Over the period January to May of 2023, there was a 40% increase in Russia-China trade as compared to the same five-month period in 2022, according to Chinese customs data. Chinese imports rose by 20.4%, while exports to Russia soared by 75.6%. The increase was facilitated in part by the June 22 opening of the cross-border road bridge between Russia’s Blagoveshchensk and China’s Heihe, and by a large volume of traffic at the railway border crossing Nizhneleninskoye-Tongjiang, with 1 million tons of hard coal and iron ore shipped from Russia to China since it opened in November 2022.
Even more significant is the fact that 70% of cross-border settlements between Russia and China are currently conducted in either rubles or yuan, a fact which was emphasized by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin during his May 23-24 visit to China.
