Prospects of the Chinese market for Russian agri-food exports

Abstract

One of the major targets of modern agri-food policy in Russia is a significant increase of agri-food exports — almost twice as much by 2024. In this projection, China is viewed as the most promising market. However, Russia’s entrance to the Chinese market faces a number of constraints. In addition to the standard difficulties associated with Russia’s agricultural and food exports (export infrastructure constraints, expensive logistics, and import bans on certain Russian products), there are fundamental constraints on supply to China in the long-term. This paper formulates a long-term view of the prospects of, and risks associated with, introducing Russian agricultural products into the Chinese market. Methodically, the paper is based on an evaluation of competitive performance by the conventional method of measuring a country’s comparative trade advantages with the Balassa index. Also the authors use trade statistics of Comtrade, Russian and Chinese national statistic agencies, estimates of international analytical centers such as World Bank, USDA, OECD, McKinsey.