title: Katamari Damacy

text: Each level features two secret items that can be found. The first item is a "royal present" that contains an object that the Prince can wear. Most gifts are non-functional, but one includes a camera that can be used to take in-game screenshots. In the two-player mode, a player can choose to play as either the Prince or one of his numerous Cousins. The screen is split vertically; player one on the left and player two on the right. Players compete simultaneously in a small arena to collect the most objects within three minutes. The playing field is replenished with new objects periodically. Players can ram into each other, knocking items from their opponents' katamaris, and if one player leads by a fair amount, then it is possible to roll up the opponent's katamari.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: Keita Takahashi had studied art and entered the Musashino Art University to study sculpting in 1995. During his studies, he came to a philosophy that his art needed to combine practical elements along with a bit of whimsy and humor. After graduation, Takahashi no longer had the desire to pursue sculpting as a full-time career, and saw the potential to become involved in video games as a means to continue his art interest in a larger medium. Joining Namco as an artist around 1999, Takahashi worked on a number of smaller projects for the publisher. One of these was called "Action Drive", inspired by "Crazy Taxi" but with more spy-based elements atop the driving gameplay. During this, Takahashi came up with the ideas of the characters that would be central to "Katamari Damacy": the King, the Queen, and the Prince of all Cosmos. His idea would have been that the queen had been kidnapped by agents on Earth, and the lazy King sends the Prince to rescue her. To do this, the player would use the diminutive Prince's head, shaped like a hammer, to stun humans, after which the Prince would then "drive" the humans around by putting a steering wheel on the back of the human's head. Takahashi felt this would lead to interesting and creative gameplay, allowing the player to create havoc as the Prince followed the misguided suggestions from the King, but the project leader rejected the idea. "Action Drive" was eventually cancelled.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: While working on other projects, Takahashi continued to try to think of game ideas, seeking to grow beyond being just an artist for Namco. Takahashi cited two concepts that led to the inspiration of "Katamari Damacy". The first was a prototype shown by Sony Computer Entertainment called "Densen" (Japanese for "power line") that had the player as a young girl traverse floating islands of various homes connected by power lines. The game, though never released, gave Takahashi the idea that the ordinary world could be made interesting with only small changes to perception, and that a game could be fun without the need to cause violence. The second idea was from the game of "tamakorogashi" played in Japanese school's "undōkai" or sports days. In "tamakorogashi", students attempt to push a giant ball into a goal. Both those ideas led to him thinking of a game where spinning a ball would roll ordinary stuff into it, making the ball larger and larger over time. The evening he conceived of this idea, he spoke to a friend, one of the game designers in Namco, to see if it made for a good game idea, who agreed it had potential. The next day, he spoke to his former boss, Mitsutoshi Ozaki, about the concept, further adding a way to reuse the King and Prince characters he had previously proposed, who also agreed it would make for a great game.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: However, as Takahashi was in Namco's art department and not in game design, there was no easy route for him to propose this idea to Namco's superiors. Ozaki suggested a novel approach for Takahashi through the Namco Digital Hollywood Game Laboratory. At the time, Namco had been following in the model that Konami had used in 1997: Konami established the Konami Computer Entertainment School to help educate new game developers which were eventually hired in Konami, and several of the experimental ideas founded by the School during this time became products within the Konami Games & Music Division (later, Bemani) that were highly successful, including "Beatmania", "GuitarFreaks", and "Dance Dance Revolution". Namco hoped the Digital Hollywood Game Laboratory would follow a similar path. At the time, Masaya Nakamura was principal of this school, and oversaw one senior thesis class where the students were being trained on 3D modeling towards producing a game prototype with the help of other Namco employees, which could potentially be made into a full game. Ozaki suggested to Takahashi that he could have the students of this class create the 3D objects needed to populate his game world.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: Takahashi took Ozaki's advice, joining the project to help produce the prototype for his game. Alongside about ten students from the Digital Hollywood program, he had been able to gain some visual design artists from Namco to help with the prototype but had difficulty in getting any game development engineers, due to the low priority of the school. He was fortunate to find that some of the engineers from Namco's arcade game division were going to be laid off, and he was able to convince three of them to join his team to retain their jobs within Namco.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: One initial difficulty faced in developing the prototype was their choice of platform, the PlayStation 2. At the time the project started, Sony had just announced the specifications for the console, which was built from the ground-up to support 3D graphics via the Emotion Engine. However, Sony had not provided any updated software development kits, believing that developers would be able to figure out the hardware. As a result, the console was difficult to develop for at its launch. In contrast, Nintendo had recently announced the GameCube and that it would provide more developer-friendly features in contrast to the previous Nintendo 64 console. Thus, Takahashi's team decided to develop for the GameCube for their prototype even though the final game was expected to be a PlayStation 2 release. In creating the prototype, Takahashi had envisioned that while the ball the player rolled around would grow as they rolled over objects, it would also shrink if they collided with obstacles and lost objects from it. This would have been tied to an interactive music track, which would have started off simple with a small ball and become more complex and full as it got larger. Technically, the team found they could not implement this shrinking mechanic due to memory limitations, and further found that with the interactive music concept, it was not fun to shrink back down and hear the music regress to a simpler form. The shrinking concept as well as the interactive music approach were subsequently dropped. The prototype was completed within about six months, in time for the year's Japan Media Arts Festival for exhibition. Takahashi also presented the game for an internal review, leading Namco to green light the game's full development.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: Full work on "Katamari Damacy" began in late 2001. Namco assigned Now Production, based in Osaka, to help bring the game to the PlayStation 2. Takahashi was initially concerned about having to work with an external studio in a different location, but found that the Namco and Now Production teams worked well together. The full team consisted of about twenty members between the two companies, and Namco had allocated a budget of about (about at the time of production) for the game; this was about the tenth of the cost of budget allocated for Namco's blockbuster titles such as "Ridge Racer" or "Soulcalibur". The full game took a year and a half to develop, with eight months of prototyping from the Digital Hollywood version.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: Takahashi said that the team was aiming for four key points in developing the game: novelty, ease of understanding, enjoyment, and humor. Iwatani compared the game to Namco's "Pac-Man", which focused on simplicity and innovation and served as a template for future games from the company. At one point during development, Takahashi "proactively ignored" advice from Namco to increase the complexity of the game.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: The core gameplay of "Katamari Damacy" is the subject of U.S. Patent 7,402,104, "Game performing method, game apparatus, storage medium, data signal and program". The patent, issued in 2009, primarily describes how the game maintains the roughly spherical nature of the katamari when objects are picked up, though extends to concepts such as tracking objects collected based on temperature or weight values, which were modes included with later games of the series.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: The music in "Katamari Damacy" was widely hailed as imaginative and original (winning both IGN's and GameSpot's "Soundtrack of the Year 2004" awards) and was considered one of the game's best features. The soundtrack was released in Japan as "Katamari Fortissimo Damacy". Its eclectic composition featured elements of traditional electronic video game music, as well as heavy jazz and samba influences (Shibuya-kei). Most of the tracks were composed by Yuu Miyake, and many feature vocals from popular J-pop singers, such as Yui Asaka from the "Sukeban Deka 3" TV series, and anime voice actors, including Nobue Matsubara and Ado Mizumori. One track is sung and written by Charlie Kosei, composer of the "Lupin III" soundtrack.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: A single-level demonstration of the final version of "Katamari Damacy" was exhibited at the 2003 Tokyo Game Show (TGS). The demo was critically praised by the press, with GameSpot's Jeff Gerstmann describing it as a "good dose of weird fun". Sony expressed strong interest in pushing the game's release forward based on the TGS response, offering to handle the game's promotion in exchange. Sony advertised the game on numerous billboards and posters across Japan, and created an infamous television ad of a businessman, waiting for an appointment, rolling up office furniture and staff. The original prototype game's cover artwork featured the large red ball used in "tamakorogashi", but for the game's final release, Takahashi developed the game's cover art, showing a large katamari on the verge of rolling over a city, emphasizing the scale of the game.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: The game was released in Japan on March 18, 2004, priced at about , roughly two-thirds of the cost of most major titles at the time. Namco had estimated that the game would sell over 500,000 units in Japan during its first year, and while the game did not make that metric, it had stayed as one of the top ten games sold in Japan through its first nine weeks on the market, with more than 100,000 units sold during that period, which was considered impressive for a new intellectual property. The public reaction to the game was positive enough that Namco ordered a sequel by December 2004.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: At this point, Namco had not considered any Western release for the game. "Katamari Damacy" was first shown in the United States at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop during the March 2004 Game Developers Conference. A group of Western developers from the International Game Developers Association had previously brought "Mojib-Ribbon" to the 2003 Experimental Gameplay Workshop after seeing it demonstrated at the 2002 TGS, and had been at the 2003 TGS to look for a similar title to exhibit in 2004. Discovering "Katamari Damacy" as an ideal title to exhibit, the group arranged with Namco to have Takahashi come to the United States to present the game. The press reaction to the session was described as "electric", but they were disappointed to learn from Takahashi that there were no plans for a Western release. Media attention to the game from the Workshop, often called "Namco's snowball simulator", led to more pressure on Namco for a Western release. Takahashi was again invited to come present the game at E3 2004. Players wanting the game to release in the West also wrote to Namco for a release. By July 2004, Namco officially announced the game's release in North America for September 2004. The game was never officially released in Europe, though its subsequent sequels would receive European releases.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: In the Japanese language, means "clump" or "clod" and "Damashii" is the rendaku form of which means "soul" or "spirit". Therefore, the phrase approximates to "clump spirit". The two kanji that form the name look similar (sharing the same right-side element 鬼), in a kind of visual alliteration. The name is officially transliterated as "Katamari Damacy" in most releases. Game creator Keita Takahashi said that the title suddenly popped into his head from the start and never changed during development.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: "Katamari Damacy" enjoyed moderate success in Japan. The game was sold at about two-thirds of the price of a new game at the time. It was the top selling game the week of its release with 32,000 units sold, and sold over 155,000 copies in Japan by the end of 2004. However, Namco originally estimated that over 500,000 units would be sold in Japan.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: The game was not released in PAL territories such as Europe and Australia since publishers thought it was too "quirky" for these markets; however, Electronic Arts picked up both sequels, "We Love Katamari"


title: Katamari Damacy

text: The North American release of the game was very well received by professional reviewers, was mentioned and praised on TechTV, and was a featured sidebar in the May 23, 2004, edition of "Time" magazine. "Time" continued to praise the game in its November 22, 2004 "Best games of the year" special, calling it "the most unusual and original game to hit PlayStation2". Most retailers underestimated the demand for such a quirky game, and only purchased a few copies of this sleeper hit; it rapidly sold out nationwide, with sales surpassing 120,000 units in North America. It also won the U.S. award for "Excellence in Game Design" at the 2005 Game Developers Choice Awards, and G4 awarded "Katamari Damacy" its "Best Innovation" prize in its G-Phoria of that year. "Katamari Damacy" was one of the recipients of the 2004 Good Design Award in Japan, the first time a video game has won this award. "Katamari Damacy" won two awards from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences for "Outstanding Innovation in Console Gaming" and "Outstanding Achievement in Game Design", as well as nominations for "Game of the Year", "Console Game of the Year", and "Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition". "GameSpot" named it the best PlayStation 2 game of September 2004. It later won the publication's year-end "Best Puzzle/Rhythm Game", "Best Original Music" and "Most Innovative Game" awards across all platforms.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: In 2015, the game placed 13th on USgamer's The 15 Best Games Since 2000 list. In 2019, it was ranked 49th on "The Guardian" newspaper's The 50 Best Video Games of the 21st Century list.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: Although the game has rapidly achieved a cult following and has been praised by many reviewers, it also has its share of criticism. A common complaint is that the game is relatively short and repetitive—it can be completed in under ten hours, and the gameplay stays virtually the same all the way through. However, others, such as "Electronic Gaming Monthly" reviewer Mark McDonald (who gave the game 8.5 out of ten with his EGM staff), argue that the game's limitations are made up for by its strengths: "Sure, you're basically doing the same thing each mission, but Katamari's elegant controls, killer soundtrack, and wicked humor make it perfectly suited for replay." As a well-executed, non-traditional game, "Katamari Damacy" has been influential in the game development community. Since its release, a number of other games have been inspired by "Katamari", such as "The Wonderful End of the World" and "Donut County".


title: Katamari Damacy

text: "Katamari Damacy" has spawned numerous sequels on the PlayStation 2 and newer game consoles. The game's direct sequel on the PlayStation 2, "We Love Katamari", was released internationally in 2005 and 2006. Its story is self-referential, following on the success of the first game, most of the levels are based on requests from newfound fans of the King and the Prince. Though sharing the same mechanics, "We Love Katamari" introduces new gameplay features, such as co-operative play, and new goals, such as collecting the most valuable objects, that would continue through its sequels.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: On July 29, 2012, the game was included in an exhibit at the New York Museum of Modern Art, entitled "Century of the Child: Growing by Design". Here, the game was used to demonstrate the change in toys and "playthings" over the 20th century, specifically praising the game for its "quirky manipulations of scale" that makes it accessible for all ages. Vice president of marketing for Namco Bandai Games America, Inc. Carlson Choi described the inclusion of "Katamari Damacy" to the exhibit as "a testament to the creative designs embodied in Namco Bandai's games ... in addition to being a validation of video games as a modern form of interactive art." On November 29 the same year, the game was included in the permanent collection of video games of the Museum of Modern Art. Curator Paola Antonelli selected "Katamari Damacy" among the first fourteen games to be displayed in the museum, which was chosen according to a variety of criteria, including "visual quality, elegance of the code and design of playing behavior."


title: Katamari Damacy

text: A high-definition remaster of the game made with the Unity game engine, titled "Katamari Damacy Reroll", was released on the Nintendo Switch and Windows on December 7, 2018. Known as "Katamari Damacy Encore" in Japan, it is the first title in Bandai Namco Games "Encore" series of remasters. The game includes support for the Switch's gyro controls in addition to its traditional control scheme. "Reroll" was nominated for the Freedom Tower Award for Best Remake at the 2020 New York Game Awards. A PlayStation 4 and Xbox One version was released in Japan on November 19, and worldwide on November 20, 2020. A version for Amazon Luna was made available on March 4, 2021, and a Stadia version was released worldwide on September 7, 2021.


title: Katamari Damacy

text: In a retrospective in 2019, "Edge" noted that playing the game 15 years after its initial release reveals how influential the game has been for independent games following it, and added that "Takahashi's breakout game shot through with what we think of these days as the indie spirit: it is playful and tremendously funny, deeply weird and a game with real heart."


title: Weimar

text: Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouring cities of Erfurt and Jena, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia, with approximately 500,000 inhabitants. The city itself has a population of 65,000. Weimar is well known because of its large cultural heritage and its importance in German history.


title: Weimar

text: The city was a focal point of the German Enlightenment and home of the leading figures of the literary genre of Weimar Classicism, writers Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. In the 19th century, noted composers such as Franz Liszt made Weimar a music centre. Later, artists and architects such as Henry van de Velde, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, and Walter Gropius came to the city and founded the Bauhaus movement, the most important German design school of the interwar period.


title: Weimar

text: The political history of 20th-century Weimar was volatile: it was the place where Germany's first democratic constitution was signed after the First World War, giving its name to the Weimar Republic period in German politics (1918–33). It was also one of the cities mythologized by National Socialist propaganda.


title: Weimar

text: Until 1948, Weimar was the capital of Thuringia. Many places in the city centre have been designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, either as part of the Classical Weimar complex (containing monuments to the classical period of Weimar in 18th and 19th centuries) or the Bauhaus complex (containing buildings associated with the Bauhaus art school). Heritage tourism is one of the leading economic sectors of Weimar.


title: Weimar

text: Noted institutions in Weimar are the Bauhaus University, the Liszt School of Music, the Duchess Anna Amalia Library, and two leading courts of Thuringia (the Supreme Administrative Court and Constitutional Court). In 1999, Weimar was the European Capital of Culture.


title: Weimar

text: Archaeological finds dating back to the Thuringii epoch (3rd to 6th centuries) show that the Weimar part of the Ilm valley was settled early. A tight network of settlements occupied much of the area of today's city.


title: Weimar

text: The oldest records regarding Weimar date to 899. Its name changed over the centuries from "Wimares" through "Wimari" to "Wimar" and finally Weimar; it is derived from Old High German "wīh-" (holy) and "-mari" (standing water, swamp). The place was the seat of the County of Weimar, first mentioned in 949, which was one of the most powerful jurisdictions in early Middle Ages Thuringia. In 1062 it was united with the County of Orlamünde to the new County of Weimar-Orlamünde, which existed until the Thuringian Counts' War in 1346. It fell to the Wettins afterwards.


title: Weimar

text: The Weimar settlement emerged around the count's wooden castle and two small churches, dedicated to Saint Peter (which later became the main church), and to Saint James, respectively. In 1240, the count founded the dynasty's monastery in Oberweimar, run by Cistercian nuns. Soon after, the counts of Weimar founded the town, which was an independent parish since 1249 and called "civitas" in 1254. From 1262, the citizens used their own seal. The regional influence of the Weimar counts was declining as the influence of the Wettins in Thuringia increased. Hence, the new small town was relatively marginal in a regional context, also due to the fact that it was located far from relevant trade routes, such as the Via Regia. The settlement around Saint James Church developed into a suburb during the 13th century.


title: Weimar

text: After becoming part of Wettin territory in 1346, urban development improved. The Wettins fostered Weimar by abolishing socage and granting privileges to the citizens. Now Weimar became equal to other Wettinian cities like Weißensee and grew during the 15th century, with the establishment of a town hall and the current main church. In 1438 Weimar acquired trade privileges for woad, a plant from which blue dye was made. The castle and the walls were finished in the 16th century, making Weimar into a full city.


title: Weimar

text: After the Treaty of Leipzig (1485) Weimar became part of the electorate of the Ernestine branch of Wettins with Wittenberg as capital. The Protestant Reformation was introduced in Weimar in 1525; Martin Luther stayed several times in the city. As the Ernestines lost the Schmalkaldic War in 1547, their capital Wittenberg went also to the Albertines, so that they needed a new residence. As the ruler returned from captivity, Weimar became his residence in 1552 and remained as such until the end of the monarchy in 1918. The first Ernestine territorial partition in 1572 was followed by various ones, nevertheless Weimar stayed the capital of different Saxe-Weimar states. The court and its staff brought some wealth to the city, so that it saw a first construction boom in the 16th century. The 17th century brought decline to Weimar, because of changing trade conditions (as in nearby Erfurt). Besides, the territorial partitions led to the loss of political importance of the dukes of Saxe-Weimar and their finances shrunk. The city's polity weakened more and more and lost its privileges, leading to the absolutist reign of the dukes in the early 18th century. On the other hand, this time brought another construction boom to Weimar, and the city got its present appearance, marked by various ducal representation buildings. The city walls were demolished in 1757 and during the following decades, Weimar expanded in all directions. The biggest building constructed in this period was the "Schloss" as the residence of the dukes (north and east wing: 1789–1803, west wing 1832–1835, south wing: 1913–1914). Between 1708 and 1717 Johann Sebastian Bach worked as the court's organist in Weimar.


title: Weimar

text: The period from the start of the regencies of Anna Amalia (1758–1775) and her son Carl August (1775–1828) through to Goethe's death in 1832 is denoted as the "golden" or the "classical" age because of the high level of cultural activity in Weimar. The city became an important cultural centre of Europe, having been home to literary figures including Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Wieland and Bertuch; and in music the piano virtuoso Hummel. It has been a site of pilgrimage for the German intelligentsia since Goethe first moved to Weimar in 1775. Goethe was also active in civic duties while living there. He served as Privy Councilor to the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach for an extended period. The tombs of Goethe and Schiller, as well as their archives, may be found in the city. Goethe's "Elective Affinities" (1809) is set around the city of Weimar. In comparison to many major German states, the dukes' policy was liberal and tolerant in this period. The liberal Saxe-Weimar constitution was brought into effect in 1816.


title: Weimar

text: The time after Goethe's death is denoted as the "silver" age because Weimar remained an influential cultural centre. The first emphasis was fostering music. In 1842, Franz Liszt moved to Weimar to become the Grand Ducal court conductor. Liszt organized the premiere of Richard Wagner's "Lohengrin" (1850) as well as the world première of Saint Saëns' opera Samson et Delilah (1877) in the city. The Weimar School of Music was founded in 1872 as Germany's first orchestra school. Richard Strauss worked in Weimar between 1889 and 1894 as second conductor in the acclaimed Staatskapelle Weimar (the court orchestra founded in 1491). Several of his encores for works such as "Don Juan" and "Macbeth" were performed by the Staatskapelle Weimar. He also premièred Humperdinck's opera Hänsel and Gretel 1893 in Weimar. Friedrich Nietzsche moved to Weimar in 1897, and died there three years later.


title: Weimar

text: In 1860 the Weimar Saxon-Grand Ducal Art School, the precursor of today's Bauhaus University, was founded. This was the beginning of academic arts education in Weimar. The institution created its own painting style, the "Weimar School" of painting with representatives such as Max Liebermann and Arnold Böcklin. The Kunstgewerbeschule Weimar was found by Henry van de Velde with the support of Grand Duke William Ernest in 1902 and represents the other root of the Bauhaus, known as "Das Neue Weimar" ("The New Weimar") around Harry Graf Kessler. It was a foundation against Prussia's restrictive arts policy favouring Historicism instead of international Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau.


title: Weimar

text: As early as the 19th century, the curation of Weimar and its heritage started. Many archives, societies and museums were founded to present and conserve the cultural sights and goods. In 1846, Weimar was connected by the Thuringian Railway. In the following decades, the city saw a construction and population boom (like most late-19th century cities in Germany). Nevertheless, Weimar did not become industrialised, and remained a city of clerks, artists and rentiers. During the German Revolution of 1918–19 the last reigning grand duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, William Ernest, had to abdicate and went in exile to Heinrichau in Silesia.


title: Weimar

text: The period in German history from 1919 to 1933 is commonly referred to as the Weimar Republic, as the Republic's constitution was drafted here rather than Berlin, as the capital was considered too dangerous for the National Assembly to use as a meeting place, because of its street rioting after the 1918 German Revolution. The calm and centrally-located Weimar had a suitable place of assembly (the theatre), hotels and infrastructure, so it was chosen as the capital.


title: Weimar

text: In 1920, the federal state of Thuringia was founded by an association of eight former microstates (Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Saxe-Gotha, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Meiningen, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, Reuss-Gera and Reuss-Greiz) and Weimar became its capital. Due to that fact, the city experienced another period of growth.


title: Weimar

text: In 1919, Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus School by a merger of the Weimar Saxon-Grand Ducal Art School with the Kunstgewerbeschule Weimar. The Bauhaus in Weimar lasted from 1919 to 1925, when it moved to Dessau, after the newly elected right-wing Thuringian council put pressure on the school by withdrawing funding and forcing its teachers to quit. Many buildings in Weimar today have influences from the Bauhaus period. However, only one original Bauhaus building was constructed during 1919–1925, the Haus am Horn, now used for exhibitions and events on Bauhaus culture.


title: Weimar

text: The Weimar Republic era was marked by a constant conflict between "progressive" and national socialist forces, the former represented by Harry Graf Kessler and the latter Adolf Bartels in Weimar. After 1929, the right wing forces prevailed and Weimar became an early centre of Nazism.


title: Weimar

text: Weimar was important to the Nazis for two reasons: first, it was where the hated Weimar Republic was founded, and second, it had been a centre of German high culture during recent centuries. In 1926, the NSDAP held its party convention in Weimar. Adolf Hitler visited Weimar more than forty times prior to 1933. In 1930, Wilhelm Frick became minister for internal affairs and education in Thuringia, the first NSDAP minister in Germany. In 1932, the NSDAP came to power in Thuringia under Fritz Sauckel. In 1933, the first Nazi concentration camps were established around Weimar in Nohra (the first one in Germany) and Bad Sulza. Most prisoners at this time were communists and social democrats. After Kristallnacht in 1938, harassment of Jews became more intense, so that many of them emigrated or were arrested. The Weimar Synagogue was destroyed in 1938.


title: Weimar

text: During the 1930s, the barracks in Weimar was greatly extended. One famous person serving as a soldier in Weimar was Wolfgang Borchert, later a well known poet and playwright. As it was the capital of Thuringia, the Nazis built a new Roman-fascist-style administrative centre between the city centre and the main station. This Gauforum, designed by Hermann Giesler, was the only Nazi governmental building completed outside Berlin (though there were plans for all German state capitals). Today it hosts the Thuringian State Administration. Other Giesler buildings are the "Villa Sauckel", the governor's palace and the "Hotel Elephant" in the city centre.


title: Weimar

text: In 1937, the Nazis established Buchenwald concentration camp eight kilometres from Weimar city centre. Between July 1938 and April 1945, some 240,000 people were incarcerated in the camp by the Nazi regime, including 168 Western Allied POWs. The number of deaths in Buchenwald is estimated at 56,545. The Buchenwald concentration camp provided slave labour for local industry (arms manufacturer "Wilhelm-Gustloff-Werk").


title: Weimar

text: The city centre was partially damaged by US Air Force bombing in 1945 with some 1,800 people killed and many historic buildings destroyed. Nevertheless, most of the destroyed buildings were restored soon after the war because of their importance in German cultural history. The Allied ground advance into Germany reached Weimar in April 1945, and the city surrendered to the US 80th Infantry Division on 12 April 1945. The residents of Weimar were ordered to walk through Buchenwald, to see what had been happening so close to the city, as documented in Billy Wilder's film "Death Mills". The city ended up in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, so US troops were soon replaced by Soviet forces.


title: Weimar

text: From 1945 to 1950, the Soviet Union used the occupied Buchenwald concentration camp as a NKVD special camp to imprison defeated Nazis and other Germans. The camp slogan remained . On 6 January 1950, the Soviets handed over Buchenwald to the East German Ministry of Internal Affairs.


title: Weimar

text: In 1948, the East German government declared Erfurt as Thuringia's new capital, and Weimar lost its influence on German contemporary culture and politics. (The state of Thuringia itself was dissolved in 1952 and replaced by three Bezirke (districts) in a local government reform; Weimar belonged to the Bezirk of Erfurt.) The city was the headquarters of the Soviet Union's 8th Guards Army as part of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. Due to its fame and importance for tourism, Weimar received more financial subsidies from the GDR government and remained in better condition than most East German cities.


title: Weimar

text: After German reunification in 1990, Weimar experienced significant economic hardship, but funding restored much that had deteriorated, and it was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996 (Bauhaus) and 1998 (Classical Weimar). The European Council of Ministers selected the city as European Capital of Culture for 1999. Tourism has become an important economic factor over the decades. Weimar is now a popular residence of people working in Erfurt and Jena, both less than 20 minutes away.


title: Weimar

text: In 2004, a fire broke out at the Duchess Anna Amalia Library. The library contains a 13,000-volume collection including Goethe's masterpiece "Faust", in addition to the duchess's music collection. An authentic Lutheran Bible from 1534 was saved from the fire. The library is one of the oldest in Europe, dating back to 1691, and is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Over one million volumes were housed in the library, of which forty to fifty thousand were damaged beyond repair. A number of books were shock-frozen in Leipzig to save them from rotting. The library was reopened in 2007.


title: Weimar

text: Weimar is situated within the valley of Ilm river, a tributary of Saale river on the southern border of the Thuringian Basin, a fertile agricultural area between the Harz mountains in the north and the Thuringian Forest in the southwest. The municipal terrain is hilly; the height of the city centre in Ilm valley is approximately 200 m of elevation. To the north, the terrain rises to Ettersberg, the city's backyard mountain, 482 m in height. The range of hills in the south of Weimar rises up to 370 m and is part of the Ilm Saale Plate Muschelkalk formation. The eastern, central and western parts of the municipal territory are in agricultural use, whereas the Ettersberg and some southern areas are wooded.


title: Weimar

text: Weimar has a humid continental climate (Dfb) or an oceanic climate ("Cfb") according to the Köppen climate classification system. Summers are warm and sometimes humid with average high temperatures of and lows of . Winters are relatively cold with average high temperatures of and lows of . The city's topography creates a microclimate caused through the basin position with sometimes inversion in winter (quite cold nights under ). Annual precipitation is only with moderate rainfall throughout the year. Light snowfall occurs, mainly from December through February, but snow cover does not usually remain for long.


title: Weimar

text: Weimar abuts the district of Weimarer Land with the municipalities Berlstedt, Ettersburg, Kleinobringen, Großobringen and Wohlsborn in the north, Kromsdorf, Umpferstedt and Mellingen in the east, Vollersroda, Buchfart, Hetschburg, Bad Berka and Troistedt in the south and Nohra, Daasdorf am Berge, Hopfgarten and Ottstedt am Berge in the west.


title: Weimar

text: The city itself is divided into 10 inner urban and 11 suburban districts. The centre is formed by the district "Altstadt" (old town) and the Gründerzeit districts "Nordvorstadt" in the north, "Parkvorstadt" in the east and "Westvorstadt" in the south and west. Later additions are "Südstadt" in the south and "Schönblick" in the southwest. Finally, there are the Plattenbau settlements, constructed during the GDR period, "Weststadt" and "Nordstadt" as well as two industrial areas in the north and west.


title: Weimar

text: The 11 suburban districts are villages which became incorporated during the 20th century; however, they have mostly stayed rural to date:


title: Weimar

text: Over the centuries, Weimar remained a small town of less than 5,000 inhabitants. When it became the capital of Saxe-Weimar in 1572, population growth was stimulated and population increased from 3,000 in 1650 to 6,000 in 1750. Around the year 1800, Weimar had 7,000 inhabitants. Their number grew constantly over the years to 13,000 in 1850, 28,000 in 1900 and 35,000 at the beginning of World War I. During the interwar period, the new capital of Thuringia saw a population boom, which led to 65,000 inhabitants in 1940. Since that time, the population levels have stagnated. The years 2009 to 2012 brought a moderate growth of approximately 0.35% p. a., whereas the population in bordering rural regions is shrinking with accelerating tendency. Suburbanization played only a small role in Weimar. It occurred after the reunification for a short time in the 1990s, but most of the suburban areas were situated within the administrative city borders.


title: Weimar

text: The birth surplus was +3 in 2012, this is +0.0 per 1,000 inhabitants (Thuringian average: −4.5; national average: −2.4). The net migration rate was +4.5 per 1,000 inhabitants in 2012 (Thuringian average: -0.8; national average: +4.6). The most important regions of origin are rural areas of Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony as well as foreign countries like Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria.


title: Weimar

text: Like other eastern German cities, Weimar has a relatively small foreign population (compared to the German average): circa 4.0% are non-Germans by citizenship, while 7.9% have a migrant background (according to 2011 EU census). Differing from the national average, the biggest groups of migrants in Weimar are Vietnamese people, Russians and Ukrainians. During recent years, the economic situation of the city improved: the unemployment rate declined from 20% in 2005 to 5.1% in 2019. Due to the official atheism in the former GDR, most of the population is non-religious. 21.1% are members of the Evangelical Church in Central Germany and 6.8% are Catholics (according to 2011 EU census).


title: Weimar

text: The historic city centre of Weimar is situated between the Ilm river in the east, Grabenstraße in the north, Goetheplatz and Theaterplatz in the west and Schillerstraße in the south. Its two central squares are the Marktplatz in the south (with the town hall) and the Herderplatz in the north (with the main church). Despite its medieval origin, there are only a few medieval buildings, many being destroyed by frequent fires throughout the city's history. Most buildings in this area date back to the 17th and 18th century. Furthermore, Weimar has two old suburbs: in the north, the "Jakobsvorstadt" around St. James' Church (medieval origin) and another one in the south around Frauenplan square. The majority of buildings in these areas are also of 17th- and 18th-century origin. During the late 19th and early 20th century, Weimar grew in all directions. Because of its function as an "officials' city", the houses in these areas are more substantial than in many comparable Gründerzeit quarters in Germany. The most uptown areas are those right and left of the "Park an der Ilm" in the southeast, whereas the western and northern quarters are more basic and mixed with industrial areas in their outer parts. During the GDR period, two new Plattenbau settlements were developed in the west and the north of the city. After 1990, suburbanization occurred for a short time and the rural districts of Weimar saw significant growth as part of the larger city.


title: Weimar

text: The city's main church is the Evangelical St. Peter and Paul on the Herderplatz (known as Die Herderkirche). It was rebuilt in late Gothic style after a fire around 1500. Between 1726 and 1735, the interior underwent a Baroque remodelling by Johann Adolf Richter. Johann Gottfried Herder was the dean of the church between 1766 and 1803. The second old Evangelical church of Weimar is St. James on Rollplatz, rebuilt in 1712 in Baroque style. The Roman Catholic parish church of Weimar is dedicated to the Sacred Heart and was built between 1888 and 1891 in historicist forms imitating Florence Cathedral. Another church is the Russian Orthodox Chapel within the historic cemetery. It was built in 1862 as the funerary chapel of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna and was one of the first Russian-styled buildings in Germany.


title: Weimar

text: Interesting churches in the suburban districts are the Lutheran parish church of Gelmeroda, which was the inspiration for many paintings by Lyonel Feininger, and the Lutheran parish church of Oberweimar, which was a former monastery, and is a good example of Gothic architecture in Weimar.


title: Weimar

text: Due to its function as a ducal residence, Weimar is rich in early-modern castles and palaces. The biggest one is the "Stadtschloss" at Burgplatz in the city centre. Today's four-wing building was started after a great fire in 1774. The tower and the Bastille building at its south-western edge are relics of older castles in this place.


title: Weimar

text: The "Fürstenhaus" at Platz der Demokratie was the first parliament building in Weimar, established in the 1770s. Today it is in use by the Weimar School of Music. The "Green Castle" next to the Fürstenhaus was built in the 1560s in Renaissance style and hosts today the Duchess Anna Amalia Library. The "Yellow Castle" at Grüner Markt was built in 1703 and is the municipal library today. The neighbouring "Red Castle" is also part of the library and was built in the 1570s. The "Wittumspalais" is a smaller widow mansion near Theaterplatz, established in 1768. Outbildings of the ducal residence are the "Husarenstall" (1770), the later residence of Charlotte von Stein at Ackerwand street, the "Marstall" (1870s) at Kegelplatz, today used as Thuringian State Archive and the "Reithaus" (1710s) within the "Park an der Ilm".


title: Weimar

text: Furthermore, there are some impressive ducal country residences around Weimar. They are marked by their beautiful parks and gardens. Schloss Belvedere, south-east of Weimar was built between 1724 and 1732 in Baroque style with an orangery near to a ducal hunting forest. North-east of Weimar, at Ettersburg lies another ducal hunting lodge next to the Ettersberg mountain and its forest. It was established between 1706 and 1711 also in Baroque style. The third summer residence, Schloss Tiefurt, is located in Tiefurt, north-east of Weimar. The small lodge in a wide park in Ilm valley was rebuilt in 1775 in late-Baroque forms.


title: Weimar

text: The Onion Market (Weimarer Zwiebelmarkt) is an annual festival held in October in Weimar and it is Thuringia's largest festival. The festival is held over 3 days and approximately 500 stalls and more than 100 stage performances are put up across the city.


title: Weimar

text: Weimar first celebrated the Onion Market in 1653. Stalls typically offer onion plaits, themed arts and crafts and numerous onion-based foods, including onion cakes, onion soups and onion breads. The festival also hosts numerous beer gardens, live music, fairground attractions and a Ferris wheel.


title: Weimar

text: There are several clubs with live music once or twice a week. There is also a student club in the city centre which also features disco and live music events on Friday- and Saturday nights (Kasseturm). There are several smaller theatre and cabaret venues other than the large "DNT" (Deutsches National Theater). There are four cinemas including a 3-D cinema, and a Bowling Alley in the Weimar Atrium, the local mall.


title: Weimar

text: The area around Weimar is relatively fertile and 48% of the municipal surface are used for agricultural production. Most common agricultures are cereals, maize and rapeseed, while famous agricultural products from the Weimar region are potatoes (especially from Heichelheim, to the north) for dishes with s (Knödel from potatoes), onions (from Heldrungen and Oldisleben, to the north), which are sold at Weimar Onion Market in October, and Saale-Unstrut wine from Bad Sulza, to the north-east.


title: Weimar

text: Industry has never been dominant in Weimar, nevertheless there were several big factories from different sectors until 1990. After reunification, nearly all factories got closed, either because they failed the adoption of free market economy or because the German government sold them to west German businessmen who closed them to avoid competition to their own enterprises. On the other hand, the federal government started early in the 1990s to subsidize the foundation of new companies, but it took long time before the economic situation got stabilized around 2006. Since this time, unemployment decreased and overall, new jobs develop. Today, there are many small and medium-sized companies in Weimar with electro-technics and engineering in focus. Nevertheless, settlement of new factories isn't much in focus of the local government, because it concentrates itself on developing tourism and services. The biggest companies with production in Weimar are Bayer (pharmaceutical factory), Coca-Cola (beverages) and Hydrema (dump truck factory). A new big commercial zone was established in the 1990s in the neighbouring municipality of Nohra with focus on logistics and distribution.


title: Weimar

text: Due to its tradition as a capital, Weimar is a centre of governmental services to date. Furthermore, creative branches like media, advertising, architecture and design are important for Weimar's economy. The most important sector is tourism with 3,500 hotel beds, 350,000 visitors and 650,000 overnight stays in hotels in 2012 and a large number of German one-day visitors. Other services like retail, trade fairs and specialized hospitals are more brought by the near neighbour cities Erfurt and Jena with their infrastructure.


title: Weimar

text: Weimar is connected by the Thuringian Railway to Leipzig in the east and to Frankfurt/Kassel in the west. Furthermore, there are some regional railways to Gera via Jena and to Kranichfeld via Bad Berka. Today, there are long-distance trains to Frankfurt via Erfurt and Fulda and to Dresden via Leipzig and regional trains to Göttingen and Eisenach via Erfurt, to Halle via Naumburg, to Altenburg, Glauchau, Zwickau and Greiz via Jena and Gera and to Kranichfeld. When the new Erfurt–Leipzig/Halle high-speed railway will open (in 2015), Weimar will be disconnected from the German long-distance train network. However the regional train service will be augmented to connect Weimar with ICE-stops in Erfurt, Halle and Leipzig.


title: Weimar

text: In freight transport exists an intermodal terminal in Vieselbach "(Güterverkehrszentrum/GVZ)" with connection to rail and Autobahn, west of Weimar.


title: Weimar

text: Weimar is located at the Bundesautobahn 4 (Frankfurt–Dresden). Furthermore, there are two federal roads to Erfurt and Jena (Bundesstraße 7) and to Rudolstadt and Kölleda (Bundesstraße 85) as well as some regional roads to Sömmerda, Oßmannstedt and Magdala. A bypass road around Weimar was built in the 2000s in the north and west; the eastern and southern continuation are in discussion, but not in definite planning because of some difficulties in routing.


title: Weimar

text: The Erfurt-Weimar Airport lies approximately west of Weimar. It was largely extended in the 1990s, but the anticipated rise in passengers did not occur so that there is only rare air traffic, mostly to Mediterranean holiday regions. Other flights are carried out via Frankfurt Airport, which can be reached in 3 hours, and via Berlin Brandenburg Airport, which is also about 3 hours away.


title: Weimar

text: Biking is becoming more popular since the construction of quality cycle tracks began in the 1990s. For tourism, there are the "Ilm track" and the "Thuringian city string track (Radweg Thüringer Städtekette)". Both connect points of tourist interest, the first along the Ilm valley from the Thuringian Forest to the Saale river and the second close to medieval Via Regia from Eisenach via Gotha, Erfurt, Weimar, and Jena to Altenburg. Additionally, there are themed routes like the Goethe cycle track and the Feininger cycle track. For inner city everyday traffic, some cycle lanes exist along several main streets. Bike rental is offered in the city centre.


title: Weimar

text: For a small city, Weimar is well served by city bus routes, which also serve all of the surrounding towns and villages. An hourly bus route serves the Buchenwald Memorial and oldtimer buses operate in the city's historical centre. All bus routes are connected at Goethe Square in the city centre, and many also serve the main railway station. Trams served the city from 1899 to 1937. Trolleybus service started in 1948 and was discontinued in 1993.


title: Weimar

text: After the reunification, the educational system was realigned. Some academies were combined into the new Bauhaus University, founded in 1996 with approximately 4,200 students and focus on architecture, design and media. The Liszt School of Music is a university focussed on music and music education founded in 1872 with 850 students today. Furthermore, there are three regular Gymnasiums, the "Musikgymnasium Schloss Belvedere", an elite boarding school with focus on music, and the Thuringia International School with an international (and foreign language) curriculum.


title: Weimar

text: The most important archives in Weimar are the "Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv" (member of UNESCO Memory of the World Programme) with focus on German literary history and the Thuringia Main State Archive with governmental documents from last 500 years. The Duchess Anna Amalia Library hosts books and documents of German literary and cultural history.


title: Weimar

text: The years behind the names indicate the years of office, whereby the year of office did not correspond to the calendar year.


title: China–Russia relations

text: China–Russia relations, also known as Sino-Russian relations, are the international relations between the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation. Diplomatic relations between China and Russia improved after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and establishment of the Russian Federation in 1991. American scholar Joseph Nye states:


title: China–Russia relations

text: The two countries share a land border which was demarcated in 1991, and they signed the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation in 2001, which was renewed in June 2021 for five more years. On the eve of a 2013 state visit to Moscow by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin remarked that the two nations were forging a special relationship. The two countries have enjoyed close relations militarily, economically, and politically, while supporting each other on various global issues. Commentators have debated whether the bilateral strategic partnership constitutes an alliance. Russia and China officially declared their relations 'Not allies, but better than allies'.


title: China–Russia relations

text: The relations between China and Russia go back to the 17th-century, when the Qing dynasty tried to drive Russian settlers out of Manchuria, ended by the signing of the Treaty of Nerchinsk. During the Cold War, China and the USSR were rivals after the Sino-Soviet split in 1961, competing for control of the worldwide Communist movement. There was a serious possibility of a major war between the two nations in the early 1960s; a brief border war took place in 1969. This enmity began to lessen after the death of Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong in 1976, but relations were poor until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.


title: China–Russia relations

text: On December 23, 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin made his first official visit to China, where he met with CCP general secretary Jiang Zemin and Chinese president Yang Shangkun. In December 1996, at the end of Chinese Premier Li Peng’s visit to Moscow, Russia and China issued a joint communique pledging to build an "equal and reliable partnership." This reinforced the China-Russian view that the United States was their main competitor in the global political scene.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In 2001, the close relations between the two countries were formalized with the "Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation", a twenty-year strategic, economic, and – controversially and arguably – an implicit military treaty. A month before the treaty was signed, the two countries joined with junior partners Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Still active as of 2022, the organization is expected to counter the growing influence of the United States military outreach program in Central Asia. The PRC is currently a key purchaser and licensee of Russian military equipment, some of which have been instrumental in the modernization of the People's Liberation Army. The PRC is also a main beneficiary of the Russian Eastern Siberia – Pacific Ocean oil pipeline.


title: China–Russia relations

text: By 2019, both nations had serious grievances with the United States. For China, the issues were control of the South China Sea, trade policies, and technology policy. For Russia, the main issue was severe economic penalties imposed by the U.S. and Europe to punish its seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. China and Russia do, however, differ on some policies. China does not recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea, and Russia does not support China's claims in the South China Sea. Nevertheless, China and Russia currently enjoy the best relations they have had since the late 1950s. Although they have no formal alliance, the two countries do have an informal agreement to coordinate diplomatic and economic moves, and build up an alliance against the United States. Yaroslav Trofimov, the chief foreign-affairs correspondent of "The Wall Street Journal", argued in 2019:


title: China–Russia relations

text: In June 2022, Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping had a call with Putin where he reaffirmed support for Russia on security issues while saying that "all parties should responsibly push for a proper settlement of the Ukraine crisis".


title: China–Russia relations

text: On May 29, 1994, during the visit of Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to Beijing, Russian and Chinese officials signed an agreement on the Sino-Russian Border Management System intended to facilitate border trade and hinder criminal activity. On September 3 of that year, a demarcation agreement was signed, fixing the boundary along a previouslydisputed 55-km stretch of the western Sino-Russian border. After the final demarcation carried out in the early 2000s, it measures , and is the world's sixth-longest international border.


title: China–Russia relations

text: The 2004 Complementary Agreement between the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation on the Eastern Section of the China–Russia Boundary stated that Russia agrees to transfer a part of Abagaitu Islet, all of Yinlong (Tarabarov) Island, about a half of Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island, along with some adjacent islets, to China. A border dispute between Russia and China, standing since Japanese invasion of Manchuria of 1931, was thus resolved. These Amur River islands were, until then, administered by Russia and claimed by China. The event was meant to foster feelings of reconciliation and cooperation between the two countries by their leaders. The transfer has been ratified by both the Chinese National People's Congress and the Russian State Duma. The official transfer ceremony occurred on-site on October 14, 2008.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In 2005, Beijing and Moscow ratified an agreement that ended more than three and half centuries of their struggle over territory and for dominance.


title: China–Russia relations

text: Economic relations between Russia and China demonstrate mixed trends. Trade between the two countries was running between $5 billion and $8 billion per year in the 1990s, but grew steadily from then onwards. It was on course to hit $100 billion – the previous goal – until the 2008 crisis interceded. Trade slumped back to around $60 billion in 2015 and 2016 but started to recover again in 2017. Both countries are expecting to raise the trade volume to $200 billion by 2024.


title: China–Russia relations

text: Between 2008 and 2009, when Russia experienced a financial crisis, there was a sharp increase in borrowing from China. This trend, however, did not last. Starting in 2013, borrowing started to grow steadily.


title: China–Russia relations

text: The main form of cooperation in the complex economic relations between Russia and China is trade. From 2003 until 2013, mutual trade increased 7.7 times; in 2014 t,he scale of bilateral operations increased even more. The aggravation of relations between Russia and Western countries contributed to the expansion of economic ties with China. By 2020, the parties planned to increase bilateral trade to $200 billion. According to the Federal Сustoms Service (FCS) of the Russian Federation, in 2016 the foreign trade turnover of Russia and China amounted to $66.1 billion (in 2015 – $63.6 billion). Russia has a negative trade balance with China: in 2016 exports amounted to 28 billion, whereas imports totaled 38.1 billion (in 2015, 28.6 and 35.9 billion, resoectively). The share of China in foreign trade with Russia grew from 12.1% in 2015 to 14.1% in 2016. Since 2010, China is the largest trading partner of Russia.


title: China–Russia relations

text: Most of Russia's exports to China originate from the mining and petrochemicals sectors. More than half of Russia's exports to China come from mineral fuels, oil, and petroleum products (60.7%), followed by wood and wood products (9.4%), non-ferrous metals (9%), fish and seafood (3.5%), and chemical products (3.3%). The main categories of imports to Russia from China are machinery and equipment (35.9%), clothing (13.7%), chemical products (9.1%), fur and fur products (5.6%), footwear (5.3%), and furniture (3%). According to the General Сustoms Administration of China, bilateral trade in January–May 2017 increased by 26.1% in annual terms, amounting to $32.3 billion, and mutual trade in 2017 may exceed $80 billion According to the Ministry of Commerce of China, as of January 1, 2016, the volume of accumulated direct Russian investments in China amounted to $946.9 million and Chinese investments totaled ten times more, estimated at $8.94 billion.


title: China–Russia relations

text: Participation in such organizations as BRICS and RIC (Russia-India-China) has significant importance for Russian-Chinese economic relations. At the Russian-Chinese summit held in Shanghai, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping stressed that "Russia and China stand for the transformation of BRICS into a mechanism of cooperation and coordination on a wide range of global financial, economic and international political problems, including the establishment of a closer economic partnership, the early establishment of the BRICS development Bank and the formation of a; for the expansion of joint efforts of representation and voting rights of States with emerging markets and developing countries in the system of global economic governance, for the formation of an open world economy; for the deepening of cooperation in the field of foreign policy, including in the settlement of regional conflicts".


title: China–Russia relations

text: To facilitate financial transactions in the regions, China and Russia will conduct a currency swap. Central banks, with whom China has signed currency swaps, are able to issue loans to their banks in yuan. A currency swap agreement was signed with Russia in the amount of 150 billion yuan ($25 billion). Currency swaps will make the ruble and the yuan more stable, which in turn will have a positive impact on the stability of the global financial system. Additionally, the expansion of currency trading may facilitate investment processes. By investing in an economy that is now facing certain problems due to the fall of the ruble and oil prices, China is carrying out soft expansion and supports one of its main partners. China and Russia have long advocated reducing the role of the dollar in international trade, and both aim to create conditions for the development of bilateral trade and mutual investment. The rate of de-dollarization chosen by the countries is due to the rapid growth of the RMB's share in international payments and settlements (Oct. 2013. – 0.84%, Dec. 2014. – 2.17%, Feb. 2015. – 1.81%). The conclusion of a currency swap makes it possible to facilitate payments, as there is an imitation of the internal currency, which speeds up the transfer procedure and minimizes the cost of conversion.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In 2013, China initiated the creation of a new economic initiative – the "New silk road" or the Belt and Road Initiative. This project is designed primarily to strengthen economic ties and cooperation and to attract investors from Asia and other parts of the world to actively participate in the creation of the "silk road economic belt of the XXI century". The zone should extend from China to Europe through Central Asia and Russia, as it is an important transit logistical link between China and Europe, in which the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank may play a significant role. In recent years, China and Russia have stepped up cooperation in the construction of cross-border infrastructure. New Eurasian transport routes are being built as well, including the "Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe" railway and the "Western Europe – Western China" route, which will pass through Russia. In northeast China and the Russian far East, both countries are actively promoting the construction of bridges, ports, and other projects. It is planned to increase the volume of bilateral trade between China and Russia to $200 billion by the end of 2020.


title: China–Russia relations

text: Russia has also shown interest in cooperating with the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). The creation of the EAEU is posed to serve as an important platform for multilateral cooperation in the region, as all participants are friendly neighbors and partners with Russia, as well as traditional partners with China. Russia is interested in creating a free trade zone of the EAEU and China, as well as the use of the national currency in this region.


title: China–Russia relations

text: On November 23, 2010, at a meeting of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, it was announced that Russia and China have decided to use their own national currencies for bilateral trade, instead of the U.S. dollar. The move was aimed to further improve the relations between Beijing and Moscow and to protect their domestic economies during the financial crisis of 2007–2008. The trading of the Chinese yuan against the Russian ruble started in the Chinese interbank market, while the yuan's trading against the ruble started on the Russian foreign exchange market in December 2010.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In coordination with other emerging economies, the 2010 BRIC summit was held in Brasília in April 2010.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In 2014, Beijing and Moscow signed a 150 billion yuan central bank liquidity swap line agreement to avoid and counter American sanctions.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In December 2014, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi pledged to offer financial support to Russia and support the Ruble, if needed, in light of the currency's depreciation.


title: China–Russia relations

text: Tourism, especially from China to Russia, has seen a massive spike over the years. More than 2 million Chinese tourists visited Russia in 2019, compared to 158,000 a decade ago. China is one of the most important tourist markets for Russia. Support for cooperation between Russian and Chinese investment organizations in tourism industry is provided in the context of the Joint Action Plan by the Russian Federal Agency for Tourism and China's State Administration of Tourism. More than 2.3 million Chinese tourists flew into Moscow's Sheremetyevo – Alexander S. Pushkin international airport in 2019, including 1.26 million who transferred via the airport. Sheremetyevo, which offers flights to 29 Chinese cities served by eight Chinese airlines, expects their number to grow by 30 per cent a year in the years to come. Russia has played into this tourism boom by expanding capacity of Moscow's largest airport. “Russia has also allowed more flights from regional Chinese air companies to Moscow, which helps to turn the Russian capital into an air hub for Europe-bound Chinese tourism.” Sheremetyevo is looking to capitalise on that growth. Pǔtōnghuà or standard Chinese is among the languages displayed on Sheremetyevo's signs and announcements, while duty-free stores accept popular Chinese payment methods, including UnionPay cards and online systems WeChat Pay and Alipay. As many as 70 per cent of tax-free receipts handed out at Russia's airports go to Chinese citizens. By 2019, Russia has become among the top 3 travel destinations for Chinese tourists.


title: China–Russia relations

text: Since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, energy relations between China and Russia have been generally marked by cooperation and regard for mutual geopolitical and strategic interests. China's fast-growing economy places increasing pressure on itself to secure energy imports, while Russia's economy is largely driven by the demand for the export of natural resources. China became a petroleum importer for the first time in 1993, had become the world's second-largest oil-consuming country as of 2011, and the world's largest overall energy consumer as of 2010. In a report released in January 2012, the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation estimated that the country's crude oil consumption would increase to 480 million tonnes in 2012, or 9.6 million barrels per day. The group also forecast that natural gas consumption would rise 15.3 percent to 148.2 billion cubic meters (bcd). Given its geographical proximity to China and position as one of the world's largest oil producers and natural gas exporters, Russia has been an obvious candidate for meeting this increased demand. While energy relations have primarily related to oil, gas, and coal, there have also been partnerships with regard to nuclear and renewable (wind and water) energy technology.


title: China–Russia relations

text: From the mid-1990s, when the tightening of global energy markets coincided with his rise to power, Russian President Vladimir Putin has signaled the importance of, oil and particularly natural gas, for Russia's emergence as a global power. Long-term prospects for Russian gas exports to China will be affected by several global pricing trends. Surges in liquefied natural gas (LNG) capacity, the increasingly competitive nature of Central Asian gas supplies, advances in shale gas technology, and potential greenhouse gas policies may all impact Chinese consumption.


title: China–Russia relations

text: Despite frequent declarations of goodwill and bilateral energy cooperation, Chinese-Russian energy relations since 1991 have been limited by mutual suspicions, pricing concerns, inadequate transportation infrastructure, and competition for influence in Eurasia.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In 2014, Russia and China signed a 30-year gas deal worth $400 billion. Deliveries to China started in late 2019. The Power of Siberia pipeline is designed to reduce China's dependence on coal, which is more carbon intensive and causes more pollution than natural gas. For Russia, the pipeline allows another economic partnership in the face of resistance to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The proposed western gas route from Russia's West Siberian petroleum basin to North-Western China is known as Power of Siberia 2 (Altai gas pipeline).


title: China–Russia relations

text: In 2022, China's imports of discounts of up to 30% oil from Russia rose 55% in May, Russia displaced Saudi Arabia as China's biggest oil provider in recent months.


title: China–Russia relations

text: The official relationship between the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation has been upgraded three times since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1991. Beginning as “good-neighborly and mutually beneficial” in December 1992, it evolved into a “constructive partnership” in September 1994, and finally a “strategic partnership of coordination” in April 1996. In September 1999, the two countries began joint construction of a nuclear power station at Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province with an installed capacity of 2 million kW, one of the first situations of mutual energy cooperation.


title: China–Russia relations

text: The late 1990s also marked the beginning of feasibility studies for natural gas and oil pipeline projects in Western and Eastern Siberia. In 2001, Russian company Yukos proposed the unprecedented Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) Oil Pipeline Project, which would link Yukos's oil refinery in Angarsk to Daqing, in northern China. At the time, rail routes were the only means of transporting oil into the growing Chinese market. The project stalled in October 2003 when Yukos chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested on charges including tax evasion and fraud, and the Russian government launched an immediate investigation into the company. Many speculated that the series of events were politically motivated, given that Mr. Khodorkovsky had been a vocal opponent of President Putin. A week after Mr. Khodorkovsky's arrest, China Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue publicly announced that the Kremlin investigation would not impact the proposed China-Russia oil pipeline project.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In September 2004, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao met with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov in Moscow, where the two heads of government signed agreements affirming Russia's promise to set the route of a proposed pipeline from Eastern Siberia to the Pacific, with priority given to laying a pipeline spur to China, as well as increasing rail oil exports to China to 10 million tons (200,000 b/d) in 2005 and 15 million tons (300,000 b/d) in 2006. Four days before Wen's visit, Yukos, then the largest supplier of Russian oil to China and Russia's biggest oil producer, publicly announced that rail shipments of crude oil to the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) would end beginning on September 28, 2004. The Kremlin had begun auctioning off the troubled company's operating assets a month prior in August.


title: China–Russia relations

text: Gazprom, Soyuzneftegaz and the Chinese Embassy in Moscow all expressed interest in Yuganskneftegaz, a main arm of Yukos. The subsidiary was ultimately acquired by Russia's state-owned oil company Rosneft for roughly $9.3 billion. In February 2005, Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin revealed that Chinese banks provided $6 billion in financing the Rosneft acquisition. This financing was reportedly secured by long-term oil delivery contracts between Rosneft and the CNPC. In the same month, the Chinese Foreign Ministry denied that China provided "funds" for the deal. The Foreign Ministry could not confirm whether there were any "loans" involved, ministry spokesman Kong Quan said.


title: China–Russia relations

text: State-owned Lukoil became China's largest Russian oil supplier when CNPC reached a strategic cooperation agreement with the company in September 2006. As promised during Premier Wen's visit to Moscow in 2004, construction on a direct pipeline spur to China began in March 2006, when CNPC signed an agreement providing state oil producer Transneft $400 million for constructing a pipeline from Skovorodino, about from the Chinese border. In the same month, CNPC agreed to a set of principles establishing future joint ventures with Rosneft.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In 2006, Gazprom was made responsible for all exports of gas from Russia's eastern Siberian fields, outside of sales made through production sharing agreements (PSAs). This was another move widely seen to be politically motivated, since successful commercial development of these fields and export to Asian markets would be impossible without Gazprom – and therefore Kremlin – involvement. In an annual shareholder report two years prior, Gazprom acknowledged a plan for supplying natural gas to China. Two routes, roughly equal in capacity, would be constructed, with a total volume of 68 billion cubic meters of gas per annum. An Altai pipeline would link West Siberian fields with the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in western China, while the eastern pipeline would run from Yakutia into northeastern China.


title: China–Russia relations

text: Chinese domestic natural gas consumption roughly matched domestic production in 2004. Since then, however, its rate of growth and more sustainable energy profile compared to oil inevitably led to a surge in Chinese natural gas imports. In March 2006, CNPC signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Gazprom for the delivery of natural gas to China, which officially began pricing negotiations between Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller and Chen Geng, then head of the CNPC. In September 2007, the Russian Federation Industry and Energy Ministry approved a development plan for an integrated gas production, transportation, and supply system in Eastern Siberia and the Far East, taking into account potential gas exports to China and other Asia-Pacific countries. Gazprom was appointed by the Russian Government as the Eastern Gas Program execution coordinator.


title: China–Russia relations

text: Russia's desire to diversify its export markets has been matched by China's willingness to invest in Russian energy production and infrastructure. Russian policymakers, however, have expressed reserve about increased Chinese influence in the energy sector. In 2002, CNPC attempted to bid for Russian oil firm Slavneft, but withdrew just weeks later. International news sources suggested the bid failed partly due to anti-foreign sentiment in the Duma, Russia's lower parliamentary house. Slavneft was privatized by parity owners TNK (later OAO TNK-BP) and Sibneft (later OAO Gazprom Neft) soon afterwards. In 2004, Slavneft was then acquired by TNK-BP, the product of a merger between the Alfa Access Renova Consortium (AAR, Alfa Group) and British Petroleum (BP). In 2006, Russia denied CNPC a significant stake in OAO Rosneft. When the Russian company went public, CNPC was allowed to purchase $500 million worth of shares, one-sixth of the $3 billion it had sought. The financial crisis triggered in 2008 gave China its opportunity to invest in Russia on a grander scale through a loans for oil program. In 2009 and 2010, China's long-term energy-backed loans (EBL) extended large sums of capital to companies and entities not only in Russia, but also in Brazil, Ecuador, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.


title: China–Russia relations

text: Growing Chinese investment is speculated to be about more than energy security for China. Chinese news agency Xinhua reported in 2010 that many Chinese enterprises believe the Russian market will allow them to become truly global. Gao Jixiang, Associate Research Fellow of the Russian Economy Research Office of the Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, reported that China's investments in Russia totaled $1.374 billion as of 2007, and were projected to reach $12 billion by 2020. In 2008–09 alone, total investments rose 25.4% to $2.24 billion and direct investment went from $240 million to $410 million.


title: China–Russia relations

text: 2009 marked the 60th anniversary of established diplomatic relations between Moscow and Beijing, and also coincided with the signing of over 40 contracts worth roughly $3 billion. Chinese leader Hu Jintao and President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia conferred three times in four days during mid-June at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Yekaterinburg, at the first-ever heads-of-state meeting of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), and again when Hu made a state visit to Moscow from June 16–18, representing what many saw to be a high-water mark in Chinese-Russian relations.


title: China–Russia relations

text: Growing economic closeness also seemed to suggest a growing political alliance. In an interview with China Central TV on the day of Hu's arrival in Russia, Medvedev cited the high-level exchanges and other bilateral achievements in what both governments refer to as their "strategic partnership" as evidence of what he called "the highest level of ties in the history of Russian-Chinese relations." A joint statement released by the two heads of state expanded upon how the two governments usually pledge mutual support for their sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Russian government explicitly affirmed that Tibet, along with Taiwan, are "inalienable parts of the Chinese territory", while the Chinese supported "Russia's efforts in maintaining peace and stability in the region of Caucasus." During Hu's visit, however, Gazprom announced it could not begin delivering natural gas to China in 2011 as planned because of pricing disagreements. Construction of the Western Siberian Altai pipeline, which could deliver over 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually to China, was originally scheduled to begin in 2008. A senior Gazprom official observed, "As soon as there is a price, we will start the construction, but this is a complicated issue."


title: China–Russia relations

text: September 27, 2010 marked the completion of the Russia-China Crude Pipeline. Stretching from Russia's Skovorodino station to China's Mohe station, it was the first pipeline ever built between China and Russia. In April 2009, Rosneft and Transneft had signed deals with CNPC guaranteeing the pipeline's production of 300,000 barrels of crude oil per day for twenty years as part of a $25 billion loan-for-oil agreement. Upon the pipeline's completion in 2010, CNPC also signed a general agreement with Transneft over the operation of the pipeline, a framework agreement with Gazprom to import natural gas to China from 2015 onwards, an agreement with Rosneft on extending oil supply to the Russia-China Crude Pipeline, and an agreement with Lukoil on expanding strategic cooperation. Both sides hailed the series of agreements as a "new era" in cooperation, and Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin told reporters in Beijing that Russia was "ready to meet China's full demand in gas" going forward.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In 2009 Andrei Slepnev, a Russian deputy economic development minister, announced that Russia and China not only had good prospects for cooperation in oil and gas, but also nuclear power engineering, as well as space exploration. In September 2010, President Putin reaffirmed the potential nuclear future of Russia and China's energy relations, saying "Of course, our cooperation with China is not limited to just hydrocarbons ... Russia is China's main partner in the field of peaceful use of nuclear energy, and equipment supplies here amount to billions of dollars". As of 2011, however, Russian officials have remained reluctant to transfer nuclear energy technologies and other knowledge products to Chinese partners. Industry experts have pointed out that while proprietary technology would protect Russian exports from being displaced by lower-cost Chinese products in third-party markets, such an approach may reinforce Chinese doubts about Russia's reliability as a long-term energy partner.


title: China–Russia relations

text: The Russian oil industry has not only been burdened by corporate struggles such as with Yukos and political disagreements between the countries, but also by the reoccurring breaches in safety. Some difficulties stem from the Kazakh riots to endless environmental concerns, but most recently the capsizing of an oil platform that was allowed to operate in the north late in the season, while towed under adverse maritime conditions. Incidents such as these cannot help but give potential foreign investment, which the region needs, pause as to the reliability of Russian energy supplies.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In 1996, the Russian Federation completed two production sharing agreements (PSA) for oil and gas exploration off the northeast coast of the Sakhalin Islands. The Sakhalin-I project, operated by Exxon Neftegas Limited (ENL), has estimated potential recoverable reserves at 307 million tons of oil (2.3 billion bbn) and 485 billion cubic meters of gas as of 2002. ENL, a subsidiary of US-based ExxonMobil, holds a 30 percent interest in the project, while Rosneft holds 20 percent via its affiliates RN-Astra (8.5 percent) and Sakhalinmorneftegas-Shelf (11.5 percent). Japanese consortium SODECO and the Indian state-owned oil company ONGC Videsh Ltd. holds the remaining 50 percent (30 and 20 percent, respectively).


title: China–Russia relations

text: The Sakhalin-II project is managed by the Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd. (Sakhalin Energy). As of 2011, Russian state monopoly Gazprom holds 50% plus 1 share, RoyalDutch Shell 27.5%, Mitsui 12.5% and Mitsubishi 10%. Gazprom purchased its majority stake from Sakhalin-2 operator Royal Dutch Shell in 2006. The project had been placed permanently on hold by environmental regulators, but moved forward after the sale. The series of events led to widespread speculation that environmental violations may have been used as a bargaining chip in the deal. Sakhalin-II consists of two 800-km pipelines running from the northeast of the island to Prigorodnoye (Prigorodnoe) in Aniva Bay at the southern end. The consortium built Russia's first liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant at Prigorodnoye. Industry sources speculated that "some in Russia hope to sell China gas from Sakhalin-2's or other facilities' future LNG holdings now that it has mastered the technology".


title: China–Russia relations

text: In December 2003, CNPC and Sakhalin Energy signed a frame agreement on exploration and development in Russia's Sakhalin oilfield. ExxonMobil also looked towards the Chinese market, making preliminary agreements on supplying Sakhalin-I gas to China as early as 2002. On November 2, 2004, CNPC began negotiations with ExxonMobil for possible long-term gas deliveries from Sakhalin-1. Negotiations were then concluded in October 2006, when Exxon and CNPC officially announced an agreement. Under the deal, Sakhalin-1 could sell up to 10 billion cubic meters of gas to China over 20 years by pipeline. The plan met strong opposition from Gazprom, which has a rival pipeline project and controls all Russian gas exports apart from sales through PSAs such as Sakhalin-1. In August 2006, Sakhalin-I's De-Kastri oil terminal began exporting processed petroleum to markets including China, Japan, and South Korea.


title: China–Russia relations

text: The influence of Russia's regional energy trade has led to a sense of local uneasiness about foreign countries' influence in the sector. In 2000, President Putin warned a Siberian audience that unless Russia intensified the region's development, the Russian Far East would end up speaking Chinese, Japanese and Korean. In 2002, the Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Vladimir Potapov, expressed serious concerns about the region's combined remoteness, weak infrastructure, declining population, and wealth "in very diverse resources". Political figures like Viktor Ozerov, Chairman of the Federation Council's Defense and Security Committee, warned of military threats in the Far East and decried the predatory use of the region's resources, and large-scale illegal immigration, though scholars pointed out that no imminent threat was visible. Dmitri Trenin stated that, 'the principal domestic reason is the situation of eastern Russia, especially East Siberia and the Russian Far East. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the territories have been going through a deep crisis. The former model of their development is inapplicable; a new model is yet to be devised and implemented. Meanwhile, the vast region has been going through depopulation, deindustrialization, and general degradation. ... The quality of Moscow's statesmanship will be tested by whether it can rise up to the challenge in the East." The RFE has been one of the most difficult areas to transition between the structure of the Soviet Union and the still developing Russian state due to the lack of economic self-sufficiency in the region or any prospects of stable growth.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In September 2005, the Minister of Economic Development and Trade German Gref promised a doubling of state support for the RFE to $612 million in 2006, and the consideration of allocating a new $2.5 billion infrastructure fund for projects in the region. A year later, at the end of 2006, Putin reiterated that the socio-economic isolation of the RFE represented a threat to national security, and advocated yet another new socioeconomic commission and regional development strategy to be formed. He specifically pointed to the perceived threat of foreign immigration in the Far East. Scholars and regional experts have suggested that China's rapid economic growth (especially relative to Russia's GDP growth rate) lies at the root of anxieties concerning the RFE. While the Russian and Chinese economies were roughly the same size in 1993, China's grew to over 3.5 times larger than Russia's by 2008. Even since 1998, when Russia began a rapid economic recovery, China has grown at a faster rate; the gap has only widened since the global economic crisis and falling energy prices of the late 2000s. China's growth has led to the creation of new productive capacity, whereas Russia's recovery has been based largely on reutilizing Soviet-era capacity that had idled in the early 1990s.


title: China–Russia relations

text: Russian officials have repeatedly reiterated their opposition to being merely China's natural resources storehouse. As early as 2001, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin warned that if Russia failed to become "a worthy economic partner" for Asia and the Pacific Rim, "China and the Southeast Asian countries will steamroll Siberia and the Far East." At the start of his presidency in September 2008, Dmitri Medvedev echoed similar concerns, warning a Kamchatka audience that if Russia fails to develop the RFE, it could turn into a raw material base for more developed Asian countries and "unless we speed up our efforts, we can lose everything." Regional experts have pointed out that despite these increasingly vocal concerns, the local economy of the RFE has become increasingly reliant on Chinese goods, services, and labor over the past decade; furthermore, local out-migration shows little sign of reversing. For all the early promises under Putin, Moscow's policy towards the RFE has not seemed effective as of 2008.


title: China–Russia relations

text: Dmitri Trenin of the Moscow branch of the Carnegie Endowment has argued that Siberia's development could become Russia's most urgent challenge. Failure to develop the region into more than a raw material outpost could lead to what he calls a "Chinese takeover of the region, not by migration but rather by economic means of trade and tourism."


title: China–Russia relations

text: Russia's plans for this region have revolved around building energy infrastructure to leverage exports and attracting investment so that the capital will be available for modernizing regional infrastructure. These plans largely depend on foreign investments, which Russian companies have grudgingly acknowledged. In 2008, a consortium of Chinese engineering firms led by Harbin Turbine signed an agreement with Russian power producer OGK to produce coal-fired turbines in the RFE, adding 41,000 megawatts of new generating capacity by 2011. Stanislav Nevynitsyn, executive director of OGK, admitted, "It is simply a necessity for us to work with the Chinese – we will not get the capacity built otherwise." Through loans to Russia's Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs, Vnesheconombank (VEB), China became a major stockholder in Lukoil in 2009. In the same year, after having excluded foreign firms from bidding on the huge Udokan copper mine in Southeast Siberia, Moscow welcomed Chinese, South Korean, and Kazakh miners and refiners back into the bidding process.


title: China–Russia relations

text: As part of the 'Russia's Energy Strategy till 2020' program, the Russian government launched a program of creating a unified gas production, transportation, and supply system in Eastern Siberia and the RFE in 2006. The program would ultimately provide affirmation of an all-Russia gas system from the Baltic Sea up to the Pacific Ocean." Russian policymakers have also suggested building an international center for spent fuel and nuclear energy in the RFE, hoping to raise the profile in the export of nuclear energy to the global market.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In 2009, Gazprom was awarded subsurface licenses for the Kirinsky, Vostochno-Odoptinsky and Ayashsky blocks to begin the Sakhalin-III project. Geological exploration has been underway at the Kirinskoye field and, as of 2009, natural gas production is scheduled for 2014. The field will become one of the natural gas sources for the Sakhalin–Khabarovsk–Vladivostok gas transmission system (GTS). The first GTS start-up complex will be 1,350 km, with a capacity of 6 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In 1996, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan formed the Shanghai Five, a collaborative body that was renamed the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) with the addition of Uzbekistan in 2001. As members of the SCO, China and Russia have cooperated in military exercises, such as counterterrorism drills in Kyrgyzstan in 2002 and similar exercises in Kazakhstan and China in 2003.


title: China–Russia relations

text: Russian and Chinese leaders regularly call for greater cooperation and coordination through the SCO between their two countries in the context of their broader goal of promoting multilateral diplomacy. In a joint statement issued on May 23, 2008, Russia and China asserted that “International security is comprehensive and inalienable, and some countries’ security cannot be guaranteed at the cost of some others’, including expanding military and political allies.” Zhao Huasheng, Director of Russian and Central Asian Studies at Fudan University's Shanghai Cooperation Center, has argued that economic cooperation will ensure the long-term relevance of the SCO, as current security threats recede. While China and Russia do enjoy some bilateral energy cooperation, which experts predict will continue to grow in the future, the two countries have emerged as rivals for Central Asian oil and gas supplies. With the rising oil prices in the mid-2000s, Russia has sought to renew its influence in Central Asia, in particular the region's southern flank, to guarantee access to gas supplies for reexport to Europe and for its own domestic needs. As China's energy needs have grown and its policymakers have sought to develop its western provinces, China, too, has sought to expand its influence in Central Asia.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In 2007, at a meeting of SCO prime ministers in Tashkent, Russian Premier Viktor Zubkov reiterated Moscow's desire to forge a Central Asian energy "club" within the SCO, comprising Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The SCO energy club could be set up as soon as 2008, Russian Deputy Industry and Energy Minister Ivan Materov announced in Tashkent. Materov insisted, however, that the club would not amount to a sort of mini-OPEC. Political and economic analysts in Moscow believe the Kremlin is keen to establish an energy club as a means to prevent a possible clash with China over Central Asia's energy resources.


title: China–Russia relations

text: At a May 2007 SCO summit in Turkmenbashi, Russian, Kazakh and Turkmen leaders announced the expansion of the Prikaspiisky gas pipeline from Turkmenistan into Russia. The plan has stalled due to several obstacles, including price disagreements and the economic recession of the late 2000s.


title: China–Russia relations

text: Uncertainty over the Prikaspiisky route has given China an opening into the region, especially in Turkmenistan. During a brief visit to Ashgabat, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao called for efforts "to step up bilateral trade cooperation to a new level." Berdymukhamedov, in turn, expressed interest in "working closely" with China on a natural gas pipeline project, Xinhua News Agency reported. In December 2005, Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev inaugurated the Atasu-Alashankou pipeline to ship oil to China. The $800 million Atasu-Alashankou route still needs Russian crude oil from Western Siberia, transported via the Omsk-Pavlodar-Shymkent pipeline, to reach its full annual capacity of 20 million tons by 2010. Although China and its Central Asian partners view their expanding cooperation as a means of diversifying their energy partnerships, Russia has enjoyed success in other major energy projects. In November 2007, two Russian companies (TNK-BP and GazpromNeft) signed an agreement with KazTransOil to ship up to 5 million tons of oil annually to China via the Omsk-Pavlodar-Atasu-Alanshakou pipeline. In the first quarter of 2008, 300,000 tons of Russian crude oil were exported to China along this route. Moreover, a Russian engineering company, Stroytransgaz, won a tender to build Turkmenistan's section of the gas pipeline to China.


title: China–Russia relations

text: China and Russia announced in May 2014 that they had reached a 30-year gas deal where "Russia would supply 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas each year to China". These developments continue to show Russia and China's attempts to work together outside of USA confinements.


title: China–Russia relations

text: After the EU arms embargo on China imposed as a consequence of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, China became a reliable client for Russian military exports, making up 25–50% of all foreign military sales. On November 9, 1993, Russian Defence Minister Pavel Grachev and Chinese Defence Minister Chi Haotian signed a five-year defense cooperation agreement paving the way for an increase in the number of military attachés stationed in their respective capitals. On July 12, 1994, the Russian and Chinese defence ministers signed a border security agreement designed to prevent potentially dangerous military incidents, such as unintentional radar jamming and airspace violations. In December 1996, Russia finalized "the sale of SU-27 fighters and related production technology to China."


title: China–Russia relations

text: On October 19, 1999, Defence Minister of China, General Chi Haotian, after meeting with Syrian Defence Minister Mustafa Tlass in Damascus, Syria to discuss expanding military ties between Syria and China, flew directly to Israel and met with Ehud Barak, the then Prime Minister and Defence Minister of Israel where they discussed military relations. Among the military arrangements was a $1 billion Israeli-Russian sale of military aircraft to China, which were to be jointly produced by Russia and Israel.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In 2004, the Russian Foreign Ministry blocked both the sale of the Su-35 and Tupolev Tu-22M bombers to China over concerns about the arrangements for Chinese production of the Sukhoi Su-27SK (known as the Shenyang J-11). Originally, the licensing agreement required that engines and avionics be sourced by Russian suppliers; however, by 2004 these components were being produced domestically.


title: China–Russia relations

text: Currently, China focuses on domestic weapon designs and manufacturing, while still importing certain military products from Russia, such as jet engines. China sought to become independent in its defence sector and become competitive in global arms markets; its defence sector is rapidly developing and maturing. Gaps in certain capabilities remain, including development of electronic and reliable propulsion systems, although China's defense industry production has improved significantly, providing an advantage over other militaries in the Asia-Pacific region. China's 2015 Defense White Paper called for "independent innovation" and the "sustainable development" of advanced weaponry and equipment.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In September 2018, Russia hosted the militaries of China and Mongolia as a part of the Vostok 2018 military exercise to improve ties between the countries, making them the first two countries outside of the former Soviet Union to join the exercise.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In December 2019, Rostec officials accused China of intellectual property theft of a range of military technologies. In June 2020, Russia charged one of its Arctic scientists of passing sensitive information to China.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In July 2019, and again in December 2020, Russia and China flew joint bomber patrols over the Pacific.


title: China–Russia relations

text: In November 2022, Russian and Chinese warplanes including the Tupolev-95 and XIAN H-6K long range strategic bombers conducted joint patrols over the Sea of Japan and East China sea.