China can learn from Russia to beat Western sanctions as ‘de-risking’ pressures mount, foreign affairs expert says

Use of non-dollar currencies, increased trade with ‘friendly’ partners and capital flight controls help Moscow avoid crash, says Ding Yifan

Ding is former deputy director of an institute that advises the Chinese government on policy

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered foreign companies leaving the Russian market to sell their assets for half of their value and to pay a portion of the proceeds to the state. Photo: Reuters

Published: 10:00am, 23 Feb 2024Updated: 11:30am, 23 Feb 2024

Russia’s success in rising above Western sanctions through de-dollarisation and shoring up trade partners can be a valuable lesson for China as pressure mounts over “de-risking”, according to a Chinese international relations specialist who once worked at an institute that advises the central government.

“Russia has provided us many precious experiences that we can learn from to deal with financial and economic sanctions in the future,” said Ding Yifan, formerly the deputy director of the Institute of World Development under the State Council’s Development Research Centre, at a seminar in Beijing on Wednesday.

Despite the war in Ukraine and mounting sanctions, the Russian economy grew by 3.6 per cent last year, beating analysts’ expectations and marking a significant rebound from 2022, when its gross domestic product contracted by 2.1 per cent.

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared last month that his country had become Europe’s biggest economy in terms of purchasing power parity.

Ding’s assessment comes as the war in Ukraine enters its third year with no end in sight.

Soon after the war began in 2022, the US and its key allies imposed unprecedented export controls, financial sanctions and oil price caps on Russia.

They also banned Russian banks from using global financial messaging system Swift, short for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, freezing hundreds of billions of dollars of Russian central bank assets and curbing the flow of military technology to Moscow.