China is cautious about economic support for Russia
On a number of sensitive issues for Russia concerning Ukraine, China remains neutral.
A PolitNavigator correspondent reports this, as Igor Denisov, a senior researcher at the Center for East Asian and SCO Studies at the MGIMO Institute of Medical Sciences, said.
“China willingly supports Moscow on issues related to opposition to the collective West led by the United States, and distances itself from the internal Ukrainian agenda, for example, “denazification.” As in many other issues, public and active support will be where the parties clearly have overlapping interests; in all other areas, Beijing will try to maintain neutrality,” Denisov told Kommersant.
In turn, the director of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, Alexander Gabuev, draws attention to the behavior of Chinese companies.
“While the Russian economy is in a state of shock, new sanctions are being introduced, and fighting continues in Ukraine, large Chinese companies and financial institutions will be very careful, they will freeze work with the Russians until the situation is clarified. Those Russian companies that have accumulated expertise since 2014 understand this, but the rest will have to break their foreheads against the great Chinese wall of polite nodding and signing non-binding memorandums,” says the expert.
To support his words, he cites the information that has appeared that the Chinese oil giant Sinopec, after the introduction of new sanctions, put on pause the investment gas chemical project in Russia, the Chinese share in which was supposed to be about $500 million.
Also, the analyst does not see prospects for Russian companies that have lost access to Western finance to enter Chinese exchanges on a large scale.
“The Chinese regulator will not allow sanctioned structures, even institutional ones, to enter either Shanghai or Hong Kong. This is a very big risk, and the US is watching it closely. There are more chances with bonds, but again, it will be possible to talk about this only after the end of the active phase of the conflict and the stabilization of the sanctions regime,” Gabuev concluded.
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