This dissertation examines how economic cooperation between China and Russia has evolved in terms of direction and structure under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013, and seeks to derive policy implications bas...
This dissertation examines how economic cooperation between China and Russia has evolved in terms of direction and structure under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013, and seeks to derive policy implications based on its achievements and limitations. In particular, against the backdrop of major geopolitical changes—such as the intensification of Western sanctions on Russia following the 2014 Crimea crisis, Russia’s “pivot to the East” policy, and the outbreak of the Russia–Ukraine war in 2022—the study investigates the role played by the BRI in shaping bilateral economic relations, with a specific focus on trade structure and asymmetries between exports and imports.
To this end, the study first reviews the concept and evolution of the BRI, theories of regional economic integration and economic corridors, and theoretical approaches to energy and infrastructure cooperation. It then conducts a survey of existing literature on China–Russia economic cooperation and the BRI. The review shows that while many studies concentrate on political and diplomatic discourse or on specific flagship projects, there is still a relative paucity of quantitative research assessing the concrete impact of the BRI on the trade structure between the two countries.
Next, using UN Comtrade data, the study constructs a dataset of HS 2-digit bilateral trade flows between China and Russia by product category and year, and analyzes changes in trade volume, commodity structure, and regional distribution through descriptive statistics and graphical methods. The results indicate that China–Russia trade has expanded rapidly, centered on primary commodities such as energy, natural resources, timber, and metals, and that Russia’s export orientation has clearly shifted from Europe toward China in the wake of Western sanctions. At the same time, China’s exports to Russia have gradually diversified into machinery and equipment, intermediate goods, and consumer goods, underscoring the growing presence of Chinese products in the Russian economy.
The core empirical analysis of this dissertation employs panel regression models in which China’s imports from Russia (Russia’s exports to China) and China’s exports to Russia are used as dependent variables. Using a panel dataset combining HS 2-digit product categories with annual observations, the dependent variables are specified as the natural logarithms of trade values (ln_imp and ln_exp). The key explanatory variable is a dummy variable bri_dummy indicating the post-BRI period (equal to 1 for 2013 and after, and 0 otherwise). HS-code fixed effects are included to control for structural differences across product categories, and OLS estimations are conducted using HC3 heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors.
In the import model, the coefficient on bri_dummy is positive (0.2177) but not statistically significant (p = 0.112). This suggests a tendency for Russia’s exports to China (China’s imports from Russia) to increase after the launch of the BRI, but it is difficult to attribute this expansion solely to the BRI once the effects of international oil prices, the global business cycle, sanctions, and war are taken into account. By contrast, in the export model, the coefficient on bri_dummy is 0.3267, implying that China’s exports to Russia increased by approximately 39% on average in the post-BRI period, and this effect is statistically significant at the 10% level (p = 0.066). This finding indicates that the BRI is likely to have exerted a more direct and positive impact on China’s export expansion and market access in Russia, and that the research hypothesis is partially supported on the export side.
Furthermore, the analysis with product fixed effects confirms that primary commodities such as energy, natural resources, timber, and metals remain at the core of China–Russia trade, while in some product categories China’s exports are moving toward higher value-added and greater diversification. Based on these findings, the dissertation presents several policy implications. For China, key tasks include upgrading and diversifying its export structure, managing risks associated with dependence on energy and raw materials, and advancing toward a “green” and “digital” BRI. For Russia, priorities include improving its resource-dependent export structure, enhancing infrastructure and institutional conditions in the Far East and Siberia, and managing risks associated with overdependence on China while maintaining a balanced external strategy. As joint tasks, the study emphasizes the importance of strengthening institutionalized cooperation mechanisms, improving data and information-sharing systems, and developing new cooperation agendas linked to carbon neutrality and energy transition.
At the same time, this study has several limitations in terms of data and methodology. By relying exclusively on HS 2-digit merchandise trade data, it cannot capture services trade, investment and finance, or project-level cooperation. In addition, the use of a relatively simple panel OLS framework without fully incorporating year fixed effects, macroeconomic variables, and geopolitical shocks limits the extent to which causal inferences can be made. Nevertheless, the dissertation makes a meaningful contribution by providing empirical evidence that China–Russia trade has expanded on both the import and export sides under the BRI—especially with clearer effects on China’s exports to Russia—and by deriving policy tasks for both countries on this basis. In doing so, it offers a useful starting point for more refined future research and policy debate.