COVID-19 and new realities of Russian agricultural and food exports to China

The article discusses barriers and weak points on the way of Russian agricultural and food export to China during the coronavirus period. For many years for objective reasons (unfavorable epizootic situation in the Russian Federation) domestic producers of meat and offal could not enter the Chinese market. The export of aquatic biological products, primarily pollock, to China prevailed in the Russian agroexport at the same time. The epidemic of coronavirus infection has become a serious and difficult test for our fishermen and farmers. Russian fishermen have not been able to deliver their cargo in the Chinese ports of Qingdao and Dalian in the usual bilge batches (in bags) almost for a year and a half. As the result the pollock putina-2020 was disrupted. The author identifies the reasons for these circumstances. Presumably, the goal of Chinese business, and possibly the state, is to transfer all transport supplies to and from China to containers and refrigerated containers under the guise of “anti-COVID measures”. The point is more than 96 % of the world's dry cargo containers and 100 % of refrigerated containers are manufactured in Chinese factories since 2021. Different requirements for packaging of agricultural goods at various checkpoints on the Russian-Chinese border have been a big problem for Russian agricultural exporters in the last two years. The effective Order of the General Customs Administration of the People's Republic of China No. 248 “Regulations of the People's Republic of China on the management of registration of foreign enterprises for the production of imported food products”, on the one hand, will introduce uniformity in this matter, on the other, will significantly increase the costs of Russian exporters. As a result,the bulk of the previously planned exports to China will be redirected to other foreign markets or processed in Russia.