The paper presents findings of a comparative study of value priorities in Chinese and Russian students. The subjects were 487 engineering students (300 Chinese and 187 Russian) of higher educational establishments. The average age of the subjects was 21 years. The study used S. Swartz's "Values questionnaire" adapted for Russia by V.N. Karandy- shev and for China - by L. Schonmin, as well as descriptive statistics and R. Spearman's correlation quotient. The findings revealed a high degree of similarity between value orientations of Russian and Chinese students. In both cases personal success and independence,care for the family were named as priority values. There are also differences in value hierarchies. The value safety which motivates one to protect society and self ranks first in Russian students and sixth - in Chinese. The value hedonism ranks as least important in Chinese students, while in Russian students it is in the middle of the list. The discovered similarity of value priorities can be explained by proximity of "cultural profiles", discovered by means of comparing cultural values in Russia and China; by similarity of processes which took place in the XX century in the process of establishing socialism; by the fact that economy and political organization have been reformed in the past decades. Differences can be accounted for by specificity of reforms in Russia and China, by specificity of socialization of Russian and Chinese students. Compliance of students' value priorities with goals of their development as subjects of future professional activity and with trends in the development of their own country indicates prognostic competence of students in both Russia and China.