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The proposal was announced on August 2 in Smolny during a meeting between Deputy Chairman of the Committee for External Relations of St. Petersburg Vyacheslav Kalganov and Deputy State Inspector of the Office of Foreign Affairs of Shaanxi Province (China) Li Aijun.

As noted, the city of Yanan in China is proclaimed the “birthplace of the revolution”, and in St. Petersburg in the Petrograd region stands the famous cruiser Aurora - a symbol of the October Revolution, which is very revered in China.

To work out the proposal of the Chinese side during the delegation’s stay in St. Petersburg, it was decided to additionally organize a meeting of the Shaanxi province delegation in the Administration of the Petrograd District of St. Petersburg (will be held on August 6).

In addition to cooperation at the level of administrative-territorial units, during the meeting, the sides discussed the possibility of signing a “road map” for cooperation between St. Petersburg and the capital of Shaanxi province - the city of Xi'an for 2019-2024.

According to the Deputy Chairman of the Committee for External Relations of St. Petersburg Vyacheslav Kalganov, from St. Petersburg the necessary internal approvals have been passed, the city is ready to start signing the document in the near future.

Also from St. Petersburg, V.G. Kalganov invited the Chinese partners to take part in the implementation of investment projects in St. Petersburg - the project of creating the Martial Arts Center, theme parks, congress and exhibition center and light rail lines.

In response, Li Aijun confirmed his readiness to consider the proposals of St. Petersburg to participate in the implementation of investment projects and sign a roadmap for the development of bilateral cooperation.

At the end of the meeting, in the interests of expanding cooperation in the spiritual and moral sphere, Vyacheslav Kalganov presented Li Aijun with a book describing the life of Serafim Sarovsky in Chinese, published in St. Petersburg, as well as a picture with a view of Smolny.

For reference: Shaanxi Province is located in the central part of China, its population is about 35 million people. The administrative center and largest city of the province is Xi'an. It was from Xian that the Silk Road began centuries ago. Today the city is at the forefront in the framework of the large-scale strategy “One belt, one path”. This is a dynamically developing city, claiming to be one of the key economic and cultural centers of the country.

The Yanan urban district is known in the history of the Chinese Civil War as one of the final points of the Great Campaign and in the following years (from 1937 to 1948) as the main center of the Chinese Communist Party. Thanks to this, Yanan is proclaimed "the birthplace of the revolution."

Mao Zedong spent 13 years in Yanani and wrote most of his works, which subsequently served as the basis of Maoism, here. It is noteworthy that at the dawn of his career, the current President of China Xi Jinping worked here.

Additionally:
A delegation of the Shaanxi Foreign Affairs Office arrived in St. Petersburg on July 31, 2019 with the aim of taking advanced training courses at the St. Petersburg Economic University. In the period from August 10 to 13, 2019, the delegation will continue the training program in Moscow.