Foreign Ministry: Yanukovych's visit to China opens new opportunities for economic development

18:55

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's state visit to China has opened new opportunities for the development of the Ukrainian economy, the director of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry's information policy department, Oleh Voloshyn, has said.

"By paying his visit to China, the Ukrainian president has to a great extent opened for Ukrainian businesses and the economy access to development opportunities that provide for cooperation with the world's second-largest economy," he said at a briefing in Kyiv on Monday.

Voloshyn said the president's visit to China was extremely successful and that it had returned Ukrainian-Chinese relations to the level of a real strategic partnership.

"The fact that 13 bilateral documents were signed during the visit indicates that Ukrainian-Chinese relations have reached a level of not just talk about friendship, but the filling of this friendship and this partnership with concrete achievements," he said.

Voloshyn also noted that a political dialog and, to a large extent, economic cooperation between Ukraine and China had stalled because of "a short-sighted political line of the previous leadership of our state."

"China needs a stable and predictable system, clear rules of the game and the authorities' desire to make promises that it will then fulfill," he said.

He also added: "China realized that it's possible to deal with Ukraine, and that this is a country in which it's possible to invest funds and not to be afraid of losing them."