Chinese companies are confident that mutually beneficial trade and economic cooperation with Russia has great prospects for development thanks to strong support at the highest level. The goal of boosting bilateral trade between Russia and China to $200 billion is also expected to be achieved ahead of schedule, Zhou Liqun, head of the Union of Chinese Entrepreneurs in Russia, told the Global Times.
Good-neighbourly relations between China and Russia guarantee “business opportunities and development” for Chinese enterprises, which are confident of the broad prospects for mutually beneficial trade and economic cooperation between the two countries. Zhou Lijun, head of the Union of Chinese Entrepreneurs in Russia, said in an interview to Global Times.
He also stressed that the high-level talks held during the visit of President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China to Moscow and his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin are a kind of “compass” that sets the direction for further development of bilateral relations.
The visit will help to unlock the “enormous potential” of trade and economic cooperation between China and Russia, Zhou believes. In his view, further expansion of bilateral contacts at various levels will give further impetus to practical cooperation in various fields, which will thus enter a “new stage of great development”.
China-Russia trade and economic cooperation has shown great vitality in recent years, despite the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the related uncertainties affecting global markets, Zhou said in an interview with the Global Times.
He said joint strategic large-scale projects in areas such as energy, nuclear power, aviation, aerospace and infrastructure development were particularly successful. In addition, cooperation in cross-border e-commerce, digital economy, biomedicine, environmental and low-carbon projects and other new areas is gaining momentum, the Chinese expert explained.
According to the official data of the Chinese customs, the volume of bilateral trade between China and Russia in 2022 increased by 34.3% in a year and reached a record level of 1.28 trillion yuan (about $190 billion). This development momentum has been maintained in the new year: in the first two months, total trade between China and Russia increased by 36.4 percent to 232.5 billion yuan.
This shows that there is still a strong upward trend in bilateral economic cooperation, the paper noted. According to Zhou, Chinese enterprises intend to continue cooperating with Russian partners in a wide range of sectors – from the production of cars, construction machinery, mechanical and electrical products to cooperation in industrial parks, global supply chains and modern logistics.
The use of local currency payments, expansion of financial services and the development of practical cooperation between the Eurasian Economic Union and China’s One Belt, One Road initiative will also play an important role, said the head of the Union of Chinese Entrepreneurs in Russia. He predicted that all these promising initiatives will be further developed.
“We will continue our efforts to bridge the two initiatives, and we will also seek to give new impetus to a comprehensive strategic coordination partnership between the two countries,” Zhou told Global Times. The earlier goal of increasing bilateral trade to $200 billion is also expected to be achieved ahead of schedule, the Chinese expert said.
Earlier a joint statement of the two leaders on the 2030 development plan for the priority areas of Sino-Russian economic cooperation was issued in the Kremlin. It states that the two sides undertake to develop economic cooperation in several key areas, including expanding trade, optimizing the overall trade structure, developing e-commerce and other innovative forms of cooperation.
In addition, Russia and China intend to improve financial cooperation and steadily increase the share of local currency payments used in bilateral trade, investment, lending, and other economic and trade transactions to meet market demand, the Global Times reported.
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