Following a historic high in 2022, trade between Russia and China has continued to accelerate. Since the beginning of the year both exports and imports have been growing at a double digit pace, according to Chinese customs data released on Wednesday.
The data showed that bilateral trade rose 40.7% from January to May, year over year, to $93.8 billion. Over the same period, Chinese exports to Russia grew 75.6% year over year to $42.9 billion. Imports to China from Russia increased 20.4% to $50.9 billion.
There was $20. billion in trade turnover between the two countries in May alone, as exports from Russia come in slightly higher, at $11.3 billion, compared to deliveries from China, which were $9.3 billion.
Trade between Russia and China grew by 29.3% over the course of 2022, to a record $190.3 billion. Last month, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov pointed out that bilateral trade is heading on a course to surpass the target amount of $200 billion a year ahead of schedule.
He said, “If recently the figure of $200 billion seemed far off, this year we are likely to exceed it.”
Trade experts have said the economic relationship between the Kremlin and Beijing has been strengthened by the development of infrastructure at border crossings and trade routes between the two countries.
Just at the cross-border bridge between Russia’s Blagoveshchensk and China’s Heihe, which went into operation in June 2022, roughly 200,000 tons of cargo has moved across the border in the first five months of 2023, according to data from the Russian Consulate General.
Meanwhile at the Nizhneleninskoye – Tongjiang railway border crossing, there has been a flood of cross-border deliveries, with one million tons of hard coal and iron ore transiting from Russia into China since the crossing opened in November of 2022.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said during a visit to China at the end of last month that the mutual decision to conduct a majority of the nation’s trade transactions in national currencies instead of the US dollar had greatly benefited the Russia-China trade relationship. Currently, according to official data, 70% of cross-border settlements are being conducted in either rubles or yuan.
