China is the largest buyer of Russian agricultural products. In 2023, the trade turnover of agricultural goods between China and Russia reached a record $11.4 billion, a 33% increase over the previous year, said Zhang Hanhui, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of China to Russia, at the China-Russia Forum on Agricultural Cooperation.
According to him, the rapid development of agricultural trade between the two countries has activated the constant expansion of mutual admission of various products to each other’s markets. More than 60 kinds of Russian food products are allowed to be imported into China, and more than 3,000 Russian companies can export products to China.
Chinese agrarian enterprises are actively investing in Russian agriculture, Zhang Hanhui noted. Companies from China participate in 255 such projects with investments of more than 11 billion dollars, this year investments will amount to another 170 million dollars. The countries cooperate in such spheres as production of soybeans, corn and other crops, cultivation of vegetables in greenhouses, cattle breeding and poultry farming. This allows not only to increase supply in the Russian domestic market, but also to a certain extent satisfies the Chinese market’s demand for high-quality Russian agricultural products, the ambassador said.
The main volume of Russian supplies to China is made up of oil and fats products and fish
Veronika Nikishina, Director General of the Russian Export Center (REC), said that over the past 10 years Russia has risen from 13th to 8th place in terms of supplies of agro-industrial products to China. The volume of supplies in money has grown more than five times. But the potential of our cooperation is still underutilized, she believes.
“The Chinese market is extremely important for the Russian agro-industrial complex. We are happy to note that local companies are already interested in purchasing not only basic food, but also products of higher processing,” Nikishina noted.
Now the main volume of Russian supplies is made up of oil and fat products, as well as fish and seafood, said a representative of the Federal Center “Agroexport” under the Ministry of Agriculture Alexander Yakuba. According to the results of last year, the key commodity positions were rapeseed oil, frozen fish, crustaceans and sunflower oil. In 2024, we increased supplies of crustaceans (+16%), pork (255 times) and wheat (4.5 times). To a large extent, these results were achieved thanks to the effective cooperation of government agencies on the admission of Russian products to the Chinese market, says Yakuba. For example, in 2023, permission was obtained to export Russian peas, and by the end of the year the export volume exceeded 1 million tons. And after the opening of the Chinese market for Russian pork at the end of last year, in the first nine months of 2024, supplies from Russia exceeded 29 thousand tons.
Work is now underway to lift restrictions on supplies of winter wheat, barley and grain processing products. “Russia has a great potential for growth in exports of these products, we are ready to provide Chinese partners with stable supplies of grain products that meet all quality and safety requirements,” Yakuba emphasized. Work is also underway to gain access to the Chinese market for Russian finished meat products.