On June 4, 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that China was sending weapons to Russia, ignoring international sanctions. However, Ukraine seems to have been aware of this for quite a while, as an article was made in April discussing what specific weapons and tools were being sent to Russia to aid them in their military campaign. Among them, according to Yahoo!, are guns and body armor-- both very vital tools in a military war.
The question for us at Daily Dough then becomes, why? Why would China put so much effort into supporting Russia militarily?
Well, let's look at the facts.
Economically, Russia no longer has many standing allies. This is due to all the sanctions, effectively a country, company, or institution denying another country's economic freedom. For example, the European Union has sanctioned Russia to deny its ability to trade oil to any country or business related to the EU. However, regarding oil specifically, Russia's exports are not going any lower. Sanctions are effective on public companies, who shunned Russian oil. However, private companies jumped on the opportunity of less competition and began to buy a lot of Russian oil. As a result, Russian oil was in the hands of the free market, going to places that required oil, like the Dutch company Zeeland Refinery.
It doesn't stop there, however. We can apply this logic to many Chinese companies as well. Because of the sanctions, many companies and countries in the Western world have completely abandoned Russia. This opened up a hole in the Russian trading market. On the other hand, this allowed Turkish, German, Dutch, and particularly Chinese companies to invest in the Russian economy in 2022.
Supposedly, China has remained its biggest trading partner and has dominated Russian trade in 2022. It appears that the Chinese public is more interested in remaining in Russia than leaving; unlike the West, where companies would get public backlash for supporting Russia, Chinese companies have faced backlash for not having business in Russia.
So what?
What's the big takeaway here?
Regarding economics, the facts show that due to the large vacuum in trade with Russia, China has taken opportunities to trade with Russia while the West continues to sanction them.
The politics of this issue will be discussed in another upcoming article...
Until then, we await further news.