When the Russian and Chinese presidents meet in Uzbekistan this Thursday, the meeting will be of particular importance to Vladimir Putin.

Because the Kremlin's hopes are pinned on China: the gas that Gazprom no longer sells to Europe is supposed to flow there;

Computer chips, cars and machines are said to come from there, which the West no longer supplies because of Russia's war against Ukraine.

Yet nearly seven months after Russia's attack, Beijing is still hesitant to embrace the role of savior.

Henrik Ankenbrand

Economic correspondent for China based in Shanghai.

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Catherine Wagner

Business correspondent for Russia and the CIS based in Moscow.

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It is true that Russia's exports to China, especially oil and gas, rose by 50 percent between January and August compared to the previous year.

But in the opposite direction, Beijing's energy companies are careful not to circumvent the sanctions imposed by the West.

And so far only a little of the technology that is so urgently needed has arrived in Russia: imports from China grew by only 8.5 percent up to August.

Chinese car brands like Chery and Great Wall are at least partially filling the gap left by VW and other Western manufacturers in Russia, and the top-selling smartphones and televisions in Russia are now also from Chinese manufacturers.

But all this is far from being a complete replacement for Western suppliers.

So how resilient is the partnership between the two neighbors, beyond the “turn to the east” propagated by the Kremlin since 2014 and the staged friendship of the presidents?

Russia relies on cooperation

The rapprochement did not begin with Russia's annexation of Crimea.

The basis for pragmatic economic relations was already laid under Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, says the expert on Russian-Chinese relations at the Carnegie think tank, Alexandr Gabuyev.

At that time, a border conflict that had arisen from ideological differences between Mao Tse-tung and Nikita Khrushchev, which was expensive and burdensome for both sides, was settled.

According to Gabuyev, certain rules then applied after the agreement was reached: one did not interfere in internal affairs and traded for mutual benefit.

When China went from oil exporter to energy importer in the mid-1990s, Russia stood by as a supplier - building most of the pipelines to the West, where significantly more energy was needed.

According to Gabuyev, a “chauvinist, Eurocentric attitude” has long prevailed in Russia's economy;

one preferred to sell banks to Austrians, Germans or French than to Chinese.

That only changed with the annexation of Crimea and the western sanctions.

In fact, trade between countries grew by 50 percent from 2014 to 2021.

But last year, China still only accounted for a fifth of Russia's foreign trade.

As early as 2014, it became clear that the desire for cooperation emanated above all from Russia: At that time, it was expected that China would start financing the planned high-speed rail link between Moscow and Kazan, writes Kadri Liik of the European Council on Foreign Relations - but Beijing's development banks were touched project not on.

Conversely, the hopes of Russian entrepreneurs that the Chinese would certainly “buy everything” were not fulfilled: the breads from Russian bakeries were too sweet for the Chinese taste and Russian sweets were not packaged nicely enough.

That Chinese businessmen in negotiations lecture the other side for two hours about the "greatness of the Chinese nation" and don't move a millimeter from their maximum demand: