The article in the legal perspective covers from the perspective of retrospectives and modernity, some facets of the scientific and technical cooperation between Russia and China. The objective need of the two countries to develop the STC on mutually beneficial conditions was taken as a basis. The starting point is the 1992 Intergovernmental Agreements: on scientific and technical cooperation and on military technical cooperation. The author focuses on problem issues and prospects for cooperation in the designated area. The author considers some examples of realizable cooperation. The study used such methods of scientific knowledge as: general scientific dialectic, historical, comparative legal analysis, the law is also considered from the standpoint of economics. At the same time, the author proceeds from the subjective-objective assignment of processes and phenomena, and their interconnectedness. The novelty consists in the "through" approach, affecting the issue being studied in retrospect and from the perspective of modernity. It seems that a significant backlog of past years and other circumstances and factors (active links at different levels, etc.) create a basis for progress in the field of the STC and the prospects for its development are seen to be quite successful.