- Russia’s yuan reserves are nearly depleted due to Chinese banks’ fear of US sanctions.
- Lenders have urged Russia’s central bank to address the yuan deficit, causing the ruble to drop.
- China’s hesitance stems from US threats of secondary sanctions over Russia’s Ukraine war financing.
Maybe they shouldn’t have invaded Ukraine.
the question is if they could still pull out of the war
Putin’s fragile ego won’t allow that.
Ukraine doesn’t have the resources to start some weird revenge conquest, given that their allies fear MAD.
Do you feel that Putler? That’s the walls closing in.
Sanctions work.
This is what frustrates me so much about people in the US arguing against supporting Ukraine. At the end of the day, while China might be willing to help Russia, the US is by far it’s largest customer. Add to that China’s own economy is contracting, and supporting Ukraine against Putin, along with the severe sanctions that have been in place, is the smartest most cost effective way of hopefully removing him from power. I have a co-worker who got out of Russia a little over a year ago, and he said it was pretty bad before he and his family left. Unfortunately, it’s a slow process because the goal is to get the Russian people to oust him. We all know that’s not going to happen at the ballot box, so all that’s left is the people overthrowing their leaders. Things have to get pretty dire before a population like Russia’s gets to that tipping point.
This is a marathon. The main thing is keeping Ukraine strong and able to defend itself. I’m really liking the offensives into Russian territory they’ve been carrying out. I just want them to remember a defensive position is easier to maintain/win than an offensive one. In other words, don’t try to go to far into Russia. Way way too many great generals have made that mistake!
US is by far it’s largest customer
That’s true and there’s also more to it.
The US is China’s largest single trading partner but China has many many trading partners.
May nations now trade or at least negotiate in blocks. Both ASEAN and the UE, as blocks, do more trade with China than the US does. When it comes to individual nations the US isn’t as far ahead as it might seem. Russia, Vietnam and Taiwan together trade more with China than the US does, despite having a combined GDP that’s a tiny fraction of the US.
The key issue is that China has been working really hard to make itself less dependent on the US. They still have a way to go but they’re much less vulnerable than they were a few years ago.
Fair points, but I would also add that while the US isn’t a block, they do hold sway with a number of other countries. NATO is also involved in this equation. China also has significant investments in the US. I don’t fault China for seeing economic opportunity in Russia, but they have to walk a pretty fine line if they’re going to make it work.
China knows that the US has a lot of economic leverage. They’ve been working very hard to change that and a lot of those efforts have flown under the radar.
BRI is pretty obvious and it’s seen as one of the major reason the ASEAN countries are pivoting towards China. But consider the whole South China Sea issue. Everyone frames it as a contest over sea resources and few people consider the strait of Malacca. It’s a potential choke point for all trade west of Southeast Asia. While China is working to be able to defend that they’re also working with Thailand to build a canal that would bypass the straight of Malacca all together. All of that is primarily to reduce US leverage and those initiatives tend to work more often than they fail.
working with Thailand to build a canal that would bypass the straight of Malacca all together
This is a crazy pipe dream by the Thai PM, China has nothing to do with it. It doesn’t make any sense to unload ships in Thailand, move them by train across the peninsula, and then reload them onto ships. They can go via other routes in Indonesia if they don’t want to go through the straight of Malacca for some reason. The Thai PM is just jealous that all the shipping trade (and money) goes to Singapore and Malaysia because it is easier for the boats to stop there.
They’d be better off if they weren’t actively committing genocide. Weird how we don’t hear about it though. Disgusting.
See: Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea…
Actually sanctions don’t work at all, what’s happening here is the result of a war of attrition.
Cuba is stubborn and resource efficient, Venezuela is decently resource rich and the sanctions are relatively new, Iran still has some trade partners and is decently rich in resources, North Korea is propped up by China and is kind of an anomaly. Sanctions are rather long term and take certain conditions to work properly, Russia fits those conditions despite them theoretically being resistant to sanctions.
Right, so… they don’t work, they just hurt people. Those are a lot of anomalies which prove the point made.
Nope, most sanctions have a defined purpose even still. The Russian sanctions target their oil export and certain high tech bits of equipment think night vision goggles and cpus. This alone has hindered them rather well in Ukraine to the point id call it an ongoing success. Iran is very similar they just aint as inept as Russia so its been lessened. Venezuela has been on the brink for years now so we’ll see how that works out. And the North Koreans wouldve collapsed five times over by now without China, the operational purpose to the sanctions on them is to basically keep them from getting air and becoming a proper threat. Cuba is just kinda chilling, island nations can just kinda do that sometimes.
Not fast enough. I agree they work, but often times it hurts all the people, and the ones that have “say” often are slow to help their fellow people.
I guess the financial market is being reduced to ruble
It would be interesting to see the ruble collapse entirely. Crypto is already very popular in Russia, so the state could lose a tremendous amount of power/funding when they need it most.
Hot take:
China has lost all faith in Russia. Is reorganizing to reflect that.
And maybe is even considering Taiwan’s advice, lol.
Hotter take:
China is on the brink of financial collapse and no longer can afford to support Russia’s bullshit.
What’s “Taiwan’s advice”? What did Taiwan tell China about Russia?
The president or prime minister said that if China is serious about reclaiming Taiwan, it should also reclaim land that is currently Russian, as that land was also lost during the same time period.
It would also be much easier to conquer than Taiwan.
Taiwan made a sarcastic comment.
Essentially calling out their policy of “Territorial Integrity”, they told them to take back land they gave to Russia
Ohhh that one. I see. Thanks.
Wow, that’s too bad. Anyway make sure you’ve got plenty of Rubles in your bathroom for when they make TP the national currency, bub.
The Ruble is worth more now than before the war startedYour graph is showing dollars vs rubles, dumbass. Compare rubles vs dollars over 5 years and it’s the direction we all know it to be. https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/RUBUSD/
I didn’t realize that was different
Both graphs are showing the same thing - Russian currency weakening. Your’s just shows how many rubles it takes to buy a dollar (not something you want going up if you’ve got rubles).
I hope Ukraine takes away their natural gas production next. Gonna be the USSU pretty soon, get fucked Putin.
Well… India is still a partner so Putin still has that…
India is taking advantage of the situation.
It’s understandable that a developing country wants cheap energy, also genuinely sad the world’s largest democracy is funding a dictator’s barbaric land grab.
