On October 19, Gong Jiong, a China Forum expert and vice president for research at UIBE Israel, gave an interview to Sputnik on trade between China and Russia and the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.

The steadily growing China-Russia trade is “a shiny spot amidst a gloomy picture,” said Professor Gong. He believes that the $200 billion trade target between the two countries pledged by President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin is going to be grossly exceeded to around $250 billion given the robust growth rate of 30%. 

There is broad global interest in moving beyond a system of trade based on the US dollar, noted Gong. Countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia are talking about de-dollarization for trade settlements. He also mentioned that there is an initiative within the BRICS Plus to explore the option of implementing an alternative currency and an internal trade settlement mechanism.

On October 17-18, the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation was held in Beijing. “We’re talking about spending over $1 trillion over 3,000 projects in 150 countries. There’s never been a time in human history that such a large scale set of hard infrastructures were built within a short period of just ten years,” said Gong. He believes that while the last ten years of accomplishments of the BRI project have been impressive, it is only just getting going.

Established in 2014, Sputnik is a Russian state-owned news agency and radio broadcast service.

Read the article here: https://sputnikglobe.com/20231018/burgeoning-russia-china-trade-shiny-spot-amid-gloom-in-global-economy-1114295637.html