Putin has Shifted Russia from Being a Raw Materials Supplier to the West to Being a Raw Materials Supplier to China, El Murid Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 31 – In all the talk about Russia’s shift from the West to the East, Anatoly Nesmiyan, who blogs under the screen name “El Murid,” many have ignored what is a most important continuity: Russia indeed no longer is a raw materials supplier to the West; it has become a raw materials supplier to China.

            If one looks at trade figures, El Murid points out, “Russia supplies China exclusively raw materials and almost nothing else except them.” That raises an interesting question: “whether there is all that much difference in being a raw materials appendage of the soulless West or being the same thing but for China” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=63AEF0D46960F).

            The Kremlin will insist on calling this a partnership, he continues; but if it is, it is one  in which China is completely dominant and Russia completely subordinate, precisely the relationship the Kremlin claimed it has broken with the West to prevent from ever happening again.