And it's also something that's been within China's own development plans when it comes to technological development.
And it's also one of the topics during, for example, the two sessions you know a meeting that you yourself also pay close attention to.
So how do you think when it comes to the future China-Russia cooperation can align with each other?
China now is the very important part of the economic of China to research new technologies.
And I suppose that's our engineering schools, Russian engineering schools, Russian brain, Russian science will give our cooperation very good impulse, because now, in between our cooperation, China invest.
Chinese government, according to two sessions, invest in a lot of to increase the, the level of uh researching in china, especially researching the research in high technologies and so on.
So we, our engineering, russian engineering school, need to cooperate in this and need to provide our brains, our technologies, our engineering special skills to cooperate in this.
So we have now a very good time for this.
And also we have two years, this year and next year, the years of education between our countries, and this is the second point about our education calculation.
And when it comes to education and also when it comes to engineering schools, cooperation in engineering schools, and also have to talk about people-to-people exchange, because that is also, I would say, the foundation for more bilateral trade investments.
And also right now we have a visa-free policy took effect and more cross-border travel between China and Russia.
So what kind of future momentum do you see when it comes to this people-to-people exchange between Chinese people and the Russian people?
With a free policy.
It's a very good policy to improve our people's diplomacy contacts and it's very good situation for business, because now business uh don't need to do a special uh visa, to not need to waste time, and uh it's already really improved.
Increase our collaboration between our people's diplomacy.
Yeah, now we, As you know, now the share of Russian tourists in Sanya is about 60 persons.
So it's really a big share, a big volume of our tourists.
Thank you, Mr. Kiparysov.
And also out of curiosity, how long have you been in China?
I suppose 2016.
This year is the 10th.
10th anniversary.
To end our conversation here.
Over the past 10 years, what sort of changes have you seen about happening in China?
You see now that China is, step by step, creating the good atmosphere, from foreign business to providing a lot of services for us, including I have Chinese bank cards.
I have, how to say, Alipay.
I have WeChat that's using it all.
We use it now to to create in this interview.
We use in the tencent meeting, not zoom, not other programs, but now we've used in chinese a lot of, a lot of made in china goods.
So this, this kind of atmosphere is really provide our easiness to good cooperation, provide a lot of possibilities to our cooperation.
And the point so, maybe 10 years before, our focus of the, our business interest, you know, for the russian businessman is he wasn't only on china, first a lot of european partners, a lot of american partners, but now, And from this past all these years, we see that the Chinese partners are the most stable and the most confident partners in all the world.
Now for Russian
So all our employers or all our managers in Azure Guild of Commerce are speaking Chinese.
So that is why my English isn't good enough for Augusta.
Step by step.
I started for good English because now, for our American and European partners, we connect in very, very small part of time.
The most time we cooperate with Chinese partners.
That's the influence, of course, increase in my personal language.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Kiparosov.
Thank you for this interview.
And I wish Russia-Chinese mutual benefit cooperation will be increased very well.
What a wonderful opportunity to learn a little bit more, and had the opportunity to learn about a lot of different things.
But this opportunity to learn more about China and Russia's relationship is new for me.
So I really appreciated that conversation between Fei Fei and Pavel Kiparisov.
Yes, President Putin is in Beijing for a couple of days, May 19th and May 20th.
The partnership between the two countries touches on many different fields.
Education, Fei-Fei and Pavel talked about it a little bit.
It's quietly become one of the most active and fast moving areas.
And that's especially true for younger people on both sides.
We'll get to that in just a sec.
But, Yushin and Yishan, good afternoon.
By the way, this relationship between the two leaders.
It's not rare for them to get together.
They've done this many, many times.
Yeah.
Ever since 2013, when the two leaders have met more than 40 times on bilateral and multilateral occasions.
It's already marking that we have this bond over the years.
Because if you really look into China-Russia relationship, it dates back to 80 years ago, when we were going together, shoulder by shoulder, hand in hand, the two peoples of both countries fighting the anti-fascist war.
And nowadays, this year 2026, marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the China-Russia strategic partnership of coordination.
So also Vladimir Putin.
He noted in one recent video addressing that 25 years ago, Russia and China signed the Treaty of Good Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, which laid a solid foundation for a genuinely strategic relationship and comprehensive partnership for the benefit of both of the two sides and the two peoples of our countries.
The two.
Yeah, the two countries and the people of those countries.
Yeah, of course.
Business is big between the two countries as well.
We heard about it a bit during the conversation.
According to China's Ministry of Commerce, bilateral trade reached about $228 billion in 2025.
And that exceeded the $200 billion threshold for the third consecutive year.
And that's proof that the relationship is long-lasting and sustainable as well.
That's on the business side.
And perhaps just as important is and this is what I want to talk about a little bit deeper now is, on the education side of things, the education relationship between the two countries.
Exactly.
Right now, a new initiative called the China-Russia Years of Education is officially underway and it is designed to push even further on cultural exchanges and also student exchanges, language learning, joint training programs and also academic cooperation between universities.
And this is not starting from zero.
It builds on years of steady interaction between two countries.
The China-Russia Years of Education Initiative.
A little more on that, if we could.
Yeah, that's one of the initiatives that we seem to launch very recently, but it has already built on the success of previous theme years dedicated to culture, sports and sci-tech innovation, which refers to really a series of bilateral exchanges that's already happened throughout the years.
And this year we focus on the educational part and Mentioning about what's going on previously.
This is where I kind of want to just lay down a little bit of background here.
So previously, over the past two decades at least, we've been through a lot of big events like China-Russia years of national exchange.
Then there is the year of Russia in China and the year of China in Russia between 2006 and 2007.
And these are-
That was about tourism and people-to-people interaction.
Yeah, these are more on the cultural and people-to-people exchanging side.
Exactly, Steve.
And then there's also the media exchange year.
That took place not too long ago, just between 2016 and 2017.
Then we also got the China-Russia years of scientific and technological innovation that's happening more recent, in 2020 to 2021.
And then we have China-Russia sports exchange years.
That's like only two years ago, three years ago.
So that's... some of the very dynamic exchanging that we've already had.
And now we're looking at the horizon of something new called the educational campaign, the educational side.
So how many students, if we look at some numbers, are actually moving between China and Russia right now.
It is a very huge number in terms of the student exchanges, I think.
And more than 60000 Chinese students are currently studying in Russia right, pursuing everything from language training to full university degrees across the country.
And, on the other way, over 20000 Russian students are studying in China, experiencing some Chinese education and also daily life firsthand.
And I think this is also mentioned during the conversation we just heard.
The visa-free policies really helped a lot in the communication and also exchange for the two countries.
So mutual visa-free policies have significantly facilitated the people-to-people exchanges between the two countries.
And The data from the Association of Tour Operators of Russia is showing that over 150000 Chinese tourists visited Russia in the first quarter of 2026.
First quarter. border alone.
That's more than 44 percent year on year, while Russian trips to China also rose around 34 percent in 2025.
That visa free policy is working.
Yeah, and I saw a lot of videos shared on Red Note since the past six months at least, that people saying what is the best way of getting Wi-Fi right after you landed in Moscow.
Or where to visit that has the best Russian food that you can't try and cannot be mimicked in anywhere in China.
So, you know, stuff like that.
I have one colleague just recommend to me.
You can spend maybe just a weekend or plus another day off to travel to Russia for a little trip.
Not very far away.
Well, certain parts of Russia aren't that far away, but there are, of course, certain parts that would take a long time to get to.
So what is this initiative?
And I guess the question I want to know is why is it so important the China-Russia years of education?
Well, it is important because nowadays we see more deepened people-to-people exchanges nowadays.
And Yusheng, you mentioned a lot of the big numbers and data.
But really, on the more recent case, in the first quarter of this year alone, cross-border passenger trips through the Manchuli port, which is on the borderline, reached over 222000.
That's up more than 40% year on year.
So it's not only...
Wrapping up at the end of 2025, but it's still ongoing and still growing.
So, behind those numbers, a whole generation of young people in Russia and in China living and studying or thinking about living and studying in each other's country and getting firsthand experience of each other's daily lives.
That's the motivation that's driving this whole initiative that we're building nowadays, especially when it comes to language.
There's a lot of young people in China that's learning Russian and that kind of gives me a ritual kind of perspective, because when my parents if not my grandparents were younger, that's also the vibe.
50 years ago, 60 years ago, among the young people back then.
It's also a vibe for a lot of them to learn Russian.
My grandpa, the father of my mom's side.
He used to write letters with some Russian pen pal 50 years ago.
I'm sure he forgot most of the vocabulary nowadays.
But yeah, like 50 years later, we see the same trend happening right now.
There are more than 180 universities in China that offer Russian language majors.
And that means that students can commit to four or even more years, I suppose, of intensive Russian study, leading to a very specialized degree.
There's also about 120,000 students across Chinese universities and schools.
Translators, teachers, diplomats, business professionals in Russian related fields.
And that goes the other direction as well, doesn't it?
In Russia, there's a big push to learn Chinese.
Actually, Chinese language learning has grown really steadily across Russia, more than 140%
Universities now offer Chinese courses, and that number still continues to climb.
On top of that, over 220 primary and secondary schools have also added Chinese to their curricula, which means that students from really, really young age can now study Chinese as their maybe a second foreign language.
Pavel said during his chat with Fei Fei that oh you know, English is kind of well because I need it to communicate with my American and European colleagues, but usually I'm communicating in Chinese with my Chinese business colleagues.
Kind of a cool thing that shows how small the world has gotten.
This makes sense to me.
It makes so much sense, doesn't it?
Because if you're looking at continuing to develop an already strong relationship, albeit through education or person to person ties or tourism or whatever certain types of business and different types of industries, then fostering the relationship from a young age is a really smart thing to do.
And we can start with language learning, because through language learning we know that we learn culture.
And then, when we learn the language, we usually want to travel to that place and learn as much as we can as well.
What about at the university level?
Beyond language learning, the universities are working together too on both sides?
Yeah, it is after all the year of education between the two countries.
So, of course, a lot of the universities are carrying on this kind of a responsibility of forging alliances 15 of them, to be more specific, 15 university alliances already established, and that's involving more than 800 institutions across both countries.
So these alliances cover a wide range of activities, including joint research projects where professors and graduate students they collaborate across borders.
And then there are also faculty exchange programs that really allows teachers to travel to each other's campuses, and talent training initiatives also that's designed to prepare the next generation of specialists.
So yeah, that's a lot of the things going on and across different borders and different fields of expertise.
One concrete example would be the Shenzhen MSU BIT University, which is a joint project between Lomonosov Moscow State University and Beijing Institute of Technology.
And over the past decade it has developed into a major platform for higher education cooperation and cross-cultural training, offering degrees and research opportunities in both countries.
Actually, no, in both languages, in both Chinese and Russian.
That's interesting because Shenzhen is about as far away from Russia as you can get in China.
And that's the outcome of collaboration between a Russian university and a university based in Beijing.
That's cool.
Do you guys know any Russian words at all?
Нет.
Нет.
I know that one too.
That means no, right?
Right.
No.
До свидания.
I know that one too.
I think it's my destiny perhaps to to learn russian, because it seems, everywhere i go, people think that i'm russian.
In korea yeah, oh yeah.
I got this a lot in korea.
I got it so many times.
People asked me if i was from russia and i thought oh, that's interesting.
Korean people think that i look russian.
And then i moved to china and i have some russian neighbors and one day they approached me speaking russian And I said oh, I'm sorry, I don't speak Russian.
I'm Canadian.
And they said, oh, sorry, someone told us a new Russian guy moved into the building.
And we thought that's you.
So then I realized it's not just the Koreans that think I'm Russian.
The Russians think I'm Russian, too.
So I might want to go to one of these language programs.
It might benefit my future.
You know I think again I'll reiterate that point that it was a really good opportunity for us to learn about the relationship between China and Russia.
And again, the president, President Vladimir Putin, is in town for a couple of days.
And I'm sure that there will be lots and lots and lots of stories covered in the news on the topic.
