Turn to the East in faces – Newspaper Kommersant No. 67 (7512) dated 04/18/2023

On April 17, at the TransRussia 2023 forum, I felt deja vu: as if I had not left the international exhibition in Guangzhou, where I worked as a translator in my distant youth.

There are almost more Chinese faces than Russians, a cheerful Chinese dialect sounds, a lost hieroglyphic business card with the lonely Russian name “Yura” is lying on the pavement next to the pavilion. The Chinese often take on additional Russian names to facilitate communication and expect Chinese names from foreign contractors; I, for example, was Lin Tianshi. There are also excellent Russian-speaking guests from China.

Inside the pavilion is replete with hieroglyphic signboards, Chinese container lines, logisticians, special economic zones and so on vying with each other offer their services. Yes, and Russia pleased partners with a logistics complex named after Deng Xiaoping and other oriental delights.

Never before has the notorious turn to the East looked so unusually real. The composition of the guests also emphasized the theme of the sessions. Which fleet to bring cargo from Chinese ports to St. Petersburg. How to provide platforms for container imports coming from China. How to take out Chinese goods imported to the Russian Federation from border crossings…

In general, the growth of trade with China is not a surprise to anyone. Carriage of goods by rail in communication with China in 2022 increased by 28%, to 123 million tons. In the first months of the year, the passage of goods through the Zabaikalsk-Manchuria railway crossing increased by almost 60%, the volume of traffic through the new Nizhneleninskoye-Tongjiang bridge exceeded half a million tons, and the demand for trucking from China almost doubled in a quarter.

But not only China became the hero of the exhibition. Guests from Iran, with which trade increased by 20% last year, are also quite numerous and are represented not only among the speakers discussing the international North-South corridor, but also among the exhibitors who came to look for partners. There are also Turkish firms. It was announced at the forum that the cargo turnover by rail with Turkey increased by 42% over the year, and Kommersant wrote about a multiple increase in road transport between the countries.

Many small companies from Russia also appeared among the participants of the exhibition, offering their intermediary services in logistics, a noticeable contrast with previous years, when big business was mainly exhibited, and there were noticeably fewer visitors (however, the pandemic is also to blame for this contrast).

All this produces a really optimistic, if somewhat bewildering, impression. It is not clear how the relations of the Russian Federation with the countries with which the country is largely doomed to friendship will develop, but at least it is clear that it is not only Russia that is interested, at least in the field of transport.