The impact of the ruble's collapse and how to deal with it?

This round of depreciation of the ruble has hurt some small and medium-sized enterprises in China, including some small sellers engaged in small border trade.

Due to Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis, the Russian government launched "counter-sanctions" targeting Polish apples, Dutch cheese, American chicken, Norwegian salmon and other foods. One of the most intuitive reactions is to push up the prices of Russian domestic products.

Currency depreciation has led to a decrease in the consumption power of Russian residents. Therefore, China’s exports of small household appliances and light textile products to Russia will inevitably be affected, as will tourism and border trade.

Not long ago, the central banks of China and Russia signed a bilateral local currency swap agreement of 150 billion yuan/815 billion rubles. With direct exchange between the RMB and the ruble, the depreciation of the ruble may cause huge losses to China's exports to Russia. However, local currency settlement currently only accounts for a small share of Sino-Russian trade. Even if the local currency swap quota is fully used, it will only account for less than 25% of Sino-Russian trade volume. Therefore, the depreciation of the ruble has little actual impact on bilateral trade.

The other side of the coin is that due to Russia’s implementation of counter-sanctions against the West, it may increase its imports of fruits, vegetables, meat and other daily necessities from China and other countries, which will partially offset the depreciation of the ruble on China’s exports to Russia influence. In addition, due to the Ukraine crisis and Western sanctions, the supply of some Russian oil exploration equipment and aviation equipment has been restricted. Although the Russian government is focusing on developing its own manufacturing industry, problems such as technology, production capacity and labor shortages cannot be solved immediately. China’s strong manufacturing Capabilities can fill this short-term gap.

Currently, China and Russia are experiencing difficulties in general small commodity trade, but oil cooperation and Russia’s Far East development cooperation to get out of trouble have huge potential, and Chinese companies should seize the opportunity.