MOSCOW, July 24 (Reuters) - China has complained to Russia about the abrupt closure of a vast market in Moscow used by tens of thousands of Chinese merchants, and asked Moscow to take into account the two neighbours' strategic partnership.

Chinese President Hu Jintao (L) shakes hands with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during their meeting on Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Beijing sent Vice Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng to Moscow this week for talks on the impact of the market's June 29 closure, which followed complaints about its operations by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

"In light of the development of the Sino-Russian strategic partnership, China urges the Russian side to take a historical perspective, legally resolve the situation and protect Chinese merchants' legal rights," Gao said in a statement. China and Russia are members of the BRIC alliance of major developing economies and want closer economic and diplomatic ties. Beijing agreed this year to lend Russian oil firms $25 billion in exchange for 20 years of oil supplies at below market rates.

Putin had said the market was a major focus of smuggling and contraband goods and put a figure of $2 billion on the value of goods at the sprawling 300 hectare site, just eight km (five miles) from the Kremlin.

A migrant workers association in Moscow estimates that up to 100,000 traders were left jobless by the sudden closure of the market, many of them Chinese and Vietnamese.

Russia's Industry Ministry estimated that fake designer clothing accounted for 46.8 percent of the market's turnover in 2008.

The Chinese statement, posted on the website of its Moscow embassy in Chinese and translated by Reuters, also calls on Russia to ensure the personal safety of merchants who operated at the market and to protect their legal rights to their goods.

An earlier statement issued in Beijing on July 17 voiced concern about the huge losses suffered by the tens of thousands of Chinese merchants who operated there.

Gao also gently reprimanded Chinese traders for the way they operated in Russia and said they must change their conduct and comply scrupulously with Russian customs laws.

(Reporting by Conor Sweeney; additional reporting by Lucy Hornby in Beijing; editing by Tim Pearce)