You're reading: Investment-hungry Ukraine will host visit by powerful Chinese president

Hu Jintao trip comes year after Viktor Yanukovych visit to Beijing.

Chinese President Hu Jintao will visit Ukraine to discuss bilateral cooperation, investment opportunities and sign agreements aimed at intensifying cooperation.

The visit is scheduled for June 18-20. The Chinese president will first arrive in Crimea and then will visit Kyiv.

This is his first visit to Ukraine.

Until recently, the two countries did not show much interest in cooperation.

The last visit from a Chinese president came 10 years ago.

After President Viktor Yanukovych took power on Feb. 25, 201o, Ukraine increased the tempo of its Eastern diplomacy.

Ukraine is struggling to get another International Monetary Fund loan and wants to attract investment from China, one of the world’s top lenders and economic powerhouses.

China views Ukraine as a threshold to the European Union, where it seeks to expand its markets.

“All Chinese analysts whom I talked to clearly say that China is interested in Ukraine integrating into the European Union, and not reintegrating with Russia-led integration initiatives on the post-Soviet space,” said Valeriy Chaly, deputy head of the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center. “They are interested in economic expansion in the European region.”

Oleksandr Dykusarov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, told the Kyiv Post that the Ukrainian and Chinese presidents plan to sign several bilateral documents.

Ukraine’s ambassador to China, Yuriy Kostenko, said these deals involve infrastructure projects as well as cooperation in the energy sector, coal industry and agriculture in Ukraine.

The presidents also plan to sign a joint declaration on the establishment of a strategic partnership.

China views Ukraine as a threshold to the European Union, where it seeks to expand its markets.

Some, however, are uncertain whether Ukraine’s relations with China are of strategic nature.
“I have doubts whether one can now call the level of relations between Ukraine and China a strategic partnership. It has to be analyzed. I do not think such ambitious statements should be announced ahead of real actions,” Chaly said.

While visiting China in September, Yanukovych said that Ukraine wants to attract as much as $4 billion in Chinese investment, including money for a high-speed train connection between Kyiv and Boryspil International Airport. But little has materialized.

Chaly suggests that Jintao’s visit to Ukraine may also not bring any concrete results.

Oleksiy Haran, scientific director of the School for Policy Analysis in Kyiv, praises efforts to develop relations between Ukraine and China, but warns that they have to be based on national interests rather than ideology.

Last December, Ukraine ended up in an awkward situation when, by trying to please China, it did not send the Ukrainian ambassador in Norway to the Nobel Peace Prize celebration honoring a Chinese dissident who won.

“The question is what will prevail in these relations – authoritarian ideological affinity [between Chinese and Ukrainian authorities] or promotion of true Ukrainian interests,” Haran said.

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Kyiv Post staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at [email protected].