SHANGHAI, China -- Thousands of Chinese and Russian troops carried out a mock amphibious landing on a Chinese beach Wednesday, as Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said the joint war games underscored a growing strategic partnership between the former Cold War adversaries.

Chinese state television showed fog and rain blanketing the coast of the northern Chinese province of Shandong as landing craft disgorged troops and amphibious tanks and armored vehicles in the heavy surf.

Bombers and fighter jets attacked imaginary targets on shore as soldiers charged through seaside scrub and rappelled down ropes from helicopters.

Ivanov met on Wednesday with Chinese Foreign Minister Cao Gangquan, telling him the war games showed their "strategic cooperative partnership has entered into a new stage," China's official Xinhua News Agency said.

Cao replied that the exercises deepened trust and cooperation in military affairs and had "an important realistic significance and profound historic impact on the safeguarding of regional and world peace and security."

The eight-day exercise, dubbed "Peace Mission 2005," involves about 7,000 Chinese troops and 1,800 Russians, along with state-of-the-art warships, warplanes and armor. The games were inaugurated last week with planning sessions in Vladivostok and will end on Thursday.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday that the United States was monitoring the games but did not see them as threatening.