MOSCOW, February 9. /TASS/. Growth of exports to Russia is becoming increasingly important for China, first of all due to stagnating supplies to Western countries, deputy general director of the Center for Strategic Research Boris Kopeikin told TASS.

"Trade turnover smashed all records in 2023. Growth of exports to Russia is becoming increasingly important for China amid stagnating exports to a number of Western countries. In particular, Russia already became the largest importer of Chinese cars a couple of months ago. Growth of supplies of cars, consumer goods, equipment and many other things meets our demands. That said, though the rates of growth of Russian supplies to China were smaller after an explosive increase last year surplus in mutual trade persists. In the longer run Russian exports will rise to a certain extent due to growth of supplies of traditional export items, such as gas," he said.

The expert is convinced that particularly diversification of the range and increasing complexity of the structure of trade turnover will become the growth driver. The issue is about food, production of the wood processing industry and about higher-value-added products, of the machine building, IT and other sectors among other things, Kopeikin said, adding that tourism will continue actively developing as well.

"Apart from direct supplies, many Russian enterprises are building Chinese companies into their production chains, and the other way round. Such synergy creates conditions for further growth of trade," the expert said. "[Russian First - TASS] Deputy Prime Minister [Andrey] Belousov said in November that "the ruble and yuan already accounted for 95% of trade transactions". In the medium term there won’t be any notable use of other currencies than the national currencies of the two countries in trade between Russia and China," he added.

Sino-Russian trade

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with the US journalist Tucker Carlson earlier that Russia and China have a balanced trade turnover, complementing each other in the area of high technologies, energy and science. He referred to figures, according to which trade turnover between the two countries has reached $230 bln, while China’s statistics suggests that trade turnover has topped $240 bln.

Earlier, the governments of Russia and China set the task of bringing bilateral trade to $200 bln annually by 2024. According to General Administration of Customs of China, trade turnover between Moscow and Beijing reached record-high $240.11 bln in 2023, having increased by 26.3%. Chinese exports to Russia gained 46.9% to $110.97 bln. Imports from Russia went up by 12.7% to $129.14 bln.