Special report: Year of China

    BEIJING, June 15 (Xinhua) -- China will stage a "Beijing Week" in Moscow from June 27 to 30 amid a series of regional cooperation programs marking the "Year of China" in Russia.

    The Beijing municipal government would send a delegation of more than 300 headed by mayor Wang Qishan and vice mayor Lu Hao --the largest ever in Beijing's history, Yang Liuyin, director of the Beijing Municipal Foreign Affairs Office, told a news conference on Thursday.

    High-level meetings between Beijing and Moscow officials, performances, an exhibition on the Beijing Olympics, a trade fair, and tourism promotion fair would be arranged for the "Beijing Week," he said.

    "The event will help push the friendly ties between Beijing and Moscow and between China and Russia," he said.

    Evgeny Tomikhin, senior counselor of the Russian embassy in China, said Russia and China had a friendly and close relationship, but the people of the two countries still needed to know more about each other.

    "The Beijing Week is a good opportunity for Moscow people to learn about Beijing, not only the city's history, Chinese history and traditional culture, but also about modern Beijing and modern culture," he said.

    Beijing received 58,000 tourists from Russia in the first five months, up 19.4 percent from the same period last year, said Wang Qing, director of the Tourism Promotion Department with the Beijing Municipal Tourism Administration.

    The figure was 150,000 for the whole of last year, an annual growth of 54 percent, he said.

    A total of 196 programs, including 13 national events, will be launched this year to mark the "Year of China" in Russia, a reciprocal event of the "Year of Russia" in China last year.

    Trade between China and Russia has increased in the past eight years. It hit 33.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2006, up 15 percent year on year, Chinese customs figures show.

    By 2010, China-Russia trade is expected to reach 60 billion to 80 billion dollars.

    Russia is China's eighth biggest trade partner in terms of volume while China is Russia's forth-largest trading partner.