Peter Lewis: Asian Correspondent on what China stands to gain from Trump-Putin meetings

US President Trump and Russian President Putin have been deadlocked in negotiations around the war in Ukraine, leaving space for China to benefit from this pause. 

Asian Correspondent Peter Lewis says that China stands to gain two things from this situation. 

Firstly, China can continue important oil and other products from Russia, as no final deal with the USA has been reached. 

Secondly, the delay in trade negotiations has given China more time to create a new world trading order, keeping itself at the centre. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hither do for see Pea Lewis our Asia business correspondence
with me. Now Hello Peter, Hello head. So how is
China a beneficiary of what's going on between Trump and Putin? Well,
first of all, the most obvious way is that at
the moment, Russia's avoided secondary sanctions on all of its
oil exports. You remember that before this summit with Putin,

(00:24):
Trump was vary extreme tariffs on Russia if it didn't
agree to a cease fire. When it didn't agree to
a cease fire, But yet once again, Trump backs down
and moved away from that position. So that sort of
frees up China to carry on importing oil from Russia
and any other products it's that it needs in fact.

(00:47):
And the second thing it does is it gives China
time because this is going to go on for a while.
There's going to be negotiations, and it's clear from the
way things are going at the moment, this is not
going to be resolved very quickly. And what China wants
is it has no intention of going back to where
things were before Donald Trump got elected in any trade

(01:10):
deal that it negotiates with the US. On the contrary,
what it wants to do is to create a new
world trading order with itself at the center of it.
And in particular, it wants to make itself completely self sufficient.
It doesn't want to have to rely on the US
for anything. It doesn't want to have to rely on
the US for its technology and its semiconductors. It doesn't

(01:33):
want to have to rely on the its commodities, any
of its farm products. It really wants to be totally
self sufficient. And this is probably the number one sort
of economic aim of President j Jing Ping at the
moment now has been working on that for a while.
China has been preparing for this eventuality of a second

(01:54):
Trump presidency and the possibility of a trade war for years,
and it is made steps to remove that dependency now
with exports far more to countries in Southeast Asia, Latin America,
and the Middle East compared with the growth that it's
seeing in its US markets. So these markets are becoming

(02:14):
much more important to China and will continue to be
important going forward. They're going to take up much more
of China's trade, and as a result, China is really
creating this trading system that just cuts out the US altogether,
and it will get on with it with these other countries.
But it needs time to do that, and this outcome

(02:36):
at the moment from the summit booting gives China more
time to move forward with that plan. And how things
going with India not well. This extraordinary bust up between
Trump and lou Rendra Modi, which is seems to continue
to be continuing. There's no sign at all that they're

(02:58):
going to back down. We had Scott Vessence and Peter
Navarro basically saying that India was benefiting and its big
families were benefiting from buying Russian oil and that it
was damaging cooperation between the two countries and furthering Russiamodi
has got no intention of backing down his reaching out

(03:22):
towards both in both China and Russia to try and
develop more friendly relationships. Undromodi will be in Beijing at
the end of next week. That's his first visit to
Beijing in about seven years. His invited Vladimir Putin also
to come and visit him in New Delhi. And so
what this is doing is it's sort of driving India

(03:44):
closer to China in particular. However, I think there's a
limit as to how far that's going to go because
I don't think that India and China are really going
to be close friends. They have decades of animosity between them.
They've been close to having almost outright war in the
Himalayas over their disputed borders several times. India doesn't trust

(04:09):
China and China doesn't trust India either. And also there's
the added problem that Pakistan is a close ally of India.
India's providing money and aid and economic developments of the
Delta Vode initiative to help Pakistan's economy. It provides it
with arms and weapons, and China has made it clear

(04:32):
that it wants to have relationships with both Pakistan and India.
But I don't think India is really going to be
too enamored with that. Yeah, I can see there's a
lot of problems there, a lot of wrinkles to dine
out had Peter, Thank you as always, we'll talk to
you next week. Look after yourself. Peter lewis Asia Business Correspondent.
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(04:53):
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