Russia Became Leader in Growth Rate of Trade Turnover With China in 2023 - Foreign Ministry

On February 8, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping noted in a telephone conversation that bilateral trade had exceeded the target level of $200 billion earlier than expected and reached a record-high of $227.7 billion

Russia became the leader in the rate of growth of trade turnover among China's partners, Ivan Zhelokhovtsev, a Russian Foreign Ministry official, told Sputnik. He added that the trade dynamics of the United States and Japan with China fell.

"Last year, Russia actually became the leader in terms of growth rate of trade turnover among China's main partners. With many other countries, including the United States, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, China's trade dynamics went negative, and quite noticeably," he said.

According to the diplomat, this allowed Moscow to make a significant breakthrough and move up to fourth place in the overall country ranking of Beijing's foreign economic counterparts, as bilateral trade significantly surpassed the bar of 200 billion US dollars.

"According to Chinese data, we have exceeded this symbolic mark, originally set by the leaders for 2024, by 40 billion. For comparison, this was the entire Russian-Chinese trade turnover in 2007," Zhelokhovtsev said.

He added that now more than 90% of bilateral settlements are made in national currencies, so it is more correct to say that trade between the two countries amounts to about 20 trillion rubles, or almost 1.6 trillion yuan.