The Chinese state oil company CPNC and the Chinese Silk Road Fund both have stakes in the huge oil and gas fields of North Siberia's Yamal Peninsula. Two further pipelines are at the planning stages.

Since 2019, China has received 7% of its natural gas via the 'Power of Siberia' pipeline to Manchuria. But Russia's share of China's total foreign trade is a mere 2.4% Russia is China's second biggest energy supplier. But for China's total foreign trade, Russia's share is a mere 2.4%. After all, 60% of China's electricity generation is still based on coal-fired power plants. In return, Russia procures telecommunications and electrical equipment, machinery and textiles from the Chinese.Īccounting for 26% of China’s coal and 15% of its crude oil imports, Russia is China's second biggest energy supplier. Russia supplies a developing China with crude oil, gas, coal, metals (vanadium, nickel, copper, aluminium), wood, grain, oilseeds, beef and fish. It is a hinterland, yet enjoys practical, safe land transport routes. Siberia, a region of 34 million inhabitants, is a rich repository of raw materials. Russia’s attraction as a junior partner to China is based primarily on Siberia. Xi Jinping, however, is unabashedly striving for China to replace the USA as the foremost world power by 2050, and to stay there. Putin has limited his ambitions to bringing the former Soviet Slavic republics home in order to become a respectable regional power again. Despite the glittering facades of Moscow and St Petersburg, average Russian monthly income is just $740 – on a par with Mexico or Bolivia. The result, as Helmut Schmidt once observed, is an ' Upper Volta with nuclear missiles'. If successful, they are soon blackmailed and plundered by corrupt tax collectors, apparatchiks and militiamen. Medium-sized companies struggle to access credit from Russian state banks. All other Russian industries and services remain underdeveloped.īecause of the legal uncertainties, oligarchs have always preferred to shift their billions abroad rather than invest in their home country. Russia, meanwhile, remains a supplier of raw materials, whose only strong export industry is the armaments sector. Over the past two decades China has transformed from a mass producer of cheap goods on starvation wages into a diversified, industrialised country turning out competitive, high-tech products. China’s transformation, Russia’s stagnation But on current projections, Russia's population will be smaller than Turkey's by 2050.

Putin tries to 'solve' these problems by counting Russians from Central Asia, along with residents of Crimea and Donbas. Male life expectancy stands at just 66 years, and the birth rate remains low. Russia also has a huge demographic problem. On current projections, Russia's population will be smaller than Turkey's by 2050 However, its economic power is about the size of Spain's and thus less than a tenth of China's, with its 1.4 billion inhabitants. The relationship between the two countries is extremely asymmetrical. Yet it hides the extent to which Russia, in long-term decline, is very much the junior partner. A ' boundless friendship' was thereby promulgated. These included plans for the construction of a third gas pipeline from Siberia and, at Beijing's request, a deferral of the invasion date to 24 February. In February 2022, at the Beijing Olympic Games, President Putin signed 15 agreements with China. This dependence was developing long before the invasion of Ukraine. Less widely commented on is the extent to which it has exposed Russia’s dependence on China. The Ukraine conflict has highlighted how dependent Europe is on the protective shield of NATO and the USA. It's a decline exacerbated by the latest Western economic sanctions China’s ambitions to displace the US as the main world power contrast vividly with Russia’s long-term stagnation and decline.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has exposed Russia’s growing dependence on China, argues Albrecht Rothacher.

Upper volta with missiles schmidt