In the 21st century Asian civilization as well as Russia, which represent Eurasian cultural community is facing a series of very important economic, political, social, national-cultural and other problems and I think that is the main topic of our conference today.

There is no doubt that in the 21st century the image of Asian civilization will be determined by the world unification process or by globalization. Globalization is a natural and inevitable process in the development of people community that is undergoing a certain logic way of development and at the end will lead to the creation of one social-cultural human structure.

Globalization is considered by many of its ideologist as an important factor of involvement of the rest of the world to the western liberal-democratic values, widening of the information, investment and merchandise streams, creation of the economic order. In reality, globalization could not help in eliminating the contradictions, but made them even keener. After globalization of TV and increase of information stream, poverty and inequality of the Asian world became more vivid and increased the feeling of hostility towards the prosperous North. Also we have to mention another series of negative moments which Russia and China have to take into consideration. As a conclusion the way of life offered by the West is quite unnatural for Russia and China where we have traditionally cultivated collective-community values.

At the same time the problem of civilized and cultural integrity is also keen for the Asian countries as well as for the multinational Russia Federation. Globalization is a sort of combination of cultures that covers all parts of the world. The main question is how we can combine the tendency of globalization with the laws of the cultural-language variety. For the spiritual culture, globalization means overcoming its own specific character and as a result it means its destruction. In this sense globalization is very dangerous for the culture and languages of the world and especially for the culture and languages of the native peoples.

Of course globalization process is quite important for the people of Russia, China, for many Asian countries as well as for the western community. A very vivid example of this is a rapid growth of antiglobalist movements.

So the analysis of the cultural situation in the world allows us to make a conclusion that one polar world contradicts the laws of cultural and language variety and inevitably leads to the threat of the global cultural human crisis.

There is no doubt that globalization has its own positive sides. It opens new forms of development as it is helping to spread information, knowledge and new technologies and now we can more fully make use of the advantages of the international division of labor, industrial cooperation and effective usage of natural and labor resources.

Taking into consideration all I have said above, we can make the following conclusion:West and East should combine its efforts in minimizing the negative results of globalization, act together in order to build a multipolar world, not imposing its own values, but learning to respect each other’s achievements.

The actuality and significance of our dialogue is accounted for by a whole series of factors. According to B. Kuzyk, one of the translators of Tao Te Ching, “Numerous sensual fields, which became habitual, non-linear logic, network principles of management bring the West closer to the East, which is traditionally oriented to plurality of sense, stereoscopic nature of all and every thing. In the post-modernist age, the forefront is occupied by the problem of effective interaction of internal and external, integral and partial, word and silence, surface and comprehensive human experience.”

At the present time, the opportunities are growing for engagement of Japan, USA, South Korea to the development of the Russian Far East. In the case of engagement of the People’s Republic of China, this process would be able to make the grounds for creation of the integrating association of the whole Far East Region (Russia, North-Eastern China, both states of Korea, and Japan).

We understand clearly the intention of our partners to satisfy their rapidly growing needs on the account of increase in the guaranteed volumes of deliveries of Russian fuel and energy resources. But no decisions should be made in a hurry because the given field of interaction has the strategic importance and long-term nature and requires multibillion investment. We should continue, without any emotions, to search for the verified balance of our interests. The cooperation with China in the sphere of energy should not be restricted with deliveries of Russian raw hydrocarbon materials to the People’s Republic of China. Its essential components should include expansion of deliveries of Russian power equipment to China as well as development of the joint manufacture of this kind of machine-building products.

It is time to pass from the primitive forms of trade exchange to the modern forms of economic and investment cooperation, it is necessary to develop the transport and interbank infrastructure, to stimulate the target links between the representatives of small and middle business.

Russian Federation and People’s Republic of China have close and even very close points of view with respect to most problems of international security such as the future of the United Nations Organisation or concept of the state sovereignty in XXI century. At the recent Russian-Chinese negotiations between the ministries of foreign affairs on the matters of Central, East and South-East Europe at the level of the deputy heads of the diplomatic departments of these two countries in Beijing, in discussion of the NATO problem, the Chinese party declared an opinion that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is a rudiment of the “cold war” and that there are no reasons for its expansion or for existence of this organization at all. The Chinese partners declared their concern with respect to the prospects of the NATO expansion in future, especially in such directions as Trans-Caucasus and Central Asia. In turn, there is a strong opinion in Russian Federation that the internal political stability of the People’s Republic of China makes no matter for the leisure speculations. A similar position exists also on the problem of Taiwan. The principal position of Russia with respect to Taiwan is not subjected to any revision. The support to the stable development of China will guarantee the strategic national interests of Russia. Russian Federation duly appraises the positive tendency of the Chinese party at the bilateral negotiations for admission of Russia to the World Trade Organisation. We hope that this tendency will be expressed in the practical steps in the course of the negotiation process.

We see the important interaction in the terms of the Shanghai Organisation for Cooperation. Creation of the Shanghai Organisation for Cooperation is an event of extraordinary importance not only in the regional but also in the global measurement. Actually, this matter is the transcontinental association organically connecting the North Atlantic and East Asian wings of the international life as was noted by Vladimir Putin in his greeting letter to Zhan Deguang, the Executive Secretary of the Shanghai Organisation for Cooperation, with respect to the official start of work of the Organisation Secretariat. The major advantages of the Shanghai Organisation for Cooperation include the principles of its structure:full equal rights of all the members regardless of their size and level of economic development, consensus in adoption of any resolutions, mutual consideration of interests of all the members, respect to plurality of cultures, traditions and confessions. This nature of the Shanghai Organisation for Cooperation determined its high attraction for other countries. The joint fight against the new challenges such as terrorism, extremism, separatism, narcotics makes one of the priority guidelines in the activities of the Shang hai Organisation for Cooperation. Shanghai Organisation for Cooperation will eventually have the determining importance. In everything, which is related to the business partnership, it is principally important to engage the non-governmental structures of the member countries in the sphere of interaction in terms of the Shanghai Organisation for Cooperation. This is indispensable in order to refer to the full-value investment and whole economic cooperation. It is necessary to make the economic projects commercially attractive in terms of the Shanghai Organisation for Cooperation. For this purpose, we should develop the complex system of facilities and preferences, and form the appropriate infrastructure including banks, finances, insurance and arbitration.

Naturally, our citizens, especially those in the frontier regions are concerned by more private problems such as illegal migration, cases of illegal hunting, environmental pollution in the frontier regions, and others, whose real solution will be able only by cooperation of our countries.

One of the most important components of cooperation is the establishment of close interaction between the law enforcement authorities of our countries. It is their joint work, which will enable to fight effectively against the threats carried by the organized criminality and corruption to the normal life of people and establish relations between the business subjects in the frontier regions.

It is important to strengthen the social basis of the relations, to promote to the contacts between people, to development tourism, interregional and frontier relations, to intensify the interaction in the social and humanitarian sphere, in the fields of culture and science, and between the mass media of our countries. This will make our contribution to elimination the feeling stereotypes with respect to the countries of Asia, which are far from life but still existing in the mind of most Europeans and Americans.

I would like to finish with the words of Lao Tse from Tao Te Ching:“The Tao, which can be expressed by words is not the permanent Tao, i.e., the way, which can be told about, is not the permanent way” and “The permanent Way consists of the opportunity of choosing the Way and impossibility of choosing the Way ”that can be interpreted as“ by the way of making decisions any decision can be made, but neither decision would solve all the problems”. We realize the limitation of our decisions but we also realize the necessity of their making as we have got the Way.