BEIJING (Reuters) -- China and Russia hailed 50 years of diplomatic ties on Saturday with champagne toasts and the two neighbors' first joint naval exercises.
Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji attended a party hosted by Russian ambassador Igor A. Rogachev in Beijing and hailed a strengthening "strategic partnership" between the former rivals, state television reported.At the same time, two Russian warships arrived in Shanghai to kick off naval maneuvers, state media reported.
The visit by the Varyag, flagship of the Russian Pacific Fleet, and the Burgy, a destroyer, was "one of a series of important activities marking the establishment of diplomatic ties," Xinhua news agency said.
The Beijing Youth News this week said the ships would join in exercises with the Chinese navy.
China and the former Soviet Union established ties 50 years ago, one day after the People's Republic of China was established on Oct. 1, 1949.
The one-time communist allies saw ties deteriorate, however, following the death of Josef Stalin in 1956. The rupture widened in 1960 with a complete withdrawal of Soviet aid.
In 1989, a visit by final Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev represented the beginning of a thaw in relations.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the two sides forged a benign, if somewhat awkward, co-existence aided by the resolution of border disputes that used to spark armed skirmishes.
Still, official trade with Russia has been dwarfed by that between China and the West, and the Chinese Communist Party eagerly points to chronic economic and political chaos in Russia as "Exhibit A" in its argument against democratic reforms.
It was not until NATO began dropping bombs on Yugoslavia during the Kosovo war earlier this year that the two countries discovered a common ideological goal that glued together their partnership: opposition to perceived U.S. global dominance.
China opposed the bombing from the outset, because it had not been approved by the United Nations Security Council and on the grounds that it risked setting a precedent on interference in the internal affairs of a nation.
The sentiment was driven to fever pitch when China's own embassy in Belgrade was blown apart by U.S. bombs.
Russian sympathy for fellow Slavs in Serbia and outrage at the expansion of NATO to its western border fueled Moscow's support for a joint effort with Beijing to check U.S. influence in favor of what the two sides call a "multipolar world."
On the eve of China's 50th anniversary, Russian President Boris Yeltsin spoke with Chinese President Jiang Zemin by telephone and congratulated him on diplomatic relations.
A Russian government spokesman said the leaders had "expressed mutual satisfaction with the serious progress in strengthening an equal and trusting partnership."