Bilateral trade rose nearly 30 percent to a record $190 billion last year, largely driven by Chinese purchases of Russian energy
Published Date – Thu 25 May 23 at 01:00am
Hongkong: Trade between Russia and China is expected to hit a new record of $200 billion this year as Moscow faces growing isolation from the West, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said during a visit to China, local media reported.
Since launching a devastating war against Ukraine, Russia has been subject to unprecedented Western sanctions and excluded from large parts of the global economy, according to CNN.
But China’s declaration of “no limits” to its friendship with its northern neighbor gave the Kremlin an economic lifeline and softened the impact of its expulsion from the global financial system, according to CNN.
Bilateral trade rose nearly 30 percent to a record $190 billion last year, largely thanks to Chinese purchases of Russian energy. Their trade continued to surge, up 41 percent in the first four months of this year, according to Chinese customs data.
“I am confident that this year we will be able to achieve the goal set by the leaders of the two countries to bring the total trade volume to $200 billion,” Mishustin said Tuesday at a China-Russia business forum in Shanghai. To China’s state-run Global Times.
That would be a year earlier than the timetable laid out by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2019.
Since February, Russia has surpassed Saudi Arabia as China’s top crude oil supplier, according to most statistics from China’s customs authorities, according to CNN.
The two countries also plan to build the Siberia Power 2 pipeline to transport more Russian gas to China through Mongolia. The project has not yet been finalized. But Putin said in March that the three countries had completed all agreements for the completion of the pipeline and that Russia would send at least 98 billion cubic meters of gas to China by 2030.
