After facing comprehensive sanctions by the West, the Putin government actively "look eastward", continuously strengthened cooperation with non-Western countries, expanded diplomatic space, and broke through economic encirclement. Against this backdrop, China-Russia economic and trade cooperation, as a key focus, naturally ushered in new development opportunities and continued to deliver outstanding results. However, despite this, there is still a problem that needs to be resolved in the economic and trade fields of the two countries.
At the 25th meeting of the China-Russia Economic and Trade Cooperation Sub-Committee held earlier, Russian representatives said that China-Russia trade volume is expected to exceed US$170 billion this year, setting a record high, and hope that China will further smooth the transportation at border ports. China has also given a positive response to Russia's expectations a few days ago, that is, on the basis of ensuring epidemic prevention and safety, China will further smooth port customs clearance and logistics transportation.
The element pointed out here is that with the construction of transportation infrastructure between China and Russia and the improvement of relevant policies, port customs clearance between China and Russia has become very convenient. At present, the only main factor affecting logistics clearance is actually the epidemic.
Although Russia has repeatedly proposed "I hope China will further unblock border ports", China treats all countries equally in controlling the import of the epidemic. It is impossible to have any "special treatment" to any country on the issue of liberalizing the country's doors. Russia cannot do it, nor can the United States do it.
We all know that the United States had wanted to "special treatment" with China in the civil aviation field, hoping that China would relax its epidemic prevention policies and stop the circuit breaking of US flights. The US believes that China's strict epidemic prevention policy has affected "the revenue of American airlines."
The health and safety of the people are above everything else. China naturally rejected the unreasonable demands of the United States, continued to treat everyone equally, and circuited off US flights to China that do not meet the epidemic prevention requirements. In order to retaliate, the United States suspended several flights from Chinese airlines to China, calling it a "reciprocal measure."
Comparison, it is not difficult to find that behind the United States’ “special requirements” for China, is the mentality of “self-righteousness”. Whoever does not meet the requirements of the United States will be beaten by the United States. In contrast, Russia has made "expectations" about China, which is more like "saying hello" to an old friend and asking if China can help with this matter.
National countries are sometimes just like people. Russia's attitude of asking for help is more in line with China's traditional culture of "reciting exchanges" and "harmony brings wealth", and will naturally receive a more positive response from China.
Therefore, we can see that China has made a clear statement to Russia this time that on the basis of ensuring the reasonable requirement of epidemic prevention, it will further smooth the customs clearance between the two countries. And as we all know, China does not like to speak nonsense like some major countries. We always do what we say. Therefore, China will definitely take action this time to eliminate the obstacles between China and Russia's logistics as much as possible.
But the core problem is that in addition to our efforts, Russia also needs to show enough sincerity in the issue of transit epidemic prevention. From the current perspective, the epidemic situation in Russia is still not optimistic. Since early August, a new round of large-scale epidemics has been launched in various parts of Russia. On the 26th, more than 46,000 new cases were added in a single day. Russian infectious disease experts predict that this round of epidemic in Russia may last for more than half a year and will not end until March next year.
Although the Putin government has done its best to control the spread of the new crown epidemic, Russia's current population is still less than 60% of the population who receive at least one dose of the vaccine, and only 52% of the population who receive three doses of the vaccine intact, far lower than the world's average of 63%.
This is because Russia belongs to the federal country. Many local governments do not strictly follow Moscow's will to strictly implement the epidemic, especially in places like Chechnya , Dagestan , and Buryat. The combination of the above factors has led to the difficult situation in Russia's current epidemic control.
In general, China is of course capable of cooperating with Russia's request and further unblocking logistics ports, but I hope that Russia will also make more efforts in controlling the epidemic, otherwise the "Sword of Damocles" of the new crown epidemic will always be hanging high in the economic and trade fields of China and Russia.
