China’s Investment Strategy: Prospects for Cooperation with Russia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17059/ekon.reg.2026-3-8Keywords:
China's investment strategy, Russian-Chinese cooperation, Belt and Road Initiative, anti-Russian sanctions, technology cooperation, foreign direct investmentAbstract
Analysis of Russian-Chinese investment cooperation is constrained by incomplete statistical data, differences in investment accounting methodologies, and the closure of Russian foreign economic statistics
in 2022. To address these limitations, this article consolidates and compares data from publicly available sources for 2022–2025, including UNCTAD statistics on FDI flows, Eurasian Development Bank monitoring data, data from the National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China, Chinese customs statistics on trade flows, and information on ongoing investment projects from industry reports. The findings demonstrate that China’s capital export strategy, which has transformed the country into a major global investor, is driven in part by contemporary geopolitical challenges and contributes to addressing structural challenges within the Chinese economy. At the same time, the scale of investment cooperation between Russia and China remains below the level suggested by the strength of their political and trade relations. By the beginning of 2025, China’s global outward FDI stock had reached $3.14 trillion. However, since 2016, Chinese investment stock
in Russia has accounted for less than 1 % of China’s total global investment stock, with the highest share of 0.7 % recorded in 2022. Most Chinese investments in Russia are concentrated in resource extraction and processing, infrastructure, and the establishment of joint ventures, particularly in the automotive sector. Joint projects aimed at producing high-tech products for the nuclear energy sector are also becoming increasingly promising. Recommendations for expanding bilateral investment cooperation include strengthening intergovernmental dialogue to mitigate the risks of secondary sanctions, establishing joint investment funds, developing priority development areas in border regions, and simplifying visa and administrative procedures for businesses.
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