Chinese troops assemble and await orders during the drills.-Xinhua

Russian and Chinese paratroopers landed along China's Shandong Peninsular coast Saturday as some 9,000 soldiers from the two countries began the phase two of their first major joint military exercises.

The exercises involving the army, navy, air force and marines of the two countries, reflect the growing friendly ties between Moscow and Beijing, and the drills are targeted no third country, Chinese military strategists say.

About 7,000 Chinese troops and 1,800 Russians with ships, fighter planes and amphibious vehicles are taking part in "Peace Mission 2005," China’s Central Television Station (CCTV) said in its nightly news program.

China and Russia settled the last of their decades-old border disputes last year and are cooperating in a regional security group, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, meant to combat Islamic extremism and separatism in Central Asia.

The exercises this week are meant to improve cooperation in "dealing with crises and organizing coordinated actions in the backdrop of the fight against terrorism, separatism and extremism," China's Xinhua News Agency said.

Chinese state television's evening news showed Chinese and Russian officers gathered in a command center in Shangdong before computer screens with maps of the exercise.

The report showed Chinese soldiers driving tanks and troop carriers and preparing for parachute jumps, though it did not say whether those activities occurred Saturday. It showed Russian fighters and cargo planes landing at a Chinese base, and a Chinese schoolgirl giving a bouquet of flowers to a Russian naval officer.

Saturday's exercise was to include 14 ships and about 50 Russian and Chinese warplanes and the mid-air refueling of Russian-made Chinese Sukhoi-30 interceptors by a Russian tanker, according to ITAR-Tass.

The exercises this week is expected to give Russia a chance to showcase its advanced long-range strategic bombers, the Associated Press reported.

However, the Associated Press said in a report quoting Western analysts that the joint games are motivated by the two big countries’growing concern about U.S. dominance of world affairs.

Recently, led by the Pentagon, a few Western countries are creating world jitters about China’s military build-up, saying it won’t bode well for Asian and Pacific stability. Beijing, backed up by a rapid growing economy, claims it needs to modernize its backward military in order to keep pace with world trends, protect territorial borders, and safeguard regional security.

The maneuvers began Thursday in the Russian port of Vladivostok.

The exercise Saturday on the Shandong peninsula, which juts into the Yellow Sea, was meant to simulate landing a joint force. A group of 86 paratroopers with 18 military vehicles landed at a Chinese training ground and practiced "reaching ... the assault position and the launching of an attack at enemy positions," Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency reported.