Russia and China have issued a joint statement during Vladimir Putin's visit to Beijing.
The document, which is of a programmatic nature, states that the countries oppose the expansion of NATO.
The statement was published on the Kremlin's website.
The parties oppose the further expansion of NATO, call on the North Atlantic Alliance to abandon the ideologized approaches of the Cold War, respect the sovereignty, security and interests of other countries, the diversity of their civilizational and cultural-historical patterns, and treat the peaceful development of other states objectively and fairly.
In addition, China supported the proposals put forward by Russia on security guarantees in Europe, it follows from the document, writes RBC.
What else is said in the statement of Moscow and Beijing:
- Some forces representing a minority on the world stage continue to defend unilateral approaches to solving international problems and resort to power politics, practice interference in the internal affairs of other states.
- Democracy is a universal human value, not a privilege of individual states, its promotion and protection is a common task of the entire world community. Democracy is not built on stencils. The people have the right to choose such forms and methods of implementing democracy that correspond to the specifics of this state. Only its people have the right to judge whether a State is democratic.
- Russia and China, which are world powers with a rich cultural and historical heritage, have deep traditions of democracy based on thousands of years of development experience, broad popular support and consideration of the needs and interests of citizens.
- The attempts of individual states to impose their "democratic standards" on other countries, to appropriate to themselves the monopoly right to assess the level of compliance with the criteria of democracy, in fact, are an example of trampling on democracy and departing from its spirit and true values. Such attempts to act as a hegemon pose a serious threat to global and regional peace and stability, undermine the stability of the world order.
