Wu Bangguo, chairman of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress (NPC), will arrive here on Sunday for a three-day visit, during which he will meet Russian leaders and top legislators of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) members.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of China-Russia strategic partnership of cooperation and the fifth anniversary of the signing of the Good-neighborly Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between China and Russia.

China's ambassador to Russia Liu Guchang has said that the hosting of "Year of Russia" and "Year of China" in 2006 and 2007 will further enhance understanding and political trust between China and Russia.

As mutual political trust deepened, the China-Russia ties have reached a historic height. A regular communication mechanism is now in place between the NPC and Russia's State Duma, lower house of parliament, and the Federal Committee, or the upper house.

With the steady advancement of Sino-Russian strategic partnership and the sustained growth of the two economies in recent years, bilateral economic and trade cooperation and cultural exchange have got on the fast track.

The volume of bilateral trade has been growing at a rate of more than 30 percent for a seventh consecutive year. The Sino-Russian trade volume in 2005 hit an all-time high of 29.1 billion U.S. dollars, a 37.1-percent jump on the previous year. Statistics from the Customs sources of both countries showed that China has become Russia's fourth largest trade partner, and Russia China's eighth largest one.

The two sides managed to hold two investment-promoting fairs last year, during which the value of contracts signed amounted to 2.2 billion dollars. The two sides are striving to achieve the goal set by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and his Russian counterpart Mikhail Fradkov that by the year 2020, Chinese investment in Russia will increase to a total of 12 billion dollars.

The two countries have made substantial progress in energy cooperation. In 2005 China imported more than 12 million tons of crude oil from Russia. And the enterprises from the two countries are still negotiating possible cooperative expansion in areas of oil and natural gas.

The two countries are making joint efforts to regulate the trade order, optimize the trade structure, explore the trade potential and raise the level of bilateral trade, so as to lay a sound foundation for realizing the goal of bringing bilateral trade to 60 billion to 80 billion dollars by the year 2010.

Meanwhile, over the past years, the all-round cultural cooperation between China and Russia has also been encouraging. In 2003, Russia became the main guest country at the "Meet in Beijing" spring arts festival, the biggest international art festival ever held in Asia.

With artists from the two countries frequently exchanging visits on various occasions, unofficial cultural exchanges between China and Russia are also growing, and a number of art institutes, libraries and museums of China and Russia have forged partnership.