Russia and Turkey aim to revive pre-crisis level of cooperation: PutinRussian President Vladimir Putin has expressed willingness to revive his country's cooperation with Turkey at a pre-crisis level.
He made the remarks following a meeting with his visiting Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Their relations took a downturn last November when Turkey shot down a Russian bomber on the Syrian border.
CRI's Victor Ning has more on the two presidents' talks in Russia.
Putin highlighted that his talks with Erdogan were very important for the future of bilateral ties, which outlined initial objectives for long-term restoration.
"Our priority is reaching pre-crisis level of bilateral cooperation and it is a really pressing task, because only in the first five months of this year Russia-Turkey trade volume shrank by 43 percent."
The Russian president said Erdogan's visit is a sign that Turkey is willing to restore bilateral cooperation despite its difficult political situation caused by the failed coup attempt last month.
Both sides indicated they would like to overcome the difficulties, to restore state relations for the sake of the two peoples.
Putin stressed that to restore normal bilateral economic cooperation can't happen overnight.
"We have to undertake diligent work to revive our trade and economic cooperation. This process has already been launched, but it will take some time. A visit to Moscow at the end of July by Turkish delegation representing the economic bloc of the government was an important step."
The two presidents talked about the Turkish stream pipeline project and construction of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant, as well as ways to revive tourism.
Putin also noted that his country intends to gradually cancel the special economic measures limiting Turkish firms' activities in its market.
More meetings will also be held for major companies of both sides to discuss the revival of mutual trade, investment and implementation of key projects.
"Our cooperation is not limited only to energy and gas and power plants. It's quite multifaceted. It's engineering, the metal industry, trade. Today we talked a lot about resuming agricultural supplies. We will do everything in the framework of the plans we laid down today."
Putin also announced a mid-term cooperation program that spans the year 2016 to 2019, and also intergovernmental commissions of the two countries would resume contacts.
On the Syrian crisis, the Russian president reiterated that his country was determined to find a compromise on the issue with Turkey.
More specific meetings would be held on issues related to the issue's settlement in a bid to seek more satisfactory joint decisions.
For his part, Erdogan expressed hope for the resumption of charter flights between the two sides, as well as mutual trade and activities of Turkish construction contractors.
"Mr. President Vladimir Putin and I had very considerable and meaningful talks today. You know that these were the first talks after the well-known incident of shooting down of a Russian warplane over the Syrian border and after a long period of time this is our first meeting face to face. Moreover, after the coup attempt on July 15 in Turkey, I have made my first visit abroad to Russia."
The Turkish President said they found a similar position on normalizing their bilateral ties, and agreed to use their capacities to maintain regional stability and confront all kinds of crises.
The meeting between the two leaders was their first since Turkey downed one of Russia's warplanes last November, which sparked a diplomatic crisis as well as economic sanctions from the latter.
For CRI, I'm Victor Ning.Chinese steel firms never dump their products: officialAn official from China's top economic planner says the country's steel companies have never dumped their products, while the government has been making tremendous efforts to cut their obsolete capacity.
The official also called on other countries to stop resorting to trade protectionism.
CRI's Xie Cheng has more.
Xia Nong, deputy director-general of the National Development and Reform Commission's department of industrial policies, says China's steel products are highly competitive globally, and have gained a good reputation in international trade.
This is due, he says, to the efforts of the steel companies rather than government's subsidies.
China now uses the most efficient, low energy consuming and highly sophisticated steel manufacturing equipment in the world, which has helped cut production costs significantly and boost firms' competitiveness.
Xia's remarks come after several countries, including the United States, have conducted anti-dumping investigations and adopted measures against Chinese steel exports.
The official said protectionism will not fundamentally help solve the problem in the global steel industry, and will instead deal a further blow to international trade order.
"The steel trade mainly depends on the needs of the supply and the demand sides, which results in a market behavior. So I think prudent, restrained and standardized attitudes should be adopted in solving the current friction and disputes facing the steel trade."
Xia added that the average export price for China's steel sheets last year was 3670 yuan, or over 550 U.S. dollars per ton, while domestic steel sheets were priced at 3600 yuan per ton at most.
As such, there is no question of Chinese companies dumping steel products.
The official also criticized the U.S. for hampering world steel trade by launching a Section 337 investigation – which looks into allegations of unfair practices in import trade – on China's steel products.
"The U.S. has launched Section 337 investigations while the anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measures are still effective. We believe this is tantamount to duplicating trade remedy or abuse of trade protection measures. We are strongly opposed to it."
Xia also noted that China has discouraged massive steel exports as a response to the country's current national conditions.
Instead, it has taken a series of measures in cutting export tax rebates and levy higher tariffs to control exports and solve overcapacity.
He said the tax refund rate for steel exports is lower than the value-added tax rate of 17 percent, which is in line with WTO rules.
For CRI, I'm Xie Cheng.China to further conduct structural reforms on SOEsChina is making efforts to cut capacity of its state-owned enterprises through reforms including structural adjustments.
Han Xiaoping with China5e.com, a website focusing on China's energy industry, says mergers between state owned enterprises in certain sectors is extremely urgent.
"The enterprise integration process will start with reducing redundancies across management. After that, financial costs will come down, and operating efficiency will be improved. So now what we really need is to have most of these steel businesses, as well as other state-owned enterprises, integrated in the same way."
China plans to cut steel and coal capacity by about 10 percent — as much as 150 million tonnes of steel and half a billion tonnes of coal — in the next few years with funds set aside to help displaced workers.
Last month, Wuhan Iron and Steel and Shanghai-based Baosteel announced a plan for "strategic restructuring," creating the largest steel producer in China with annual output reaching at least 60 million tonnes a year.
Such adjustments can be seen in other industries too.
China International Travel Service Group has also recently finished the process of becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the China National Travel Service (HK) Group.
Zhang Chunxiao with the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, says there needs to be more change.
"We should allocate state resources in the most efficient way. Further shrinking of the number of state owned enterprises should be carried out. Central government should focus on areas largely related to people's livelihood, related to state security, to the essential infrastructure as well as to critical natural resources."
Chinese authorities unveiled a new chapter of State Owned Enterprise reform early this year, putting the focus on mega-mergers of state groups in order to boost competitiveness through economies of scale.Wang Yi's Indian visit to push for success holding of summits:spokespersonThe Chinese government says Foreign Minister Wang Yi's upcoming visit to India is aimed at exchanging views with his Indian counterpart in preparation for the G20 summit in China and the BRICS leaders meeting to be held in India.
BRICS is an association of five major emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said Wang Yi's trip is aimed at consolidating consensus with the Indian side to push for success of the two summit meetings.
China is to hold the G20 summit in Hangzhou in September and India will hold the BRICS leaders meeting in October.
Hua says the Chinese Foreign Minister will also hold discussions with Indian officials on deepening the mutually beneficial cooperation and further the development of bilateral ties.Cyberespionage-style attacks detected against targets outside U.S.It's reported a previously unknown group has been using malware to conduct cyber espionage-style attacks against selected targets in certain countries such as China, Russia and Sweden.
Called Strider, the group has been active for the past five years, but has maintained a low profile until now.
Using an advanced piece of malware known as Remsec, it attacks mainly organizations and individuals that it thinks would be of interest to a country's intelligence services.
Researchers say the malware has stealth features that help it to avoid detection, and much of its functionality is deployed over the network, residing in a computer's memory, rather than on disk, so as to hide from detection.
It's believed that Strider's attacks are linked in some way to a previously known group, Flamer, sharing some of its techniques.
Reports say evidence of infection by the Remsec malware has been found in around 36 computers across seven separate organizations, including a number of organizations and individuals located in Russia, an airline in China, an organization in Sweden, and an embassy in Belgium.