• There will be first face-to-face meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
• Moscow pushed soldiers into Ukraine.
• They said their friendship had “no limitations.”

This week will be the first face-to-face meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping since Moscow pushed soldiers into Ukraine earlier this year.

They said their friendship had “no limitations” when they last saw each other in Beijing for the Winter Olympics. Since then, as Europe and the United States responded to the invasion with wave after wave of sanctions, Russia has sought ever-closer ties with China.

Beijing has taken care to avoid breaking Western sanctions or giving Moscow direct military assistance. A clue that Xi won’t sacrifice China’s economic interests to save Putin, who arrived to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization conference in Uzbekistan this week with his troops retreating from substantial portions of

Ukrainian land, is this delicate act of balancing, according to experts.

However, due to China’s race for low-cost commodities and Russia’s urgent search for new markets, the commercial relationship is flourishing in an unbalanced fashion.

As China buys coal and oil to address an energy problem, bilateral trade in goods is at record highs. Meanwhile, Russia has emerged as one of China’s most important export markets, and Chinese businesses are swarming to fill the void left by departing Western firms.

Market records

According to Chinese customs statistics, China’s purchases of Russian commodities increased by 60% in August compared to the same month last year, totaling $11.2 billion, outpacing July’s 49% increase.

While this was happening, its shipments to Russia increased by an additional 26% to $8 billion in August compared to the previous month.

Total goods trade between China and Russia for the first eight months of this year increased 31% to $117.2 billion. That amounts to 80% of the record-breaking $147 billion total from previous year.

According to Keith Krach, a former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic Development, Energy, and the Environment, “China needs Russia more than Russia needs China.”

He continued, “As the Ukraine war continues on, Putin’s losing friends quickly and becoming more and more reliant on China, whose economy is 10 times larger than Russia’s.

Its entire trade volume now includes 2.8% from Russia, up from 2.5% at the end of the previous year. Much larger shares belong to the United States and the European Union.

Before the conflict, China was already Russia’s biggest trading partner by far, making about 16% of all exports.

But given that Russia has entered a recession as a result of Western sanctions, the significance of the second-largest economy in the world has increased significantly.

When the war in Ukraine began, the Russian central bank stopped releasing comprehensive trade data. But Bruegel, a European economic think tank, recently estimated that China made up about 24% of Russia’s exports in June after reviewing data from the country’s top 34 trading partners.

According to Neil Thomas, a senior analyst on China at Eurasia Group, “China-Russia commerce is expanding because China is taking advantage of the Ukraine conflict to acquire Russian energy at a discount and replace Western corporations that have departed the market.”

In May, Russia replaced Saudi Arabia as China’s top oil supplier. According to the most recent data from Chinese customs, Moscow has maintained its top position for three consecutive months through July.

7.42 million metric tons in July marked a five-year record for China’s imports of Russian coal.

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