Economically, Russia is still turned to the West, not to China - expert
Russia's foreign trade is still oriented towards the West. This direction accounts for 85% of the total volume. Asian countries account for only 15% of Russian foreign trade, and 12% is trade with China.
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Such figures were presented today at a press conference in Moscow by the Deputy Director of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor Andrei Ostrovsky.
“Russia is faced with a dilemma where to develop: to the West, where sanctions are imposed against us, or to the East, where there are no sanctions, where we are gladly accepted, but, on the other hand, there is a problem of competitiveness. In particular, in the Chinese market,” Ostrovsky said.
The expert doubts that Russia and China will be able to reach the planned targets and achieve a foreign trade volume of $2020 billion per year by 200.
“At the current rate of growth in foreign trade, this plan is far from reality. Trade volume in 2016 will not exceed that of 2015. The 2014 volume – $95 billion – will not be exceeded. God willing, it reaches $70 billion,” Ostrovsky said.
In his opinion, the development of Russian-Chinese relations is negatively affected by the falling ruble and falling oil prices.
“In order for relations to develop, the volume of mutual investments must increase. Unfortunately, this is being held back. There are also no significant changes in the free trade zone between China and the EAEU. So we must count only on local changes,” Ostrovsky said.
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