Andrey Krushinsky: Russia is rated eighth by China

During the past year, China’s export and import amounted to $509.8 billion, only $9.3 billion of the sum (or 1.8%) went to Russia.

Once, Boris Yeltsin and Jiang Zemin announced their mutual intention to increase Russian-Chinese commodity turnover to $20 billion per year by the beginning of the 21st century. The showing did not seem very high for China: to compare, China’s turnover with Japan reached about $80 billion in 2001. This objective was also considered to be feasible for Russia, because it could supply China with goods that can hardly be bought in any other countries, namely, timber, modern battle jets, torpedo-boats, and submarines. But, as it turned out, the defense establishment alone was not enough for the achievement of the objectives, and the economic decay in Russia also affected the.

Here are China's ten largest commercial partners (its continental part, to be precise) during 2001: Japan (with the turnover of $79.7 billion), the USA ($73.5 billion), Hong Kong ($50.5 billion), South Korea ($32.7 billion), Taiwan ($29.2 billion), Germany ($21.4 billion), Great Britain ($9.4 billion), Russia ($9.3 billion), the Netherlands ($7.9 billion) and France ($7.1 billion). The showings demonstrate that even if the target of $20 billion was reached, Russia could be only in seventh place. But even a half of Yeltsin’s modest objectives have not been achieved.

Andrey Krushinsky PRAVDA.Ru Beijing

Translated by Maria Gousseva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/01/22/35864.html