I suppose at some point people might be figuring out that Putin is not the same as Russia and that they are better off with a different set of institutions.

They may already be aware of that, it’s just hard to overthrow a dictator as any form of resistance is immediately cracked down. Most of us can (thankfully) not imagine what it means to live under such a regime.

Just a small detail: Nabuillina quit in March 2022, soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion began, though Putin ordered her to hold her position. Did she know back then what was coming? I don’t know, but I fully agree she is a highly competent economist.

I commented here some time ago on the same topic that most economists didn’t predict a sudden collapse in Russia (although some media have been trying to convey such a message).

One of my favourite elaborations is an interview with Russian economist Natalia Zubarevich in 2023 who said back then about Russia, ‘There Will Be no Collapses, but Rather a Viscous, Slow Sinking into Backwardness’. It’s an exceptional interview in my opinion with someone of deep knowledge of the Russian economy. Many of the things we have been observing in the last three years have been predicted by Ms. Zubarevich in the second year of the invasion.

In a recent interview from this week, How the War and Latest Western Sanctions Are Impacting Russia’s Oil Sector, Sergey Vakulenko, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, argues in a similar way when he describes the situation in Russia’s oil sector.

Because of the war, the oil and gas industry is, first of all, facing serious problems in terms of refining. Looking at refineries, no one-off Ukrainian drone attack has caused long-term damage. But repeat, larger-scale attacks could create a situation where, at some point, it will no longer be possible simply to patch up or repair distillation columns – they will have to be replaced entirely.

If a person is hit once, even quite hard, he or she most likely will not die. But if a person is beaten regularly, he or she, generally speaking, can die. It is not a knife stab to vital organs, but regular beatings from which people can die – not right away, but over time. Moreover, all this diverts money and resources … Theoretically, this could be solved with a sharp increase in investment [in the oil industry]. But then the Ministry of Finance steps in and says: no, we cannot afford to take less rent from the oil sector. The money the oil sector could invest in maintaining production levels is now needed for other purposes, and taxes will not be cut.

And in a chapter in the 2023 book on “Russia’s Imperial Endeavor and Its Geopolitical Consequences” (highly recommended read), Hungarian scholar Dóra Győrffy concludes (opens pdf):

The relative certainty of the long-term decline of Russia stands in contrast to the uncertainties surrounding the prospects of post-war Ukraine. While success is far from guaranteed, Ukraine has a window of opportunity to leave its post-Soviet patronal structures behind, and build a resilient democracy, rule of law, and a strong market economy with Western support. The return of refugees, the inflow of Western capital for reconstruction, access to technology, assistance in institution building, and a strong social commitment to the idea of freedom provide a strong foundation for a new Ukraine embedded in the transatlantic alliance. Achieving this vision is the shared hope and responsibility of Ukraine and the West in their fight against autocracies.

Even if western nations could extricate their manufacturing needs from China, they would still be dependent on raw materials trade.

Some time ago there was a similar discussion in another thread, I did a brief research back then and post this with little edits as it fits here, too.

Western nations have already begun to diversify away from China, in their supply chains as well as in in raw materials. I admit that no Western country has arrived where it may want to be in its ‘de-risking’, but we must also look at China’s dependencies.

To name an example, China depends on imports for its supply of zirconium, a little-known critical mineral. Australia is the world’s largest producer and supplies China with 41 per cent of its imports, as China has already admitted.

The West also accounts for a high share of China’s imports of other important goods, such as some foodstuffs, certain raw materials, and other products. If we look at China’s import/export ratios, we see it is 65:1 for ores, slag, and ash, and with an import share of almost 50 per cent the West holds a high leverage in this sector.

Chinese import/export ratios for mineral fuels is 8:1 (although the Western share is below 20 per cent here as the majority comes form emerging economies), but for grain it is 21:1, for meat it is 36:1. (I hope that the West will never use food as some sort of ‘trade weapon’ - as China has been doing - but I am not sure.) There are may similar examples in the industry.

China is almost unilaterally dependent on ‘aircraft and spacecraft machinery and parts thereof’, an important product group. Although the import/export ratio is quite low (2:1), the western share of Chinese imports is some 97 percent, according to the German Economic Institute (opens pdf – German source). This category displays China’s highest import dependency on the West, and there is practically no substitution by alternative trading partners, and in China there is only a small degree of substitutability possible through an expansion of domestic production.

[If interested, EU-China and other trade data with relevant links can be found here.

Also, Europe is an attractive market as China’s EU export are rising - making a decisive contribution to the Chinese GDP.

So I don’t say that the EU or the West doesn’t depend on China, but I say that China depends also on the West if we look at the data of highly complex global supply chains. It’s certainly not a straightforward one-way dependency as conventional reporting (influenced by China?) make it seem in my opinion.

EU producers of steel, aluminium, cement, etc. are already paying a fee for the emissions they produce. This is one reason why global trade is hopelessly distorted as only a few countries have a serious stance towards climate change. As this COP has shown, these are mainly countries form Europe, Latin America, and some Island countries. China as the world’s worst polluter is clearly not among these countries as we see once again.

@m33@lemmy.zip

Yes. As Natalia Zubarevich, professor of the Department of Economic And Social Geography of Russia of the Moscow State University, predicted in June 2023 about the Russian economy: ‘There Will Be no Collapses, but Rather a Viscous, Slow Sinking into Backwardness’

I liked her statements back then and have been remembering them whenever I read reports like this one on the Russian economy. The interview is more than 2 years old, and with hindsight we now must say that Professor Zubarevich seems to have foreseen everything. I never heard of her before but she must be a very good economist.