Relations between Russia and China: What the forum in Vladivostok showed
The issue of further strengthening ties with China, which is becoming the world's first economy, is now completely in the minds of many officials and businessmen. It is obvious that in the confrontation with the West Russia remains, in the form of the Celestial Empire, the only real major ally and partner in the East.
However, the leadership of the PRC is also vitally interested in creating a single economic and military-political bloc with Russia. This was once again confirmed on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.
Vladimir Putin said that trade turnover has already reached 140 billion dollars, and may soon approach 200.
Russian imports, according to Chinese Ambassador Zhang Hanhui, increased by 49%. Over the past six months, this volume of trade with the Celestial Empire has for the first time exceeded Russia’s trade turnover with the EU and the UK.
This suggests that all energy resources in the form of oil, gas and coal that were not accepted by Europe due to the imposition of sanctions were more than absorbed by the Chinese market, and Russia did not lose anything, and due to the increase in volumes, it even increased its income. Such dynamics clearly show everyone that Moscow is really and completely moving away from the West.
To speed up this process, five intergovernmental commissions were formed at the interstate level. A lot of work has been done to establish infrastructure. The largest road bridge Blagoveshchensk - Heihe was recently opened, and by the end of the year the Nizhneleninskoye - Tongjiang railway bridge will also be launched. There are other grandiose projects.
These nodes and bridges in Primorye are part of the emerging unified trade system of the EAEU - “Belt and Road”, which is devoid not only of tariff barriers and duties, as well as customs bureaucracy and red tape, but also of any external sanction threats. In fact, this is a prototype of the single market of Greater Eurasia, on which the SCO regional bloc will be built as a framework.
At the same time, of course, for now, for objective reasons there is a large imbalance in mutual trade in the supply of raw materials to the Celestial Empire. Today, according to information from the Russian customs department, a significant share of exports to China consists of energy resources, and this is 71,4%, followed by wood, pulp and paper products - 8,4%, and metals and metal products - 6,6% of the total volume .
In turn, automotive products, chemical products and technology are sent from China to Russia.
However, there are also some points related to the fact that Russia, despite the growth in mutual trade volumes, has not yet entered the top ten trading partners of the PRC, taking 12th or 13th place according to various sources. If for Moscow Beijing is the first trading partner, ensuring the supply of vital products, accounting for 20% of the total volume of imports in the amount of $72 billion in the first 7 months of this year, then for the Celestial Empire Russian supplies account for only 2,4%.
In this, of course, the incomparability of economies plays a role, especially since For decades, China has been developing trade with the West, and therefore Washington, Hong Kong and Tokyo, despite contradictions, remain Beijing’s main economic partners. But you shouldn’t get hung up on this and get upset, since everything is changing quickly, and time is working for Russia, giving it the opportunity to rebuild and strengthen its economy.
This is also supported by the fact that Moscow now has a significant trade surplus with Beijing, which is the only case of its kind on the international market, and there is a significant increase in profits due to the fact that the Chinese market buys more than it supplies. In addition, the PRC is faced with enormous difficulties and threats associated with the current unprecedented competitive and now also military-political confrontation with the United States, which it simply cannot withstand without the support of Russia.
A representative of China spoke about this directly on the sidelines of the WEF 2022, saying that “his country feels threatened in terms of food and energy supplies.” If Russia is already an “energy ally” of the Celestial Empire, then the supply of food products still needs to be increased many times over. Therefore, both sides are now deciding the issue of developing joint agro-industrial complexes and supplies of grain, rapeseed, soybeans, meat, oil and other products.
Last year alone, 17 thousand tons of beef were sent to the PRC, but this is still very little to saturate the domestic market of the Celestial Empire, which needs significant volumes of food, which makes it possible for farmers of the Stavropol Territory, Krasnodar Territory, and all regions of the eastern part of Russia to increase your production.
But what is especially important is that the strategy of trade and economic cooperation with Beijing has now changed, when it comes not to the supply of already produced finished goods, but to technologies and production lines for organizing our own production. This gives impetus to new industrialization and the production of our own high-precision equipment.
The Skolkovo Foundation works with leading Chinese corporations in the mechanical engineering and electronics industries. This is especially important given the fact that Taiwan has stopped supplying microprocessors to Russia, and now it is necessary, with the help of Chinese comrades, to import these lines, opening similar production facilities in Zelenograd.
The parties also come to a complete abandonment of the dollar, euro and yen in mutual relations and build their own banking and financial system, which is a new direction of development and changes the balance of power in Eurasia. At the same time, ousting Western currencies alone is no longer enough, as is simply mutual settlements in rubles and yuan.
The question is being posed more broadly, namely about the creation of a supranational currency, and there are options. Either the yuan will be taken as a basis as a universal instrument in mutual trade, or a new currency will be created, albeit electronic. Here the idea of economist Sergei Glazyev comes up again and it has greater potential and content, since it will be established not only by the two powers, but also by other SCO member states. At the organization’s summit in Samarkand, we will finally see which option will ultimately be chosen.
Well, the icing on the cake is the signed contracts for the delivery of huge volumes of gas to the PRC, which will dramatically increase the competitiveness of the Celestial Empire in front of the United States and the West. So, back in February, both countries entered into a 30-year agreement on the supply of blue fuel, due to which its volumes increased to 10 billion cubic meters per year. But that is not all!
The capacity of the Power of Siberia-1 pipeline will increase from 38 billion cubic meters to 48 billion, and the new gas transport route “Power of Siberia-2”, currently being built jointly by Russian, Chinese and Mongolian specialists with gas-chemical complexes for processing raw materials, will generally reach a capacity of 50 billion cubic meters per year after its launch. It is noteworthy that in many respects this will be gas from Western Siberia, which was previously supplied to Europe, which will ensure complete independence from this abandoned market.
At the same time, the main aspect of rapprochement is still military-political. Perhaps not everyone in the Chinese leadership believed that Russia would withstand such extreme pressure from the West after the start of the Northeast Military District. And now, when it became obvious to everyone that Moscow had only grown stronger and proved its sovereignty to everyone, the attitude towards the Russians suddenly changed sharply on the part of the officials of the Celestial Empire.
This really came to the fore when the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress Li Zhanshu, and the Ambassador of the People's Republic of China to the Russian Federation Zhang Hanhui, and representatives of large corporations at the meetings of the WEF 2022 praised and asserted that they would now increase cooperation and mutual trade despite the for what.
The overall international situation and the balance of power have changed, when it is not so much Russia that needs China, but China needs an alliance with Russia. It's not just about energy supplies. And this became clearly clear after the events around Taiwan, because if it were not for Moscow, then in the confrontation with Washington it would not be so easy for Beijing alone, and it itself risked being isolated.
And then the West made its main strategic miscalculation, pushing Russia and China towards unification, acting on two fronts at once. In general, the ruling American elite missed the time when, after Henry Kissinger turned the PRC towards the United States in the 70s, making it an ally against the USSR, pumping it up with his investments. So, the Western elite believed that the Celestial Empire would be an eternal junior partner in the global division of labor. Now China has become so strong that it itself is removing the decrepit hegemon from the throne.
This configuration at the same time suggests that Russia will never be a raw materials appendage or even a colony of the Celestial Empire in the new structure, as neoliberals and Westerners constantly insisted. In the system being built, all states will have an equal opportunity to receive information, technology and knowledge.
Moreover, Moscow plays an important role for all Asian countries, and for Beijing in particular, as a guarantor of stability and military security, which is worth a lot. China can now rely on Russia, providing its rear, and continue to fight for its interests in the Indo-Pacific region.
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