SHANGHAI, November 17. /TASS/. The conflict in Ukraine has created a new geopolitical situation in which Europe has been hit harder than Russia, Huang Renwei, the Executive Director of the Fudan Institute for Belt and Road and Global Governance, has told TASS.
"The Russia-Ukraine conflict has created a new geopolitical situation. For me, the most important thing is that supply chains and industry are undergoing changes. Firstly, the changes affected energy supplies from Russia, which were previously oriented towards Europe. After the conflict between Russia and Ukraine flared up, these supplies were interrupted through oil pipelines, including sea pipelines. Europe and Russia found themselves separated. Of course, this is considered a big blow to Russia, but Europe was hit far harder," Huang said at the latest session of the Russian-Chinese academic conference organized in Shanghai by the international Valdai Discussion Club and East China Normal University (ECNU).
In this regard, he emphasized, Russia's turnaround in energy supplies towards Asia was to China's benefit. On the other hand, oil producers in Saudi Arabia in these conditions began to coordinate their moves with Russia more actively, which made it possible to control oil prices, he believes. "Keeping prices high has also affected inflation in the US," the expert said.
Another important change in the world, Huang said, concerns the fact that Russia has employed systems for transmitting financial information alternative to SWIFT.
"More countries began to use dollars for settlements to a lesser extent and to prefer yuan. All these changes are accelerating the decline of the US dollar hegemony. In this regard, the US is afraid of the decline in the use of the dollar, because of the excess dollars on the market," Huang said, stating that the US hegemony rested on the dollar and the armed forces.
The expert also drew attention to the fact that because of Western sanctions, the center of Russia's economic life was shifting to the Far East, with its huge resources and great potential for development yet to be tapped. If this trend continues, the expert predicts the emergence of a new cluster, which he called North Asia, incorporating the eastern part of Russia, Mongolia and China.
The academic conference Crisis and Global Transformation: China and Russia Facing the Challenges of a Changing World Order was held in Shanghai on November 16-17 with leading experts from Russia and China taking part. The Valdai Discussion Club in cooperation with the ECNU has been organizing such conferences on a regular basis since 2010. This year's conference was the first in-person event in the last four years after a forced pause due to anti-Covid pandemic restrictions.