- Russia’s yuan reserves are nearly depleted due to Chinese banks’ fear of US sanctions.
- Lenders have urged Russia’s central bank to address the yuan deficit, causing the ruble to drop.
- China’s hesitance stems from US threats of secondary sanctions over Russia’s Ukraine war financing.
This is what frustrates me so much about people in the US arguing against supporting Ukraine. At the end of the day, while China might be willing to help Russia, the US is by far it’s largest customer. Add to that China’s own economy is contracting, and supporting Ukraine against Putin, along with the severe sanctions that have been in place, is the smartest most cost effective way of hopefully removing him from power. I have a co-worker who got out of Russia a little over a year ago, and he said it was pretty bad before he and his family left. Unfortunately, it’s a slow process because the goal is to get the Russian people to oust him. We all know that’s not going to happen at the ballot box, so all that’s left is the people overthrowing their leaders. Things have to get pretty dire before a population like Russia’s gets to that tipping point.
This is a marathon. The main thing is keeping Ukraine strong and able to defend itself. I’m really liking the offensives into Russian territory they’ve been carrying out. I just want them to remember a defensive position is easier to maintain/win than an offensive one. In other words, don’t try to go to far into Russia. Way way too many great generals have made that mistake!
That’s true and there’s also more to it.
The US is China’s largest single trading partner but China has many many trading partners.
May nations now trade or at least negotiate in blocks. Both ASEAN and the UE, as blocks, do more trade with China than the US does. When it comes to individual nations the US isn’t as far ahead as it might seem. Russia, Vietnam and Taiwan together trade more with China than the US does, despite having a combined GDP that’s a tiny fraction of the US.
The key issue is that China has been working really hard to make itself less dependent on the US. They still have a way to go but they’re much less vulnerable than they were a few years ago.
Fair points, but I would also add that while the US isn’t a block, they do hold sway with a number of other countries. NATO is also involved in this equation. China also has significant investments in the US. I don’t fault China for seeing economic opportunity in Russia, but they have to walk a pretty fine line if they’re going to make it work.
China knows that the US has a lot of economic leverage. They’ve been working very hard to change that and a lot of those efforts have flown under the radar.
BRI is pretty obvious and it’s seen as one of the major reason the ASEAN countries are pivoting towards China. But consider the whole South China Sea issue. Everyone frames it as a contest over sea resources and few people consider the strait of Malacca. It’s a potential choke point for all trade west of Southeast Asia. While China is working to be able to defend that they’re also working with Thailand to build a canal that would bypass the straight of Malacca all together. All of that is primarily to reduce US leverage and those initiatives tend to work more often than they fail.
This is a crazy pipe dream by the Thai PM, China has nothing to do with it. It doesn’t make any sense to unload ships in Thailand, move them by train across the peninsula, and then reload them onto ships. They can go via other routes in Indonesia if they don’t want to go through the straight of Malacca for some reason. The Thai PM is just jealous that all the shipping trade (and money) goes to Singapore and Malaysia because it is easier for the boats to stop there.