Follow the money and it leads to Beijing. In 2022, the year Russia invaded Ukraine, trade between China and Russia came to $190.271 billion, up 29.3% on the year before. The mechanics here are less about friendship than about what Western sanctions left Moscow no choice but to do.
The research institute MERICS, which runs a joint dashboard on the relationship with other European think tanks, records a jump over 2022 and 2023, then a levelling off: by 2024 trade stood at USD 245 billion, over twice its 2020 size. In 2025 it slipped 6.9 percent. In 2026 it has bounced back hard. January to September was 31 percent above the same months of 2025, and September produced the highest monthly figure yet, USD 29 billion.
What moves in each direction
The catch is the shape of the trade. Roughly 70 percent of its value since February 2022 has been mineral fuels, mainly crude oil. Base metals add eight percent. Going the other way, machinery makes up about 23 percent, cars 17 percent, electrical equipment 15 percent, and textiles and footwear around 10 percent. Russia sells what comes out of the ground; China sells what comes out of factories.
DW put dollar figures on 2024. Russia sent roughly $129 billion of goods to China, overwhelmingly crude, coal and gas at steep discounts. China sent nearly $116 billion back, filling shelves and factories vacated by Western suppliers with machinery, electronics and vehicles. A research centre focused on energy and clean air has put what China has paid for Russian oil, coal and gas since the fighting started at over €319 billion ($372 billion).
Oil is where the redirection shows most clearly. Shipments of Russian crude to China topped 108 million tonnes in 2024, roughly 30 percent more than in 2022. Early in 2023, Pamir Consulting noted, Russia had already overtaken Saudi Arabia as China’s biggest oil supplier. Beijing drove a hard bargain: the discount on Russian crude peaked at about 18 percent in 2022.
Technology and currency
On closer reading, the flow of goods has a second purpose. Bloomberg reported that in 2025 about 90% of the sanctioned technology Russia imported came from China, against 80% the year before. Getting machine tools for missiles and drones is far harder than it was, and Russia routes purchases through third countries, paying close to 90% more than before the war.
Payment has been rewired too. After Russian banks were cut from SWIFT and about $300 billion of central bank reserves were frozen abroad, the two governments moved off the dollar. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that by late 2025 more than 99% of their bilateral trade was being settled in rubles and yuan. MERICS estimates that yuan settlements, under 2% of Russia’s total trade before the war, rose to nearly 40% in January 2024.
Nothing about this is free for Moscow. Russia now sees the odd yuan shortage and pays more to borrow, and it has to live with Beijing holding the upper hand in bilateral talks.
Sources
- China-Russia Dashboard: Facts and figures on a special relationship (MERICS)
- How China became Russia's economic lifeline (DW)
- Beijing's calculus to foster Moscow's dependence on China (Pamir Consulting)
