FACTBOX: China-Russia trade relations
(Reuters) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will make a state visit to China this week at a time when trade between the two countries is expanding rapidly.
Here are some details about trade ties:
* BILATERAL TRADE:
-- Trade between the two nations reached $48 billion in 2007 from $6.83 billion in 1996. China is currently Russia's second largest trade partner after the European Union, while Russia is China's eighth largest.
-- China is the destination for 5.2 percent of Russian exports. The main exports are crude oil, oil products and timber.
-- China's exports constitute 9.4 percent of Russia's total imports, with the current trade deficit in favor of China at $8.8 billion.
-- Bilateral trade volume is only about a sixth of that between China and the United States, and a quarter of that between China and South Korea.
- China and Russia say they have plans to push bilateral trade to $60-80 billion by 2010.
* INVESTMENTS:
-- China's direct investment in Russia reached $940 million as against Russia's $610 million invested in China, as of mid-2007.
-- Russia's recent investment law limits access for foreign investors to "strategic" sectors, including the oil and gas industries, that are key to China's growing interest in Russia.
* ENERGY:
-- China is a hungry customer for Russian mineral resources and Moscow is keen to diversify buyers for its fuel amid rising tension with major European customers.
-- Gazprom wants to supply China with pipeline gas. In 2006, the Russian gas export monopoly said it would build two major pipelines to China but later said the project had been delayed due to disagreements over gas pricing with Beijing. In October 2007, Gazprom said it had formally decided to begin work on a pipeline to China's Xinjiang province in 2008.
-- China's state owned Sinopec group has a multi-billion dollar investment with Russia's biggest oil producer, Rosneft. They jointly run Siberia's UdmurtNeft oil producer and share the Sakhalin-3 Veninsk exploration block on Russia's Pacific coast.
Sources: Reuters; WTO (www.wto.org); China Daily (www.chinadaily.com)
(Writing by Nagesh Narayana/Carl Bagh; Editing by David Cutler and Keith Weir)
