China-Russia Photo: Xinhua

China and Russia will continue in-depth cooperation on terminal operating systems, including Russia's Aurora and Huawei's Harmony OS and openEuler, and promote exchanges between companies from the two countries, according to a joint communique released on Wednesday. 

The official document, which also called for bilateral cooperation in a wide range of areas such as energy, agricultural and technology, was released after Chinese Premier Li Keqiang held the 26th regular meeting between Chinese and Russian heads of governments with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin via video conference on Tuesday.

It was the first time that Huawei's mobile operating systems have been mentioned in such a joint communique from the meeting of the two heads of governments. 

In 2020, the two countries announced in a joint communique after the 25th regular meeting, saying that they will further deepen cooperation in terminal operating systems, including the Aurora, and strengthen ties between mobile device and semiconductor manufacturers in both countries. 

Huawei's Harmony OS is used in many smart devices, IoT terminals, and industrial terminals, while openEuler will be used in servers, edge computing, and cloud infrastructure.

The Aurora, a mobile operating system developed by Russia, is based on the open source Sailfish OS, and has been used by the country as the recommended operating system for government and state-backed companies due to its privacy and security features.

During the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2019, Russian officials discussed with Huawei's rotating chairman Guo Ping the possibility of using the Aurora mobile operating system on Huawei devices, after Google suspended business with the company amid a US ban. 

Global Times