Russia-China trade booming
Trade between Russia and China has continued to accelerate this year after hitting a historic high in 2022, with both exports and imports surging at double-digit pace since the beginning of the year, Chinese customs data showed on Wednesday.
According to the calculations, bilateral trade soared 40.7% in January-May compared with a year ago, to $93.8 billion. During the reported period, Chinese exports to Russia jumped 75.6% against last year to $42.9 billion. The Asian giant’s imports from Russia surged 20.4% to $50.9 billion.
In May alone, the trade turnover between the two countries reached $20.6 billion, with Russian exports ($11.3 billion) slightly outpacing deliveries from China ($9.3 billion).
As of the end of 2022, trade between Russia and China grew by 29.3% in annual terms to a record $190.3 billion. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov noted last month that bilateral trade is on track to surpass the target of $200 billion a year earlier than anticipated.
“If recently the figure of $200 billion seemed far off, this year we are likely to exceed it,” he said.
Trade experts point out that economic cooperation between Moscow and Beijing has been bolstered by the development of trade routes and border crossing infrastructure between the two countries.
According to the Russian Consulate General in Harbin, about 200,000 tons of cargo has been transported in the first five months of the year through the cross-border road bridge between Russia’s Blagoveshchensk and China’s Heihe, which was put in operation in June 2022.
A surge in cross-border deliveries has also been noted at the railway border crossing Nizhneleninskoye – Tongjiang, with 1 million tons of hard coal and iron ore shipped from Russia to China since it opened in November 2022.
During his visit to China late last month, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said that Russian-Chinese trade has also benefited from the mutual decision to conduct the majority of transactions in national currencies instead of the US dollar. According to official data, 70% of cross-border settlements between Russia and China are currently conducted in either rubles or yuan.
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