| Chinese agricultural production has scaled to an unprecedented height with Chinese economy developed more and more market-oriented since the adoption of the reform and opening policy. The domestic agricultural products market has transformed from "the seller's" to "the buyer's". The current agricultural development subjects to dual restrictive factors: resources and market, compared with single restriction in resources in the past. After the successful entry into the WTO, Chinese economy will further accelerate its pace into the global economy. In the new era, China will confront the harsh challenge on how to make full use of international market resources to develop its agriculture.For all the discrepancies existing in agricultural resources and market, Russian and China, as neighboring countries, are highly interdependent in agricultural economy. Hence a bright prospect in broad fields in the agricultural economic and trade cooperation between two countries is expected. The Sino-Russian economic and trade cooperation, however, has a very complicated history due to various factors. The 1950s' saw the great development of Sino-Russian economic and trade cooperation. At that time China imported large-scale mechanical equipment and machineries from the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union took agricultural products from China. The total volume of trade between China and the Soviet Union in 1950 was 338 million US dollars, while in 1959 it increased to2, 097 million US dollars, occupying 50% and 20% of the total volume of export and import of the two in that year respectively. The Soviet Union was then the China's largest trade partner. Then in the 1960s' and 1970's the economic and trade cooperation between two countries shrank greatly for the deterioration of the political relations between two countries. After 1980s', great progress has been made in the two countries' economic cooperation with the normalization of the relationships. Yet, in terms of scale and quality, it was far from satisfaction. The current volume of trade between two countries respectively occupies 2% of China's total volume of trade, 4% of Russia's. The extremely low volume of trade was a striking contrast to both countries' economic development and demand.The author holds that there are many problems in the Sino-Russian economic and trade relationships, the most obvious three of which are: 1. The shaky bilateral trade caused marked ups and downs in the volume of trade; 2. The over-all trade is at a low level. The economic trade only occurred in commodities with rather small amount in production and technological cooperation,even less in mutual investment. By the end of 2,000, there were 1,300 Chinese funded enterprises in Russia with a total investment about 160 million US $ mainly engaged in export, import, microelectronic communication, clothing processing, home appliances assembly, catering trade, wood processing and agriculture etc; while 1.160 Russian investment projects in China with a total investment about 231 million US $ focusing on nuclear power, automobile and farm machinery assembly and maintenance, chemical industry and building materials etc; 3.The trade between the two countries is irregular. Although the economic and trade ties have been kept for many years, a trade in accordance with the international convention is yet to be established. Problems such as chaos, disorder, poor credit and low percentage of meeting engagements are serious menaces to a sound, steady and orderly development of bilateral cooperation. The paper, based on the analysis of international economic and trade theory as well as multitudes of research materials on Sino-Russian trade, maintains that solutions to those problems can be found if a multiple-angle research can be conducted, an analysis of political, historical and cultural conditions taken into consideration, and more important, a comprehensive analysis from the economic point of view made. It is economic interest of both sides that induces the bilateral economic and trade cooperation.
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