Chinese Firms Destroying Russian Counterparts Because of Beijing’s Actions, Business Leaders in Russia Fear

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb.11 – Russian officials say the recent decline in Russian-Chinese trade is the result of Western sanctions and the fact that Chinese exports have reached a saturation level in many areas. But Russian businessmen are still worried and say that Chinese producers with Beijing’s help are now overwhelming the Russian economy.

            Mikhail Sergeyev, the economics editor of Moscow’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta, says that the leaders of Russian firms now say that “China now is quickly burning out the remnants of Russian industry” and that Beijing’s provision of subsidies for Chinese products in Russia is now “dangerous” and must be countered (ng.ru/economics/2026-02-11/1_9435_china.html).

            According to Russian businessmen, the journalist continues, one obvious solution might be for Russia to restore its cooperation with the United States so that both countries would be in a position to counter China’s economic offensive, a recommendation so at odds with the Kremlin that it highlights how large a problem Chinese participation in the Russian economy is.

            Aleksandr Knobel and Aleksandr Firanchuk of the Gaidar Institute also stress just how much of a threat to Russia Chinese actions now are: “The dynamics of the Russian market share in Chinese experts,” the two say, “indicates a decrease in its importance even at a time of restrictions on the supply of Chinese products to the United States.”

            Russian businessmen say the Chinese threat is only growing. Vladimir Boglayev, director of the Cherepovets Foundry and Mechanical Plant, says that “about 57 percent of all technological equipment in Russia is Chinese, a pattern that means that “today Russia critically depends on whether or not China will stop the supply of equipment to our country.”

            “China today,” the Cherepovets business leader continues, “is completely burning out the remains of Russian industry and doing so at an unprecedented pace.” Soon, “we won’t even be able to choose whom we want to depend on.” And that means that China is in a “dangerous” way “depriving us of technological sovereignty.”

            According to Boglayev, “the West has deprived us of financial sovereignty, and China is now depriving us of industrial sovereignty,” leaving Russia without the room for independent action that is the hallmark of being the great power that the Kremlin has repeatedly asserted to be Moscow’s goal.

            The Nezavisimaya Gazeta author says that “the Russian authorities hope to protect some segments of the Russian economy from this Chinese ‘burnout,’ focusing in particular on “trying to preserve defense technologies or capabilities for the production of domestic railway transport” on which Russia depends.

            But Sergeyev notes, the country’s industrial leaders “point out that it will be almost impossible to preserve islands of high-tech production in space or aviation if China destroys the last remnants of Russian machine tool or mechanical engineering.” Russia has made some progress in building its defenses but has also unwittingly helped the Chinese to breach them.

            Boglayev notes that Russia is on its way to becoming “the first and only country in the world that will provide government subsidies for those wo stick a ‘made in Russia’ tag on Chinese produced equipment,” an arrangement that means “the Chinese now are not even considering the deeper localization of their production in the Russian Federation.”

The Russian authorities also hope to protect some segments of the Russian economy from Chinese “burning out”. In the Russian Federation, officials are trying to preserve defense technologies or capabilities for the production of domestic railway transport.” In that event, “it will hardly be possible to build Russian planes, ships, cars or missiles.”