Russia-China Economic and Trade Partnership Falters
VLADIVOSTOK, Russia — Universities advertise Chinese classes in this port city, the unofficial capital of the Russian Far East. Billboards offering cheap cancer treatments in South Korea litter the streets and cars imported from Japan clog the roads. In parks, clutches of locals practice qigong — an ancient Chinese exercise and breathing routine. Vladivostok is a physical embodiment of Russia's economic "pivot east" — mainly toward China — launched after Moscow's ties with the West began to fray badly in 2014.
Russian-Chinese trade fell by 5 percent year-on-year to $28 billion in the first six months of 2016, mainly because of plummeting prices for commodities such as oil, gas, lumber, metal and coal, Russia's main exports. At the same time, the U.S. remains China's most important economic relationship with bilateral trade between the two hitting $263 billion in the first half of this year.
In theory, Chinese lenders and investors were expected to help compensate for the Western sanctions over Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula and alleged meddling in that country's civil war.
But those sanctions hit Russia hard. Then there are the problems of actually doing business with Russia hinted at during the Eastern Economic Forum business conference held in Vladivostok earlier this month.
Top Chinese businessmen like Tao Ran, the chairman of construction and power company Sirius Holding, mentioned certain "inefficiencies of administration" — a thinly veiled reference to Russia's notoriously inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-china-economic-trade-partnership-falters-n645291
