Raw material advance – China to be ready to give more and more money to Russia

The visit of the Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to China has become, as a matter of fact, a presentation of the large-scale energy alliance between Russian and China. The Chinese party is ready to allocate more tens billions of dollars to Russia upon the promise of oil, gas and electricity supplies. However, only oil contracts look confident now, and none of the parties name the price, the concessions or the discounts on Moscow’s part in exchange for the money flow from Beijing. At the same time, the experience of the first oil agreements shows that the outwardly generous Chinese in fac fight for every penny.

The visit of Dmitry Medvedev to China, started yesterday, has become the first for him since he headed the Government in May of 2012. The day before, interlocutors of  Kommersant in the Government said that one of the Prime Minister’s main tasks during the negotiations with the Chinese would be diversification of the turnover of goods. Since 2009, China is the largest trading partner of Russia. At the same time, the goods turnover structure more and more fixes the status of Russia as a mere supplier of raw materials to China. Thus, in 2012 the goods turnover grew to $88.16 billion, and the Russian export made up $44.15 billion. But the share of machines and equipment was only 0.7%, and remaining export was mineral raw materials (hydrocarbons made up almost 69%).