In the wake of the Oct. 22-24 Kazan summit of the BRICS, discussion among members about how to move forward with various, important initiatives proceeds.
An opinion column posted on Nov. 8th on the website of the Valdai International Discussion Club reviews the difficulties of financial settlements and therefore of conducting business between Russia and China because of the threat of secondary sanctions against Chinese financial institutions who deal with Russian entities. The authors, Natalya Pomozova, Deputy Head of the International Department of the United Russia Party, and Artyom Semenov, Deputy Director of the Higher School of Law, report that various workarounds “require significant time and material resources due to the volume of Russian-Chinese economic cooperation.” The authors lament that “the track of China’s cooperation with Russian partners is forced to slow down due to Beijing’s pragmatic and cautious policy, since it is necessary to take into account Washington’s threats,” and they question how many developing nations might be affected by the same worry, should U.S. policy come to disfavor them.
