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Xi hails aid of Russian experts for China's early development

Xinhua, May 9, 2015 Adjust font size:

Visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday hailed contributions of Russian experts to China's early development and the traditional friendship between the two peoples.

"In the early years of new China, when the Chinese people needed help most, some 30,000 Russian experts came to China and offered their assistance," Xi said in a meeting with a group of Russian experts who once worked in China as well as relatives of some late ones.

"Never forget the well-diggers when you drink," Xi quoted a Chinese saying, expressing gratitude of the Chinese people to the Russian experts' contributions to China at its early stage of development.

Xi praised the deep friendship those Russian experts forged with the Chinese people during their days in China.

Since 1978, tens of thousands of Russian experts came to China and actively participated in its reform and opening-up drive as well as the course of modernization.

Xi lauded those experts as "messengers of peace between China and Russia" and "sincere friends of the Chinese people."

"I hope that we can inherit the deep friendship and open up a new chapter of China-Russian ties," Xi said.

Xi also recalled contributions of those Russian experts including Ivan Arhipov, who once headed the Soviet experts corps in China, Constantin Silin, designer of the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge in central China, and Sergei Toropcev, the first foreign Model Worker in east China's Zhejiang province and a 1998 winner of the Chinese government's Friendship Award.

Deeply touched by Xi's remarks, the experts recalled their "memorable days" back in China, noting that the ties between China and Russia are on a fast track of development and the contacts between the two peoples have become increasingly close.

"Russia and China should be good neighbors and friends forever," one of them told Xi.

The Chinese head of state arrived in Moscow earlier Friday for a visit to Russia, where he is scheduled to attend a series of events to mark the 70th anniversary of the victory of the Great Patriotic War. Endi