Total trade between China and Russia stood at US$19.14 billion in July, up 8.7 per cent from June, according to figures from China’s General Administration of Customs released on Thursday. But that marked a 2.8 per cent decrease from a year earlier.
China’s imports from Russia in July totalled US$10.1 billion, up 4.02 per cent from a year earlier. But in the same month, Chinese exports to the country dropped by 8.91 per cent, year on year, to US$9.1 billion.
Russia was one of China’s leading crude suppliers last year, shipping a record 108.5 million tonnes, or 19.6 per cent of its total oil imports, Chinese customs data showed.
However, oil deliveries in July fell compared with June – amounting to less than 4 million tonnes, according to figures from Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service. Chinese customs authorities are expected to release detailed oil-trade data from Russia on August 20.
For the first seven months of 2025, Russian tankers shipped 32 million tonnes to China – 4 million less than during the same period in 2024, according to the Ukrainian agency.
