Didn’t expect to engage in an argument on this matter, so I will need some time to dig up something more serious than stuff like this:

Yeah that’s just not as exciting as you seem to think it is. Some companies in China do trade with the west and don’t want to lose that. That doesn’t change the fact that China actively supported Russian war effort. Don’t take my word for it though. Here’s an interview with a Russian drone developer who says that China has been quietly allowing mass shipments of drones and supporting tech into Russia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmfNUM2CbbM

Notably, I didn’t say anything like this about your inability to substantiate your blindly optimistic claims, but if you want to escalate, sure, I can bite back. Are you sure you want to keep escalating?

I’m not sure what you want me to substantiate here, the numbers speak for themselves https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/01/13/china-russia-trade-hit-record-high-in-2024-a87590

You can bite back, but you can’t seem to produce a coherent argument.

Russia has no serious consumer electronics and other relevant industries to speak of (and has no way of developing them without either losing access to relevant goods from the PRC that will be of higher quality, or having to compete with those higher-quality goods from the PRC while at a massive disadvantage) which means that it is highly dependent on the PRC, and so on, and so forth.

In other words, China is filling the gaps left by the west and ensuring that Russian economy keeps functioning without taking any major hit as a result of sanctions.

Notably, though, the PRC has been trading more with NATO than with Russia, NATO (including Ukraine, to my knowledge) has also not abandoned trade with Russia completely, and the PRC has not ignored the sanctions.

Again, not sure why you think this is some sort of a gotcha.

You did say that you are confident that the PRC did not just ‘stand by’ during this war, but aided Russia:

And I’ve provided concrete examples of that happening which resulted in trade jumping astronomically between Russia and China throughout the course of the war.

I’m honestly not sure what you’d be expecting China to do that would qualify as not standing by in your mind.

The whole point was to hurt Russia’s economy.

That very obviously did not happen, and China was the main reason for that.

In terms of hurting Russia’s economy, the sanctions seem to have been (at least partially) successful, as Russia has been suffering from high inflation.

Ah yes, just look at all the suffering from high inflation. The World Bank just reclassified Russia as a high income country https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/world-bank-country-classifications-by-income-level-for-2024-2025

Meanwhile, the IMF forecasts that Russian economy is set to grow faster than all the western economies https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/17/russia-forecast-to-grow-faster-than-advanced-economies-in-2024-imf.html

The reality is that Russia provides a shield for China in the west. Despite what you might think, Chinese are not imbeciles, and they realize that they need a stable and functioning Russia to prevent being surrounded from the west and cut off from critical resources. Hence why China is actively supporting Russia and ensuring their economy stays stable.

They didn’t, and I’m not sure why you keep claiming this. In particular, PRC’s banks are often mentioned as refusing to work with Russia because of the sanctions.

Give substantial examples of how China followed western sanctions. The fact that you just keep doubling down on this is frankly incredible. Talk to anybody in Russia and you’ll see whether they think China helped or not. Why do you think this might be happening? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/30/world/europe/drifting-from-the-wests-orbit-russians-find-a-new-role-model-in-china.html

What I am trying to understand is what you meant when you said that the PRC didn’t just sit this one out.

I’ve explained to you precisely what I meant already multiple times. The fact that you’re trying to create some sort of equivalence between trade with China which went up by hundreds of billions and remaining trade with NATO is truly incredible.

If your claim to the PRC supposedly taking an active part in this war

It’s not, and Russia never asked PRC to do this. I’m not sure why you’d even suggest that they should be taking an active part in this war.

Considering that the PRC trades more with NATO than with Russia, by your logic we could conclude that the PRC has been helping NATO this whole time - including in the context of this war.

I’ve already addressed this earlier. PRC provides Russia with technology that it would not be accessible to Russia otherwise. For example, practically all cars are imported from China at this point, and that’s just one example. The whole point of NATO sanctions was to cut Russia off from tech it needs. China prevented this from happening.

Yeah they very much ignored the sanctions, particularly on oil and gas, as well as on exporting high tech to Russia. If you genuinely can’t see the difference between NATO trade with Russia and China there’s really no point continuing this discussion.

Another obvious option is a BRICS currency along the lines of Bancor that Keynes suggested which could be backed by a basket of commodities. This would be a far more appealing option because it would ensure that a single country wouldn’t dominate global financial system the way US does today. However, in the short term bilateral swaps work just fine as can be seen at scale in Russia which is cut out of western trade pretty much entirely at this point.

It’s also not clear to me what leverage the US has into threatening countries into using the dollar. The main leverage the US has is its shrinking consumer market. As we already saw with the tariff war, the US can’t throw its weight around like it used to.

And noted regarding the article, but that doesn’t affect my original point that there doesn’t need to be a direct replacement for the dollar for the dollar to fall out of use.

I really have no idea where the notion that a reserve currency is necessary and that dollar will remain central to the global economy until an alternative emerges comes from. There doesn’t need to be a new reserve currency for the dollar hegemony to end. What’s going to continue happening is that countries will increase bilateral trade using currency swaps, and commodities will act as value stores instead of the dollar. It’s also worth noting that China’s CIPS has already surpassed SWIFT in single-day transaction volume.

Exactly, in a situation where there is a lot of economic uncertainty it’s better to own tangible commodities than IOU notes.

Yup, very much agree.

The special measure they took was to ignore western edict on cutting trade with Russia. That was literally the deciding factor in this war.

I expect that the most likely scenario is a military collapse on the front lines. After that the current regime will likely flee to the west and declare itself a government in exile. Russia will hold referendums to see which oblasts want to join Russia and leave the rest as Europe’s problem.

They helped stabilize Russian economy, replaced sanctioned goods, and gave access to a lot of tech such as drones and chips that are necessary for modern military production.

I think it’s more about trade than a store of value. Crypto can fill that niche doing of trade settlements outside the dollar. People aren’t going to be holding crypto, but simply convert it to their own domestic currency after the transaction. Meanwhile, central banks are now turning to gold as a store of value as confidence in dollar drops.

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-opinion/article/3315943/central-banks-rush-gold-fears-us-dollar-crisis-mount

Seems like that’s the plan. Russia just stated that they expect military budget to go down next year which is a strong indication they’re expecting to wrap things up by then.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-27/putin-says-russia-to-seek-defense-cuts-though-it-depends-on-war

It’s pretty clear that there was no saving Syria, but what’s happening there now isn’t exactly a big win for the west either. The whole country is a powder keg, and in a state of civil war. The west is now stuck pouring resources into propping up yet another proxy. Also, not sure what you mean regarding Hezbollah. Last I checked they were still around and doing fine.

Russia already sells S400 systems to India and Turkey, so if they were worried about that they wouldn’t be selling them externally at all. It’s far easier for spies to gather data on these system in countries that are friendly with the west. Also worth noting that Russia already has next gen systems like S500, so what they learn using S400s can be applied to their design. The US gets to see older Russian or Chinese tech at the expense of exposing their best tech. That’s a good trade. Recall that the primary weakness the US has is the fact that it’s deindustrialized. Russia and China are able to produce new systems easily, the US is not.

Also, not sure why you say that Russia doesn’t have a ton of production capacity when Russia is outproducing all of NATO.

China already got to test their systems with the Pakistan vs India situation I believe. Russia has already tested them against Ukraine.

The key would be testing against most advanced US systems like F35 and B2. These are the real danger because if they can slip in undetected they can deliver a nuke. Learning how they work and that you can track them reliably is essential. The trade off is that the US learns more about systems like S400 is entirely worth it because it’s likely not possible to mitigate the fact that they can detect these jets. You’d basically have to go back to the drawing board and design a whole new jet at that point. And given that the US can’t even get rare earth right now, that’s gonna be a big challenge.

I agree that both Russia and China want to avoid a direct conflict with the US as long as possible. It makes sense to do so because time is on their side. However, a big aspect of using that time wisely is to learn as much as possible about the US. Russia was able to deal with DPRK as a direct result of US cutting Russia out of western financial system. The threat of secondary sanctions is what was holding Russia back before.

For example despite the staggering sanctions on Russia they haven’t moved to destroy dollar hegemony because they don’t want to anger the US and Trump and because they believe if they don’t they’ll get their stolen $300 billion dollars back held by the west.

I disagree there, dedollarization is happening at a staggering rate right now and Russia is at the centre of that. Just because they’re not making bombastic statements doesn’t mean they’re not making every effort to contain the US. Boiling the frog is the correct approach because it minimizes the risk of all out nuclear holocaust, while gradually constricting western power.

My prediction is that the collapse of the west will be internal and it will be driven by economic woes. Both the US and EU economies are teetering on the brink already, and this is translating into internal polarization as the standard of living continues to collapse. The ideal scenario for Russia and China is precisely what’s happening now with US being drawn into protracted conflicts that stretch the US past its limits.

I imagine both Russia and China are quite eager for an opportunity to test their weapons and defense systems against the US in Iran.

Russia and China are unlikely to provide direct military support, but they obviously aren’t going to stand by and provide both political and material support. China wasn’t engaged in Ukraine directly either, but certainly wouldn’t say they just stood by this whole time either.

And who’d be destroying the US economy then I ask you?

as intended

That’s my biggest worry as well, we already see just how unhinged the US is. It’s very possible that these psychos will start a nuclear holocaust.

Yeah, the math does not work here at all. The US very clearly cannot sustain any sort of war of attrition with an industrially advanced adversary at this point.