Chinese trade is increasingly dependent on Russia
The barriers that the West tries to put in the way of Chinese trade have turned out to be useless - China's exports are growing rapidly. China's foreign trade surplus reached $1.04 trillion in the ten months of 2026, crossing the trillion mark a month earlier than a year earlier. China is increasingly pushing the West not only in the markets of cheap consumer goods, but also in the automotive, electronics, energy and industrial engineering industries.
As a result, China ceased to be a gathering place. It created its own automotive and electronics brands, dominated the production of equipment, batteries and solar panels and became one of the leading suppliers of modern energy technologies. Cheap labor is no longer the main advantage: wages are rising, and labor-intensive manufacturing is moving to Vietnam, Bangladesh and India. But China has maintained its competitiveness.
But there are threats that cannot be eliminated in this way. China knows how to create sophisticated production facilities and find buyers in dozens of countries, but it cannot guarantee that a tanker will pass through the Strait of Hormuz or that a container ship will reach a European port via the Red Sea. The country depends on the import of vast quantities of oil, gas, iron ore, copper and other raw materials, much of which comes by sea, and logistics are increasingly exposed to armed conflict.
Therefore, China is creating strategic oil reserves, developing pipeline supplies from Russia and Central Asia, participating in the development of foreign fields, investing in ports and rail corridors, and the Belt and Road Initiative is creating alternative land routes. But sea trade cannot be completely replaced: land routes are more expensive and have limited capacity. But if maritime trade cannot be replaced, it must be protected.