On the snow -covered border of China with Russia, the dealership center for the sale of trucks has doubled its sales over the last year thanks to Russian customers. China's exports to their neighbor are so powerful that this summer Chinese builders built warehouses and 20-storey office towers on the border.
The Border City of Heikhe is a micro -region of China's more close economic relations with Russia. China benefits from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has led to the fact that Russia has switched from west to China, buying everything from cars to computer chips.
Russia, in turn, sells China oil and natural gas with high discounts. Russian chocolate candies, sausages and other consumer goods have been abundant in Chinese supermarkets. During the first 11 months of this year, the turnover between Russia and China exceeded $ 200 billion - a level that countries were not expected to reach by 2024.
Russia's war in Ukraine also received an image impulse from China. State media spread a stable Russian propaganda diet in China and around the world. Russia is so popular in China that influential persons on social networks are coming to Harbin, the capital of China's most northern province in the east, Heylunglzjan, to pose in Russian attire before the former Russian
cathedral.
Xi Jinping, the highest leader of China, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly publicly demonstrated close links between countries. In early September, Mr. Xi visited Harbin and declared Cheylungziang a "gate to the north" of China. Chinese exports to Russia in the first 11 months of this year increased by 69 percent compared to the same period of 2021, before invasion of Ukraine.
"The support and development of Chinese-Russian relations is a strategic choice made by both parties on the basis of the fundamental interests of the two peoples," Mr. Si said during a meeting in Beijing on Wednesday with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.
China satisfied Russia's critical need for imports, which many European and American companies avoided after Mr Putin launched a war in February 2022. China continues to play the role of a supplier of substitutes, despite the fact that it risks its close economic ties with many European countries.
Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, the leaders of Germany, France and other European countries, for the most part, delayed differences with China in issues such as human rights, and focused on trade. Chinese officials, for their part, insist that they should not be forced to choose between Europe and Russia, and that China should be able to do business freely with both.
Chinese manufacturers of vehicles won most from trade with Russia.
Recently, in the afternoon in the city of Hayeh, the queues of diesel trucks with stickers depicting a bear, a symbol of Russia, on the doors that were waiting for them to be passed across the bridge across the Amur River to Russia. The new bridge, as well as the trucks that had Genlyon badges, a brand owned by the State Shanghai Corporation of the Automobile Industry. A company known as SAIC also produces car brands such as MG purchased in Britain.
Sales helped China to overtake Japan this year as the world's largest car exporter. German manufacturers, such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW, were previously strong sellers in Russia, but they left the market in response to sanctions imposed against the country of Europe, the USA and their allies.
Sales of luxury cars in Russia have fallen sharply, which has led to a decrease in the total volume of the country market, which is now twice less than German. According to Alexander Gabev, the director of the Eurasian Center of Carnegie in Russia, representatives of the lower middle class and poor Russian families, whose members make up the bulk of the soldiers participating in the war, intensified the purchase of inexpensive Chinese cars.
One of the reasons, according to Mr. Gabev, is payments in the event of death or disability that the Russian government and insurance companies are carried out to families of Russian soldiers - up to $ 90,000 in the event of death.
Russia has not released its deaths and wounded, but the United States estimates the total number of 315,000.
The Russians buy almost exclusively internal combustion cars. In China, their surplus, as its consumers quickly moved to electric vehicles.
And the land border means that China can transport cars to Russia by rail, which is an important factor, since China has no its own fleet of transoean carriers for car export.
Result? According to GlobalData Automotive, Chinese car manufacturers captured 55% of the Russian market. In 2021, their share was 8 percent.
"We have never seen the car manufacturers from one country so quickly seized such a large market share-the Chinese are in the winning," said Michael Dann, a car consultant from Asia to San Diego.
The United States strongly warned China from sending weapons to Russia, and so far they have not found evidence that he was doing it. But some civilian equipment that China sells Russia, such as drones and trucks, also has military use.
Beijing's embrace with Russia also provided a modest but timely assistance from China's construction industry. The economy is trying to cure scars left for almost three years of strict zero couvid.
The real estate market is experiencing a crisis throughout China. Tens of millions of apartments are empty or unfinished, and new projects have stalled, which deprives the construction sector of work, which has long been providing jobs.
"Many houses are built, but no one lives in them," Zhang Yan said, a wooden door seller in Hayeh.
But some workers find work on the 2600-mile border with Russia, where there were not enough parking lots, customs centers, railway stations, pipelines and other infrastructure this year. In the summer, in cities such as Heihe, construction was moving at a rapid pace, although it was stopped for a cold winter.
Pipelines are needed for one of the most important products that trade two countries: energy.
Cheap Russian energy bypassing the sanctions imposed by the West helps Chinese plants compete in the world markets even when their production competitors in other countries, including Germany, face a sharp increase in energy prices for most of the last two years.
Russia is increasing the supply of natural gas through its Siberia Power gas pipeline to China and negotiates the construction of the second pipeline that will transport gas from deposits that served Europe before the war in Ukraine. Less than three weeks before the war in Ukraine, China and Russia have also agreed to build a third, smaller gas pipeline that will transport gas from Eastern Russia to northeast China, and the construction of this project is rapid.
The newest pipeline crosses the land that Russia seized in China in the late 1850s and never returned. Back in the 1960s, China and the Soviet Union argued for the border, and their troops joined. In the village near Hayeh, the statue of the imperial Chinese general, greater than human height, is still standing over the Amur River.
Today, Russia and China are building bridges and pipelines that cross the river.
But some workers find work on the 2600-mile Russian border, where there were not enough parking lots for trucks, customs clearance centers, railway stations, pipelines and other infrastructure by this year. In the summer, in cities such as Heihe, construction was moving at a rapid pace, although it was stopped for a cold winter.
Pipelines are needed for one of the most important products that trade two countries: energy.
Cheap Russian energy bypassing the sanctions imposed by the West helps Chinese plants compete in the world markets even when their production competitors in other countries, including Germany, face a sharp increase in energy prices for most of the last two years.
Russia is increasing the supply of natural gas through its Siberia Power gas pipeline to China and negotiates the construction of the second pipeline that will transport gas from deposits that served Europe before the war in Ukraine. Less than three weeks before the war in Ukraine, China and Russia have also agreed to build a third, smaller gas pipeline that will transport gas from Eastern Russia to northeast China, and the construction of this project is rapid.
The newest pipeline crosses the land that Russia seized in China in the late 1850s and never returned. Back in the 1960s, China and the Soviet Union argued for the border, and their troops joined. In the village near Hayeh, the statue of the imperial Chinese general, greater than human height, is still standing over the Amur River.
Today, Russia and China are building bridges and pipelines that cross the river.
