Sino-Russian Economic And Trade Cooperation—True Gold Is Not Afraid Of Fire

In 2020, the bilateral trade in goods between China and Russia reached 107.77 billion U.S. dollars, breaking through the 100 billion U.S. dollar mark for three consecutive years. China's share in Russia's foreign trade has further increased, and it has been Russia's largest trading partner country for 11 consecutive years. Russia is China's tenth largest trading partner. Especially since the second half of last year, bilateral trade has gradually recovered. China’s exports to Russia have "turned from negative to positive" and have increased positively for six consecutive months, with an average monthly increase of more than 7% in the second half of the year.

Gao Feng, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce of China, said at a regular press conference held recently that the Sino-Russian economy and trade have withstood the test of the epidemic in the past year and showed strong resilience. It can be described as "real gold is not afraid of fire." The fundamentals of cooperation between the two sides that are highly complementary and long-term have not changed.

Jiang Yi, a researcher at the Institute of Russian, Eastern Europe and Central Asia of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in an interview with a reporter from China Trade News that the volume of Sino-Russian trade remained above US$100 billion mainly due to the following three reasons: First, the opening of the Sino-Russian natural gas pipeline. Ensuring the continued increase in Sino-Russian trade has increased important weights. The oil and gas resource cooperation between the two parties was not severely impacted or affected during the epidemic, but pipeline transportation has played a unique advantage. Second, during the epidemic, the close cooperation between China and Russia in anti-epidemic materials such as masks and protective clothing expanded the trade volume between the two countries to a certain extent. Third, since last spring, China has resumed work and production relatively quickly, laying the foundation for providing needed goods to the Russian market and absorbing goods imported from Russia, and also providing a good environment for ensuring the economic and trade cooperation between the two countries.

Specifically, last year, Sino-Russian bilateral agricultural trade volume reached US$5.55 billion, a record high, and China has become the largest export market for Russian agricultural products and meat. China's exports of notebook computers and tablet computers to Russia increased by 39% and 29% respectively, and Chinese branded smartphones jumped to the top of the Russian market.

"Affected by the international economic situation, the safety and supply of agricultural products have received widespread attention, and China and Russia have great potential for cooperation in the field of agricultural products." Jiang Yi said that at the same time, both sides can further strengthen cooperation in oil and gas, including investment and technological cooperation. , Production capacity and other aspects.

In 2020, the two sides will also present many bright spots in investment and other fields. Gao Feng said that first, investment and project contracting increased against the trend. China’s non-financial direct investment in Russia was US$340 million, a year-on-year increase of 41.7%; the value of newly signed project contracts was US$5.87 billion, accounting for nearly the total value of newly signed contracts in Europe. 30%. The second is the steady progress of large strategic projects. Gas supply was started in the middle section of the Sino-Russian East Route Natural Gas Pipeline, and the construction of the Amur Natural Gas Chemical Project started. The third is the comprehensive deepening of scientific and technological innovation cooperation. The Sino-Russian Joint Scientific and Technological Innovation Fund with a total value of US$1 billion has been launched. The two sides have made positive progress in cooperation in 5G, cloud services, and smart travel. Fourth, local cooperation has deepened and become more substantial. China is firmly ranked as the largest trading partner in the Russian Far East, Siberia, Urals, and Northwestern Federal Districts.

Currently, China-Russia development cooperation in the Far East enjoys a good momentum and has entered a new stage of development in which trade and investment promote each other and benign interaction. In particular, Sino-Russian "Northeast-Far East" cooperation has shown great vitality. The joint communiqué of the 25th regular meeting between the Chinese and Russian prime ministers pointed out that they will jointly promote the opening of the Heihe-Blagoveshchensk road bridge to traffic as soon as possible and implement the construction project of the cableway across the Heilongjiang (Amur River). After the completion of the cableway across the Heilongjiang (Amur River), people from the two places can reach the opposite bank in just 6 minutes one way. Orlov, Governor of Russia’s Amur Region, stated that the project will overcome the constraints of the climate and environment on port transportation, effectively alleviate port transportation pressure, greatly improve passenger clearance efficiency, promote the interconnection of the transportation infrastructure of both sides, and deepen Russia’s Far East Cooperation in Northeast China.

"In 2021, the global economic situation is still in a state of instability, and the anti-epidemic situation of countries including Russia is still relatively severe. This will restrict and restrict the continued growth of trade between China and Russia to a certain extent." Jiang Yi said In this regard, the two sides should strengthen basic work that is conducive to the long-term economic and trade development and carry out deeper cooperation to make more progress.

Gao Feng said that in the future, China and Russia will further strengthen anti-epidemic cooperation, actively expand bilateral trade, and expand two-way investment and strategic cooperation on large projects. In 2021, Sino-Russian trade is expected to achieve recovery growth as soon as possible and continue to move towards the US$200 billion trade goal.