MOSCOW, February 2. /TASS/: Relations between Russia and China know no bounds and are of a higher quality than traditional military alliances, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with TV news anchor Dmitry Kiselyov on Thursday.
"The presence of areas of common interest is a very humble feature of our relations," he said. "It is already written down in our declarations that although we do not create a military alliance, our relations are of a higher quality than military alliances in their classic sense, and they have no bounds or limits. And there are no taboo topics either. They are indeed the best in the history of both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, and the Russian Federation."
"Our common interest is primarily to be allowed to develop based on our national plans within the existing norms of international trade, that is, the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and within the very system that the West has created, starting with the Bretton Woods Institutions - the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank," the top diplomat went on to say.
He reiterated that it took Russia 17 years to join the WTO, and upon entering the organization, the country accepted their rules, which "in general, were the rules of fair competition."Now, it has all been ruined," Lavrov said with regret. "The work of the Dispute Settlement Body was blocked in the WTO precisely because China is beating America on its own playing field by its own rules and has every reason to demand compensation, which it will certainly be awarded by the WTO Dispute Settlement Body, if the US allows this body to work," he added.
According to the foreign minister, the Americans take "a purely bureaucratic and, in the worst sense of the word, Soviet party approach" - they "simply block the appointment of new members of this body to existing vacancies, and there is no quorum there."
"This has been going on for years," Lavrov summed up. "That's exactly because China will win all these disputes with the US, they have started a reform of the WTO, publicly stating that this reform should be based on the interests of the US and the European Union. And all the rest will be told where they belong and how to behave," he stressed.
