The two countries were already moving in this direction, with Russia supplying natural gas via the Northern Sea Route and the Power of Siberia pipeline and with the Chinese leasing 2.5 million acres of Siberia as farmland, something Russia agreed to not just for the cash income but to delay the de facto redrawing of the map:
New York Times
So the two giants were already moving closer in their economic ties.
But the incessant Russia, Russia, Russia of the last six years as well as the western response to the Russian re-taking of Crimea have certainly accelerated the process, to the point the two countries have individually developed responses to a curtailment of access to the SWIFT payment system which, when combined, will create an international alternative to SWIFT.*
You can lay the blame for this acceleration squarely on the neocons and other war-mongers, the so-called intelligence community and the folks who pitched Russia, Russia, Russia for the last six years. I'm not kidding and I'm not being hyperbolic this is a huge, huge issue and is so stupid you almost have to wonder if it isn't stupid at all but part of a concerted effort to raise China and diminish the West.
From RT, the more propagandistic of the outward facing Russian media, February 6:
China outlines ambitious trade goal with RussiaBilateral commerce smashed a record high last year
China wants to boost bilateral trade to $250 billion a year. The goal was voiced by Chinese President Xi Jinping during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
“For China, this is not so much, but for [Russia] it is a very ambitious goal,” Peskov said, adding that the task is quite achievable. He pointed out that the trade turnover between the two countries hit a historic high of $140 billion in 2021.
Russian and Chinese leaders had previously set a target of doubling the volume of trade from $100 billion (reached in 2018) a year to $200 billion by 2024.
China has been the main importer from Russia of non-primary, non-energy goods since 2016....
That was the headline on his December 6 Washington Post OpEd.
The question, of course, is how are you going to enforce it?
Reuters reported earlier today: "West could cut Russia from SWIFT, sanction Nord Stream, Latvia says"
Do they think Russia hasn't thought of this possibility? Of course they did, a decade ago.
We're dealing with a nation of chess players. They've gamed out four possibilities, sixteen countermoves and 64 counter-countermoves. Meanwhile the American military have been working on their pronouns.
And the Russians also have a secret weapon: Elvira Nabiullina, the head of the Russian central bank.
Imagine having to do a high wire act, allowing the rouble to fall,
keeping rates up to counteract the inflationary tendency that
introduces, trying to account for the huge asset flows in the
underground/oligarch economy while all the while Putin is yelling at you
from the sidelines.
She is very good at what she does.
She has already considered and put on the back-burner a proposal to use the Orthodox Church as an internal payment system, It's there, just in case, you know, the electronic stuff goes down.
Here's the introduction to 2018's "Russia’s central bank quietly raised its key interest rate by 0.25 percentage points on Friday":
If you think having Donald Trump question the Fed head for raising rates is playing rough, just imagine working for Vlad Putin as his popularity drops.
Considering the hand she's been dealt, the chief of the Russian central bank, Ms. Nabiullina, should have garnered a couple more Euromoney Central Banker of the Year awards to sit next to the one she received in 2015.
Seriously, since she took over in 2013 oil prices collapsed, then doubled, the annexation of Crimea led to the first set of sanctions, the rouble fell 50%, the U.S. Treasury threatened Russian banks with exclusion from SWIFT, the second set of sanctions on companies and oligarchs led to the retraction of multi-billion dollar credit facilities which had to be replaced internally and a couple other things that I'm having trouble remembering....
She has payment systems in place with China and together with the oil & gas honchos is ready to redirect those flows.
And finally, if things escalate, what is to stop the Chinese from attacking Taiwan at the same time Russia moves its border west. With a two-front war, NATO and the U.S. would be shown to be paper tigers.
Here's an ungated version of the WaPo OpEd at the University of Pennsylvania.
And a final thought. When the SWIFT threat was being bandied about, Russia had no alternatives so she needed both an emergency solution and a longer term solution,
The emergency plan was to use the Church, as mentioned above
The longer term plan became the Mir payment system which inspired China's CIPS.
From Russian state news agency RIA, December 15:
Ушаков назвал разговор Путина и Си Цзиньпина беседой двух друзей
Google Translate seems to give a fair approximation:
"Assistant to the President Ushakov: the conversation between Putin and Xi Jinping was a conversation between two friends...."Some of the highlights:....
And the emergency solution, first proposed by the patriarch of the Russian church inspired some truly awful headlines:
"...Unorthodox Orthodox Financial Alternative"....
Putin and Patriarch Kirill are pretty tight. Here they are last Tuesday:
