Russia Warns China: Don't Count On Us For Soybeans

I like the bit of propaganda in the headline, the "U.S. trade war" bit.
See, China was just innocently enforcing tariff and non - tariff barriers to foreign companies entering its home markets while happily pursuing predatory mercantilist policies abroad and not just stealing technology but actively using state espionage as just another tool of state economic policy.
And then out of the blue, Orange Man Bad started the war.
(if I may mix my color metaphors)*

From The South China Morning Post:

China warned it should not pin its hopes on Russian soybeans plugging supply gap caused by US trade war

• Russian expert told China industry delegates that his country struggles to produce enough to satisfy its own demands, much less its neighbour’s
• China has been looking for alternative sources after falling US supplies left its farmers with a major headache

Russian soybean exports to China are likely to remain low for the next few years, an agricultural specialist has warned, suggesting that amount produced will not be enough to provide a real alternative to the United States.

China suspended purchases of US soybeans and other farm products this month after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose more tariffs on Chinese products, compounding the shortages caused by 25 per cent tariffs on the crop that have been in place since July last year.

Russia is one of the many alternative sources China has been exploring since the start of the trade war and last month it approved imports of soybeans from all parts of Russia, opening itself up to supplies from the European part.

Although Russia’s overall production of the crop – a vital food source for farm animals – is much lower than America’s, some in Beijing hoped its northern neighbour would be able to make a significant contribution in future.

Last month China’s Commerce Minister Zhong Shan  said the country hoped to “deepen its trade in soybeans” with Russia   after a meeting with his counterparts in Moscow, days after Rusagro, a Russian agricultural exporter,had shipped its first bulk vessel of soybeans to China.

But Dmitry Rylko, director general of the Moscow-based Institute for Agricultural Market Studies, said Beijing should not pin its hopes on this new source of supplies.

“In the next few years, European Russia’s soybean exports to China may be very low,” Rylko told an annual gathering of Chinese soybean growers, traders and officials in Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang on the border with Russia, on Friday.

He said soybean output in the European part of Russia would not be able to satisfy domestic demands until 2024, despite an increase in plantation areas....

....MUCH MORE

*any two colors opposite each other on the color wheel result in different varieties of the color brown—Ref.com

Related:
"The Chinese influx into Asian Russia"
We've looked at these demographics a couple times. From last year's "Siberia As Breadbasket For China" here is the map the way the Chinese think it should be drawn:

China has been eyeing their neighbor to the north based on some revanchist claims to the land for 160 years.
Here is part of the Chinese pitch from a few years ago as verbalized by the New York Times:

...The border, all 2,738 miles of it, is the legacy of the Convention of Peking of 1860 and other unequal pacts between a strong, expanding Russia and a weakened China after the Second Opium War. (Other European powers similarly encroached upon China, but from the south. Hence the former British foothold in Hong Kong, for example.)

The 1.35 billion Chinese people south of the border outnumber Russia’s 144 million almost 10 to 1. The discrepancy is even starker for Siberia on its own, home to barely 38 million people, and especially the border area, where only 6 million Russians face over 90 million Chinese. With intermarriage, trade and investment across that border, Siberians have realized that, for better or for worse, Beijing is a lot closer than Moscow....

—via "Why China will 'reclaim' Siberia", China Daily Mail, July 5, 2014

The new map is envisioned to look something like this:

Expanded China-Siberia map showing possible claims China might make

In the meantime China is leasing. From the South China Morning Post, December 18. 2018:

Russia offers 2.5 million acres of land to Chinese farmers, but will it ease Beijing’s soybean shortage?

And although the SCMP's editorial stance usually seems to be pretty much independent of the official Beijing line, the fact the paper is owned by Alibaba means the potential for government pressure should always be factored into stories such as this from the July 20, 2018 edition:

Why forecasts of a Chinese takeover of the Russian Far East are just dramatic myth

With all that as prologue....
From the Asia Times, June 13:
China’s rising economic clout in Siberia and the Russian Far East is fueling ancient local dreads...
...MUCH MORE

And "Residents Of Russian Far East Protest Chinese Presence"

"China Is Facing Food-Supply Crisis, Notable Challenges to Regime’s Ambitions"

Okay, time to fess up.
I've mentioned I have a strange fascination with the city of Harbin China,
And I've mentioned part of the reason is it is so darn cold. Which is true.
But the other reason is it is the largest city in Heilongjiang province which, of the 22 mainland provinces (they claim Taiwan is #23) is the largest producer of corn in the country and at just under 1/5 of China's total production is a world-class resource....