What do Russia and China trade in?
China has not imposed sanctions on Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, and the two countries will likely continue to trade smoothly. Here are the main data and products of the interchange
The Russian invasion of Ukraine prompted the United States, Europe and allied governments to impose heavy economic sanctions on Moscow: they froze the central bank's foreign reserves , for example, and ousted some financial institutions from the SWIFT network for international payments; the Biden administration has also banned imports of Russian oil, gas and coal .
THE "MOST IMPORTANT STRATEGIC PARTNER"
Russia is increasingly isolated and, according to the International Monetary Fund, is seriously in danger of default. The G7 could decide to deprive it of "most favored nation" status . But Moscow continues and probably will continue to have very normal trade relations with China (and not only, in fact), which considers it its "most important strategic partner". The reference is to the "limitless" collaboration that the two nations formed on the eve of the Winter Olympics, during a meeting between presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.
TRADE BETWEEN RUSSIA AND CHINA
In addition to being the "strong" partner of that alliance, China is also Russia's main trading partner, both in terms of imports and exports. In the first two months of 2022, Chinese exports to Russia grew by more than 40 percent year-on-year, while imports from Moscow increased by nearly 36 percent.
WHAT RUSSIA IMPORTS FROM CHINA
Russia imports mainly electrical and electronic components from China, for a value of 19 billion dollars in 2021. This is followed by machinery, nuclear reactors and boilers (for 18 billion) and then – at a clear distance – vehicles (4 billion), plastic materials (3 billion) and chemicals (2 billion).
More specifically, Moscow buys smartphones and communications equipment from Beijing (worth 8.1 billion); electric stoves and hair dryers (1.2 billion); components for televisions, radios and radar systems (1 billion); electrical transformers (800 million); microphones and headphones (700 million).
THE NUMBERS OF THE EXCHANGE
In 2021, Russia imported products from China for a total value of 73 billion dollars, equal to about a quarter of the total value of its imports. Its exports of products to China, on the other hand, were worth 68 billion in 2021, 14 percent of the total.
Russia is China's largest supplier of energy commodities, such as oil products and timber.
CARS AND SMARTPHONES
Russia is the third most important market for Chinese automobile exports. And while European brands like Volkswagen and BMW have shut down operations in Russia after the imposition of sanctions for the aggression on Ukraine, Chinese brands like Geely and Chery have not. According to some Chinese analysts, this is their great chance to win large market shares in the country.
As for the smartphone market, Chinese companies are already dominant: in 2021, according to Counterpoint data taken from Quartz , they controlled 41 percent of it. The most active brands in the country are Xiaomi, Huawei and Lenovo.
China is also a very important source of microchips for Russia: in 2020 it was the country of origin of half of Russian imports of semiconductors and 20 percent of those of chips.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/russia-cina-commercio/ on Tue, 15 Mar 2022 09:36:00 +0000.