Russian government: vehicle manufacturing in Russia has dropped 72.1% compared to the same period last year.
The "Avtotor" factory in Kaliningrad (that produced Kia and Hyundai cars) stopped production and sent its workers to what they euphemistically call a "vacation". No parts to build the cars from.
Many Chinese companies will no longer take payments from Russia. Russian users of AliExpress are suddenly unable to pay for their orders via Russian credit/debit cards.
Xi could fix that if he wanted to. The real story is whether he wants to. Not only does he want to distance himself from some risks that go with helping Russia but he also has incentives to get more of Russia's trade over on to the yuan now that Russia is a vassal state. Yeh, way to go Vlad.
Actually most of the business for these Chinese companies come from Western nations, not Russia. If they Russian money they they will be added to the list of companies that Western nations cannot do business with. Ali, Huawei and other Chinese companies which export products earn a large majority of their cash from the Western nations - without this business they are broke.
Oh.. I get that. It is about China for the Chinese, not Russia. But China recentrly vowed to help Russia and that "their relationship was unlimited." To which I have consistently said, yeh right, you iz a vassal state now. In addition, I repeat as always, that where Xi and Putin are apart is that Xi values his economy first and foremost, unlike Putin and his ideology. And Xi has the big commie meeting coming up in late fall, and he has the big covid problem right now and does not need any sanctions related to Putin, not does he need any nuclear wars to dampen the world economy either. As I have said, Ukraine may be Putin's hill to die on but it is not Xi's. He thinks Belt and Road and does not give a fuck about Ukraine and Russia both being under the Prince of Kyiv in 1000 A.D. If anything, Xi is off trying to make the yuan the world's reserve currency and used for the oil trade. Not trying to prop up regional local yokal currencies like the ruble.
The Chinese can’t lose when virtually no other country wants to deal with Russia. The Russians are in such a shitty situation with the Chinese. The Chinese can abuse the hell out of them and the Russians still have to come back begging.
One of the twitter replies to that is amusing. Translated fron Russian. "Lavrov said: "The operation in Ukraine is designed to end the US course of dominance in the world." I politely asked: "And for this you decided to fuck your country against the wall?" Purely interested. And they, instead of answering, drew up the protocol of the Code of Administrative Offenses 20.1.3 (from 30 to 100 tr) DB"
In case you were wondering how long it would take for the Russian airline industry to start falling apart - it already has. Boeings and Airbuses cannot be serviced, so airlines are looking to unwrap the old Yak-40 and Yak-42 airplanes, try to cobble a few together so they can fly and utilize them. Good luck - especially considering that the engines for those airplanes were made in Ukraine and the pilots that know how to fly them are in their 70s now. This is the plane they are planning to replace Boeings and Airbuses with (and there are really about 30 left, and will probably be reduced by half in order to cobble serviceable airplanes from old ones)