Trade between the two countries have exploded since January, while international sanctions weigh on Russia.
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How far the Chinese President Xi Jinping is ready to go to support his Russian “old friend” Vladimir Putin, whom he met during an exceptional tête-à-tête, Thursday, September 15, in Samarcande , in Uzbekistan? The communist leader assured that China “was willing to work with Russia to assume its role of great power”. Concretely, this has passed, since the summer, through trade in very strong increase between the two countries, when international sanctions reach the Russian economy. But Beijing’s support remains full of great caution.
China imported $ 72.9 billion (72.9 billion euros) of Russian products, the vast majority of hydrocarbons, between January and August: an increase of 50 % compared to the same period of 2021. In the other direction, “according to Chinese customs, exports to Russia, which were already on an almost vertical curve before the war, continued to increase, and they accelerated in July-August”, underlines François Godement, from the Montaigne Institute, in Paris. Between January and August, they thus increased by 9.4 % compared to the same period of 2021, for a total of $ 44.2 billion. Forgotten the decline observed in the first weeks of the war: Chinese exports found their level before the invasion of February 24.
“China shows a pragmatic opportunism. It provides what it can to maintain its close systemic partner, while being careful not to expose itself to additional economic turbulence because its inner situation is difficult “, sums up François Chimits, researcher at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (Merics) in Berlin.
It was in May that bilateral physical and monetary exchanges accelerated, according to François Godement, at a period when Beijing also radicalized his speech against the United States. “On the Moscow exchange market, Rouble-Renminbi exchanges [Yuan, the Chinese motto] exploded, a sign that things are happening on the commercial level, he notes. The fact remains that the mixture of opportunism And of prudence is a characteristic feature of the Chinese attitude towards sanctions, which it condemns in principle. “In this area, American pressure is strong: when the United States, in June, added twenty -Cinq Chinese companies on their own list of sanctions, they have placed five electronic goods companies that traded with Russia.
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