- An appliance maker in southern China is finding it hard to ship its products to Russia, not because of any problems with the gadgets but because China's big banks are throttling payments for such transactions out of concern over U.S. sanctions.
As China's big banks pull back from financing Russia-related transactions, some Chinese companies are turning to small banks on the border and underground financing channels such as money brokers - even banned cryptocurrency - the sources told Reuters."You simply cannot do business properly using the official channels," Wang said, as big banks now take months rather than days to clear payments from Russia, forcing him to tap unorthodox payment channels or shrink his business.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the topic. Reuters could not determine the extent of transactions that had shifted from major banks to more obscure routes. While officials have warned that the United States was ready to take action against Chinese financial institutions facilitating trade in goods with dual civilian and military applications and the U.S. preliminarily has discussed sanctions on some Chinese banks, a U.S. official told Reuters last week Washington does not yet have a plan to implement such measures.
Blinken made clear to Chinese officials "that ensuring transatlantic security is a core U.S. interest," the spokesperson said. "If China does not address this problem, the United States will.” By contrast, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the country's biggest lender, reported a 43% jump in assets of its Russian unit. Bank of China , the fourth-largest, did not give the breakdown.The four banks did not respond to requests for comment on their Russian businesses or the impact on Chinese companies.
"We gave up on the Russian market," the manager said. "We eventually didn't receive more than 10 million yuan in payments from the Russian side, and we just gave up. The process of collecting payments is extremely annoying.""I may gradually shrink my business in Russia as the slow process of collecting money is not good for the company's liquidity management," he said.