During President Xi Jinping's state visit to Russia earlier this month, he emphasized the importance of more educational exchanges and cooperation between China and Russia. He encouraged the youth of both countries to dare to shoulder the mission endowed by the times and make joint efforts to contribute to the two countries' comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era.

Over the weekend, the 6th China-Russia Expo kicked off in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

The five-day event has attracted more than 1,700 enterprises from 74 countries and regions. Collaboration in education is one of the key agendas of the expo – over 200 professors and representatives from some 80 universities have gathered in Harbin to share their thoughts on subjects like artificial intelligence, big data and new materials.

During the event, the association of technical universities of Russia and China (ASRTU), the leading association for the establishment and development of cooperation between universities of Russia and China, has signed a joint-development agreement with Huawei in building the Sino-Russia Intelligence Valley.

The project is expected to bring more opportunities for implementing joint research, engineering and innovative cooperation between ASRTU member universities, as well as research institutes. For example, students of the association plan to start working on satellites that can communicate with each other by 2020.

According to the Russian Education Ministry, over 18,000 Russian nationals are studying in China, while the number of Chinese students in Russian educational facilities is over 30,000.

(CGTN)