China and Russia will hold joint military exercises next year, their first since 1999 and intended to tackle a new range of security challenges and nurture their partnership, state media said on Thursday. The decision was taken during a visit to Moscow by Guo Boxiong, vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission, but the scope and timing of the exercises had yet to be decided, the China Daily said.

The navies of the two neighbours that have been developing what they call a "strategic partnership" in recent years, held their first joint exercise in October 1999 when a Russian destroyer and a cruiser visited China. Russia has been a major supplier of military hardware to China, including advanced ships and fighter planes that have been key to China's drive to modernise the People's Liberation Army.

Guo said the exercises would "jointly confront current new challenges to safeguard world peace", the China Daily reported without giving details. A China-Russia strategic partnership was important to global stability and security and ties between their two militaries were developing on a "stable path", Guo was quoted as saying.

China's Communists once looked up to their Soviet counterparts, but relations soured through the 1960s and clashes broke out along the border. Sino-Russian relations improved during the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

China has also fostered closer ties in the past few years with the former Soviet states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia via the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, established in 2001 to fight terrorism. Last August, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan held anti-terrorism exercises in the mostly Muslim Chinese region of Xinjiang.