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since the russia-ukraine conflict suddenly broke out at the end of february 2022, a supermarket with an area of ​​more than 17 million square kilometers and a total population of nearly 150 million has suddenly opened its doors to chinese companies.

since russia was sanctioned by europe and the united states immediately after the outbreak of the war, and was blacklisted by the society for worldwide interbank financial telecommunications (swift), it was unable to use the us dollar for interbank settlement transactions through traditional channels. therefore, china became russia's only industrial power-level trading partner.

but no matter from which angle you look at it, this industrial power is a little too strong - so much so that with the withdrawal of european and american companies and even goods, the various goods and materials on the russian market have not only not decreased, but the price-performance ratio has even improved. therefore, with the right time, place and even people, in just over two years, domestic companies have almost followed the pace of european and american companies' withdrawal and occupied a dominant position in all fields, all aspects and all industries in the russian market.

among them, chinese automakers are undoubtedly the group that benefited the most.

chery's arrizo 8 has become a substitute for the bmw 3 series and even the 5 series; the tank has replaced the land rover; the xingtu and jetour have replaced toyota's city suvs.

it is worth mentioning that the fuel version of the tank 500 was even purchased in large quantities by the russian ministry of internal affairs for use as official vehicles. for chinese automakers, this is a market of hundreds of thousands of vehicles that has fallen from the sky, and this market has grown into a market of millions of vehicles as the russian economy recovers.

the full entry of domestic cars into the russian market has once again produced a huge demonstration effect, following the entry of domestic consumer electronics products into russia ten years ago. it has not only fundamentally changed the russian people's view of chinese products (see》), and also cleared the way for other chinese products to further expand their market share in russia.

the victory was due to the arrogance and stupidity of the opponent, so it was so easy. but the results that were obtained too easily will inevitably make people feel proud. so much so that in the past year or so, various jokes and jokes such as "if 'todai' does not follow the sanctions against russia, it is equivalent to no sanctions" and "the revival of northeast china depends on 'ozawa'" have flooded chinese internet communities and become a new joke for domestic netizens to ridicule the united states.

but the chinese people have lived in a peaceful and prosperous environment for too long and lack a deep enough understanding of the malicious existence in this world. from the beginning of 2024, trouble came.

in the past six months or so, a certain car company has encountered some trouble in exporting to russia.

here, i cannot provide specific information about the company, but i need to emphasize that the above “encountered some troubles” is just a written version of spoken language, and in fact, this kind of trouble is not small. because it is related to the collection of funds for the normal operation of the company, and to some extent, it is a matter of life and death.

but don't get me wrong, this time domestic companies can't receive payments from russia, not because their russian partners are refusing to pay or even imitating india's "pig-killing scheme". this payment dilemma is completely man-made, stemming from the obstruction of a well-known third party, which has led to the four major chinese banks responsible for providing foreign exchange settlement services for domestic companies to conduct trade with russia to stop financial and cross-border payment transactions with russia since january 2024.

to understand the reason for “inability to receive payment”, we need to start with the sanctions imposed by the united states on russia.

since this round of russia-ukraine conflict, in addition to the swift "blacklist" operation, the us department of commerce has also significantly increased the various "sanctions" imposed on russia since 2014, directly regulating entities under its control from conducting trade and financial transactions with relevant russian companies or entities.

the "sanctions" are based on a list called the "specially designated nationals and blocked persons list" (sdn), which is composed by the office of foreign assets control (ofac) under the u.s. treasury department.

once included, no "u.s. entity" - including u.s. citizens, permanent resident aliens, entities organized under u.s. law or any jurisdiction within the united states (including foreign branches), or any person in the united states - may engage in any transactions or provide any services with it unless specifically authorized by ofac.

in addition, there is a “50% rule” for sdn, which means that entities in which an included entity directly or indirectly holds more than 50% of the interests are deemed to be included, regardless of whether such entities are individually named in the sdn list.

therefore, any "u.s. entity" is not allowed to trade or provide services with enterprises on the sdn and all entities that meet the "50% rule".

005: at the beginning of 2020, the letter "z" became taboo in europe and the united states.

the above are so-called "primary sanctions". the "secondary sanctions" that caused the incident this time were authorized by ofac to expand the concept of sdn on the basis of the above measures, and to increase the sanctions on enterprises, entities and individuals that have been included in sdn. any entity that dares to trade or provide services to these "secondary sanctions" will be treated as a "us entity". even if it is not under the jurisdiction of the united states, the united states cannot actually exercise jurisdiction over it in principle.

if the above explanation is still too complicated, here is an analogy using the social relationships between primary school students:

you are a bully in a certain class in a certain school, and you decide to instigate everyone to isolate xiao p, a classmate you dislike. however, xiao p has friends xiao d and xiao e, who still often come to play with xiao p. when you find that you cannot completely isolate xiao p, you go a step further and ask others to isolate xiao d and xiao e at the same time, unless they stop paying attention to xiao p.

to put it bluntly, this is actually forcing everyone to take sides, meaning "if you continue to do business and provide services to my enemy, then you are my enemy." however, due to the principle of faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance in chinese translation, the so-called "sanctions" from the united states, which look very high-sounding, are essentially just the kind of simplicity and plainness of a child's bullying.

as early as the beginning of last year, when all russian financial institutions were "blacklisted" by swift, the chinese people were fortunate that the country had already established the cross-border interbank payment system (cips) in advance, and once believed that with cips, they could completely ignore the us "sanctions".

but in reality, this idea is a bit out of touch. after all, the real world is not a game of chess, where if you are bigger than you, you can be eaten, or if you are not as big as you, you will definitely be eaten.

as of april 2024, the russian banking system has not directly joined cips. the only cips direct participating banks active in russia are the industrial and commercial bank of china russian rmb clearing bank, bank of china in russia, china construction bank (russia) co., ltd. and agricultural bank of china (moscow) co., ltd., which are branches of these chinese banks in russia. therefore, even if the loans of domestic enterprises are issued by russian banks, they are actually completed through these cips direct participating banks.

due to concerns about the risk of secondary sanctions, the four chinese banks’ russian offices mentioned above have strengthened their review of remittances to russia and even stopped accepting payments from russian financial institutions. the most direct consequence is that many domestic foreign trade companies are unable to receive payments normally, especially when using currencies such as the us dollar. in addition, many third-party cross-border payment platforms also tightened their supervision of russian business in the first half of the year. all these situations combined constitute the difficulties that chinese companies, including domestic automakers, are currently facing when developing business in russia.

under the premise of economic globalization and the us dollar being the world's main reserve currency and bulk settlement currency, being "sanctioned" by the united states to a large extent means being sanctioned by the world, and the invisible title of "world policeman" on the united states is by no means an empty name.

of course, even the united states cannot afford the cost of directly separating the dollar from the world's second largest economy, which accounts for one-third of the world's industrial capacity, because that would also mean the collapse of the dollar's hegemony. however, this large-scale "unbreakable" does not prevent the use of "fighting" as a means in the details.

we know that the united states cannot afford the cost of cutting off the entire chinese economy, so in recent years, it first created cips to support the bottom in times of crisis, and then used the rmb to dig into the us dollar in bulk, and even "intercepted" a considerable part of the value when engaging in currency swaps with a number of countries by taking advantage of the us dollar interest rate hike. but on the other hand, the united states also knows that china will not choose to turn its face with it immediately just because one or two companies are extremely suppressed. it first forced zte to kneel down and beg for mercy, and then used extreme suppression measures against huawei, which was also based on the above judgment.

so the reality is that the cost of finding a reason or an excuse to implement sdn on a disobedient chinese bank, or even to "blacklist" it through swift, is close to zero for the us, and the cost passed on to the us side is also very slight.

therefore, under the current circumstances, where thousands of russian companies, banks, and transportation and logistics enterprises are generally sanctioned, it is not surprising that domestic enterprises are unable to conduct independent audits to completely avoid the sanctions list, and naturally, the payment for goods cannot be received.

judging from the communique of the g7 summit held not long ago, the united states has already noticed the russian foreign trade bank (tvb), an institution that specializes in sino-russian trade settlement business. small banks in the sino-russian border area that specialize in border trade settlement business between the two countries have not escaped its attention.

therefore, in the new round of "sanctions" on june 12, ofac further expanded the scope of "secondary sanctions" against russia, involving more than 300 companies, banks and dozens of individuals in russia, china and other countries. among them is tvb's head office and its branch in shanghai, which are "fortunately" on the sanctions list. the us claims that it will impose sanctions on russia's financial infrastructure, aiming to limit the amount of funds in and out of russia. at the same time, it also attempts to restrict russia's use of various technical products and services, including chips and software.

but it is also clear that under the premise of "fighting without breaking", the way to deal with such problems is - as long as the bank has no international business and does not need us dollar positions, it will not be afraid of being listed on sdn or even being "blacklisted" by swift.

of course, there are some such institutions, but because they are relatively small, there are generally various problems. first of all, in terms of service, slow account opening is a common phenomenon, and employees are poorly capable and unskilled in various business operations. in addition, since it is the most scarce business at present, the handling fees are generally high, and there may even be no cap, and the ruble price given is not so friendly.

of course, the key is that there is an urgent need for the chinese and russian governments to take the lead in establishing a platform or solution that can fundamentally solve the problem, from the source of information to the entire system, cutting off all channels that may be interfered with and nodes that may be curbed.

i wonder if you have noticed that this article does not mention any company name except for the publicly available information, nor does it mention any specific amount of money, let alone any description of measures. the four chinese bank branches in russia can be found by searching the cips website. as for tvb, which was added to the list, it was actually information released by ofac.

since i started paying attention to this issue half a year ago, i have actually collected a lot of data and information from many sources. however, all the content that appeared in the previous version of this article has now been deleted - not a single bit of useful information can be revealed to the opponent. in the current unstable environment, everyone who may be involved in sensitive information should keep this in mind. this also makes this article eventually become a "situation statement".

in fact, large and super-large enterprises like car companies have their own set of measures to adapt and respond. at this stage, the most disgusted are still a large number of domestic small and medium-sized enterprises. however, trade with russia cannot be cut off, because this is also one of the few overseas markets where our companies can basically operate unimpeded in the current environment.

for chinese companies and even the entire country, we have long passed the era when we could just focus on development and make money without worrying about anything. in 2024 and for a long time thereafter, there will not be any chinese companies that can make money without worrying about anything, and every step forward in the future will require tremendous effort and even cost.

i just hope that the umbrella held up by the authorities will be opened soon - let me end this article with this extremely simple sentence.