Uno dei nuovi ponti che unisce il territorio della Russia a quello della Cina

China And Russia Ignore Western Concerns. 360 Degree Contacts

20/09/2023
3 minutes

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping decided not to participate personally in the 78th UN General Assembly in New York, but instead to focus on intensifying political, economic, trade, and military-technical relations between their nuclear powers.

In Moscow, Chinese Foreign Minister and senior Communist Party official Wang Yi coordinated with the Russian leadership on the details of President Putin’s official visit to China in October. On Tuesday, September 19, Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov held In Beijing “detailed and in-depth” talks with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, who called for increased cross-border trade with the Russian Far East.

The talks followed the recent Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok and were immediately interpreted by Western media as “China’s response to Western demands to condemn the Russian military operation in Ukraine.”

“Russia has been subject to Western sanctions and needs the economic and political support of its Chinese ally, supplying Beijing with oil, gas and grain,” Reuters wrote. In August, China’s State Bureau of Statistics reported, “Chinese imports of Russian products increased by 3% compared to the results of the corresponding month of 2022, reaching $11.5 billion (+8% compared to July 2023).”

In this context, cross-border trade in the Russian Far East takes on special significance. On the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum, the Russian group United Petroleum and Gas Chemical Company and the Chinese company China’s Xuan Yuan Industrial Development signed an agreement on the construction of a huge Soyuz logistics and transport center in the area of the Nizhneleninsky-Tongjiang railway bridge on the Russian-Chinese border.

The project, which is expecting an investment of 5 billion yuan ($685 million), will include a center for storing and sorting oil (5.8 million tons per year), petroleum products (1 million tons), liquefied natural gas (0.65 million tons), as well as several container warehouses (sorting 200,000 cubic meters per year).

Finally, China asked Russia to further increase grain exports. Moscow and Beijing are building the so-called “Heilongjiang Transport Corridor,” which, according to Chinese President Xi Jinping, will become “the central gateway for China’s opening to the north, designed to play an active role in ensuring the country’s food security and energy.”