Throughput capacity – Newspaper Kommersant No. 220 (7182) dated 03.12.2021

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China’s complete closure of railway border crossings with Russia for all non-containerized cargo (see Kommersant of December 1) is just the latest in a series of measures to tighten the sanitary regime at the borders by the country’s authorities. The topic was raised at a virtual meeting between Prime Ministers Mikhail Mishustin and Li Keqiang on November 30, but there was no improvement. Some officials are discussing conspiracy theories: Beijing has put cordons in the way of Russian timber, coal, fertilizers and food in order to get some “commercial concessions” from Moscow. But even if we discard speculation, the situation looks dull: the PRC authorities are unlikely to soon deviate from their chosen strategy of combating COVID, which means that the problems at the border will be serious and for a long time.

Last spring, when the pandemic was just engulfing the world, China was the first to impose large-scale quarantines and close borders. The fight against the virus has been declared a “people’s war”. With a tight seal on the outer loop, China has perfected contact tracing and pinpoint blocking of outbreaks. As a result, the engine of the domestic economy, albeit intermittently, began to work, ensuring GDP growth by 2% for the year in which the whole world was faced with a recession.

The official line of “human lives above all else” has not changed. But, despite the high proportion of vaccinated people in the PRC, this model can only work in closed borders. As shown by 2021, new strains still give local outbreaks when crossing borders, especially in cities with large ports, international airports or border crossings. The Chinese authorities’ response is to tighten the screws. In fact, this is what happened on the Russian-Chinese border after a new outbreak in Heilongjiang province. Tightenings regularly occur at other land borders and ports.

This model also has a political side effect that is very beneficial for the authorities. The number of foreigners staying in the PRC has sharply decreased and continues to decrease. On the eve of the party congress scheduled for the fall of 2022, where Xi Jinping is to go for a third term, this is convenient: the less around prying overseas eyes and ears, the calmer.

All this means that the potential damage of opening the borders for China is too great, and the cost of isolation is acceptable. This state of affairs will continue for at least a significant portion of 2022, if not longer. This means that business and the public will have to face inevitable consequences. Exporters to China can at least redirect part of their products to neighboring countries, as Russian fishermen are already doing. Much more unpleasant is the rise in price of everything that is produced in China, which is observed by Russian importers who import finished products and components from there. The rise in prices, further spurred by the autumn energy crisis, is up to 30%, and the costs will inevitably fall on consumers.

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