—You wrote the book "The Chinese Economic Miracle: Lessons for Russia and the World." Which key lessons from China's experience are most applicable to developing the Union State?
—The experience behind China's economic miracle is fully applicable both to our country and to any other country in the world. China became a leading economic power thanks to an effective system of governance. According to China's National Bureau of Statistics, China's GDP grew 4.7% year on year, reaching 69.6 trillion yuan (about $10.25 trillion) in the first half of 2026. This steady pace of growth underscores the viability of the Chinese economic model as the country enters a new five-year stage of development.
China is a model for the emergence of a new world economic order, which we have called "integral," because it combines the centralized strategic planning typical of socialist countries with market competition, and private property with a state-run financial system. State regulation steers private entrepreneurship toward raising public welfare and the economy's competitiveness. Although the Chinese themselves call their system "socialism with Chinese characteristics," its characteristic institutions and mechanisms can be used in the Union State. What matters most is that they need to function as a single, unified system of governance. In particular, monetary policy should be subordinated to the goals of socioeconomic development, rather than to IMF dogma serving the interests of international capital. This is also in line with the recommendations of economic science, which has mathematically demonstrated that a central bank's chief goal should be creating conditions for higher investment activity. Deploying new technologies raises the efficiency of production and the volume of goods produced, which in turn ensures long-term macroeconomic stability. Scientific and technological progress is the best, and indeed the only truly effective, tool for fighting inflation — and it is also the main driver of economic growth.
One could go on at length listing the institutions and mechanisms supporting economic growth that operate in China and that could be introduced here. Targeted, cheap, long-term loans are woven into the implementation of government programs and projects and fit organically into state industrial policy. The same goes for subsidizing companies' R&D spending and financing scientific and technical programs. What matters most is that each of the many tools supporting growth in production and investment forms part of a governance system that steadily raises living standards and strengthens the competitiveness of China's economy. These tools are applied broadly, tied to commitments made by economic actors, for which their managers are held accountable. An end-to-end mechanism of accountability for how allocated resources are used runs through the entire system managing China's economic development, ensuring all its tools function effectively.
China runs a successful mechanism one might call the "circle of economic prosperity": the monetary authorities generate targeted, long-term, cheap lending for investment in mastering advanced technologies and expanding output of goods in demand, which drives up wages, incomes, and public welfare, boosts savings and demand, and in turn creates the conditions for further investment growth. We need to build the same kind of positive-feedback mechanism here, breaking the vicious circle of decline in which the Central Bank raising interest rates leads to reduced investment lending, resulting in technological lag and a drop in the economy's competitiveness, which then gets compensated for by a devaluation of the ruble — which in turn triggers a fresh round of inflation, continuing the vicious circle. Doing so will require introducing restrictions on capital outflows, so that cheap credit doesn't leak into the currency market, along with special instruments for refinancing banks against commitments made by production enterprises to increase output and adopt new technologies. Building on such commitments — not just from enterprises, but from local self-government bodies and development institutions as well — China's provinces have formed investment platforms that, backed by guarantees from regional authorities, serve as the collateral base for the banking system to expand lending...
—How do the economic cycles described in your book affect the current cooperation among the three countries?
—Cycles in which technological paradigms and world economic orders change affect the economy as a whole, because they bring about technological restructuring and, correspondingly, a change in institutions. These deep structural shifts affect everyone. Economic actors who fail to adapt in time perish, while those who prepare in time reap superprofits in the form of intellectual or administrative rent. China caught the long growth wave of the new technological paradigm — whose core consists of nano-, bioengineering, information and communications, additive, and digital technologies — and rode it to become a world leader. At the same time, it built a system of governance featuring the institutions of a new world economic order, creating, in effect, the "integral" system that Pitirim Sorokin foresaw more than half a century ago: a system free of the shortcomings of Soviet socialism and American capitalism while combining the advantages of both. By combining new technologies with advanced institutions, China has become the center of the world economy. At the same time, it is pursuing a new approach to building foreign economic ties, based on joint investment. Its Belt and Road Initiative has brought together a large number of countries through a variety of investment projects, chiefly infrastructure projects, based on a so-called win-win policy — in which, unlike the liberalization of foreign trade that benefits mainly advanced countries, mutually beneficial cooperation is achieved by pooling competitive advantages to expand joint production.
The Union State has two options for cooperating with China: fit into the core of the new world economic order by building an equally effective system of governance on the basis of similar institutions and expanding production within the new technological paradigm in cooperation with Chinese partners, or end up on the periphery of the new center of the world economy as a supplier of raw materials, energy resources, and low-processed goods. After sanctions were imposed by unfriendly countries, Russia's foreign trade — and, to a significant degree, Belarus's — shifted from West to East. Between 2021 and 2023, China's share of the EAEU's total imports rose from 27% to 47%, while the share of unfriendly NATO countries collapsed from 54% to 32%. The flow of Russian raw materials and energy resources was reoriented from West to East. Chinese and Indian imports of Russian goods (oil, oil products, coal, gas, metals, timber) grew between 2021 and 2025 by nearly twofold (from $60 billion to $115 billion) and by five- to sixfold (from $9 billion to $55 billion), respectively.
China has become the Union State's main trading partner, essentially taking the place of the EU, with which trade was scaled back through the fault of the Western sanctioning countries. Some part of European imports has been successfully replaced with domestic production. But, on the whole, our economy's position within the Eurasian division of labor has changed little. Because of its technological superiority, the Chinese economy is interested mainly in importing Russian raw materials and in gaining access to the Union State's market, where it competes with domestically made goods. Contradictions arise here, and they can be overcome through the development of production cooperation. The Great Stone Industrial Park operating in Belarus is a good site for locating joint ventures integrated into the cooperation chains of domestic industry. Another good example is the use of Chinese microelectronic components in domestic machine building.
It should be noted that Belarus's economic structure resembles China's more closely than Russia's does. Its system for managing economic development rests on strategic planning; state regulation steers entrepreneurial activity toward growth in production and public welfare, and prices, money circulation, and access to resources are regulated with these same goals in mind. The state sector occupies a significant place, and the state directs the banking system toward lending for growth in production and investment. Manufacturing is the leading sector. Joint development institutions could be created to finance joint production not only for the market of the Union State and the EAEU, but for third countries as well — drawing on China's experience of implementing promising development directions through a combination of strategic planning, targeted cheap long-term investment lending, and creative entrepreneurship. We have the scientific and technical groundwork needed to launch production of the world's most advanced machinery.
BelAZ, for instance, is the world leader in manufacturing heavy-duty dump trucks. Moscow scientists possess expertise in extracting and chemically binding natural hydrogen, which could become the leading new energy carrier of the next technological paradigm. Chinese engineers build the world's best fuel cells, which generate electricity by consuming hydrogen. Our shared international and national development institutions provide long-term, concessional loans for promising projects. Together, we could create the world's most efficient dump truck for the mining industry, and later extend that technology to other branches of transport machine building.
—Is that the kind of thing you're proposing for the Union State when you talk about an investment platform with refinancing from the central banks?
—Exactly right. Except geared toward lending for investment in creating and expanding joint Belarusian-Russian production, including the production of Union State goods. That concept was recently introduced into our regulatory framework.
The main problem facing the Union State's economy is the size and quality of investment, which today has become insufficient even for simple reproduction, let alone for the above-average global growth rates required. At present, the investment-to-GDP ratio stands at 18% in Belarus and 21% in Russia; implementing the Strategy for Advanced Development requires reaching a level of 30–35% (the figures are even higher in China and other fast-growing Asian countries), with a substantial share needing to go toward building production capacity for the newest, sixth technological paradigm — which requires a multi-fold increase in R&D spending.
Amid escalating external sanctions and a tight (restrictive) monetary policy, most industrial enterprises are unable to raise borrowed funds to renew their production capacity. The final cost of credit that commercial banks provide to enterprises currently runs at no less than 15–20% a year, against average production profitability of just 5–10%. Enterprises are forced either to build these costs into the price of their final products, which drives up prices unjustifiably, or to operate at a loss — eating into working capital and underinvesting in R&D — which undermines the stability of strategic sectors of the economy and creates the risk of insolvency.
Domestic and international experience shows that the way out is to build a powerful, multi-channel system of targeted lending to production enterprises, resting on special central-bank refinancing instruments. The goal of the proposed special refinancing instrument is to provide targeted, long-term (at least three-year) lending to enterprises for expanding and modernizing production of goods in demand. This kind of financing does not produce an inflationary effect, since the additional money supply is fully absorbed and offset by the output of goods in demand. That requires monitoring that the loans are used for their intended purpose and are repaid.
At the first stage, it is proposed to pilot a mechanism for targeted, low-interest, long-term lending for the production of Union State goods, including those created through the implementation of Union State projects and programs.
—How can technological sovereignty be ensured while deepening cooperation with China?
—Today, China is the only country in the world that has achieved technological sovereignty. Doing so took it two five-year plans of intensive effort to build up the foundational industries of the new technological paradigm. We lag substantially behind in this area and lack the mechanisms to finance investment in developing and expanding them. Given this, it would make sense to develop mutually beneficial scientific and technical cooperation, form technology alliances with Chinese corporations, and build shared databases of scientific and technical information. Integrating scientific and technical capabilities requires a high degree of trust. We still have a great deal of work ahead of us to put the strategic-partnership relationship established at the level of our countries' leaders into practice, through joint projects and programs and by creating a favorable investment and innovation climate.
—Are there plans to create joint economic zones or industrial clusters involving China
and the Union State countries?
—Yes. These plans rest on the relationship of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation between the Union State's member states and China. This kind of activity promotes the development of border production sites, clusters, and trilateral industrial cooperation. Successful examples include the Nizhneleninskoye–Tongjiang cluster, the China-Belarus Great Stone Industrial Park, and the Alabuga Special Economic Zone.
— What specific projects involving China are currently being carried out on the territory of the Union State? Could they be called "growth points"?
— One of the most successful examples of Chinese investment is the Great Stone Industrial Park. At present, it's China's largest project under the "new Silk Road." With its special legal regime, the Great Stone Industrial Park is viewed within the Union State as the basic model for aligning the industrial policies of Russia, Belarus, and China.
The Great Stone Industrial Park is helping establish Belarus as a key hub for attracting investment, high technology, and modern logistics. Priority is given to clean and knowledge-intensive production. Forty-five R&D projects have been launched there. Machine building (31 projects) and biotechnology and pharmaceuticals (28 projects) are developing actively, along with electronics and medicine. To date, the park has attracted $1.61 billion in investment, of which more than $0.67 billion has been put to use. It has 173 registered residents from 15 countries around the world.
The main project on Russian territory is the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline, construction of which is planned to begin in 2027, with announced annual deliveries of 50 billion cubic meters of gas.
—Which areas of cooperation with China do you consider most promising for the Union State over the next three to five years?
—China's 15th Five-Year Plan for 2026–2030 opens up broad opportunities for cooperation. The key drivers named for China's development in the coming years are modernizing industry through artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation, along with developing digital infrastructure and data management.
With that in mind, alongside transport machine building, I would highlight agribusiness, bioengineering and cell technologies, nuclear power, the aerospace and extractive industries, and information technology. These are areas where combining our competitive advantages could produce a new level of quality in manufacturing competitive goods for the Eurasian market. Doing so requires developing scientific and industrial cooperation, and moving from trade and supply chains toward joint ventures and scientific-technological consortiums — backed by targeted lending from development institutions to help them grow.
Cooperation with China during this five-year period will also expand in traditional areas: gas (the new Power of Siberia 2 pipeline), space (a joint lunar base), and finance (with the share of settlements in national currencies rising to 80–90%). Cooperation in nuclear power will continue as well. Rosatom is building power units with VVER-1200 reactors in China. In 2025, a contract was signed for the construction of two more power units by 2030.
— What steps are being taken to simplify logistics and customs procedures between China and the Union State?
— In recent years, logistics has become one of the main constraints on trade turnover growth. Infrastructure doesn't always keep pace with demand, and delivery times and shipping costs directly affect how competitive goods are.
Under current conditions, a supplier's price is no longer the main criterion in procurement decisions. Businesses evaluate the whole chain — delivery, customs, insurance, and currency risk. This matters especially when working with China. The winner isn't the one who found the cheapest goods, but the one who built a reliable, transparent logistics scheme.
Simplifying logistics and customs procedures among China, Russia, and Belarus is being achieved through the digitalization of data exchange and the development of multimodal corridors. Key measures include mutual recognition of authorized economic operators, electronic document workflows, and the use of satellite tracking seals.
Customs administration and digitalization are being carried out through the "Green Corridor" project. The project provides for shorter inspection times and priority clearance of shipments from reputable foreign-trade participants, based on advance data exchange among Russia's Federal Customs Service, Belarus's State Customs Committee, and China's General Administration of Customs. The shift to an end-to-end "Digital Customs" system and seamless transit is cutting shipment processing times from several days down to hours.
At the same time, tools have been introduced to reduce administrative barriers and minimize physical inspections for companies holding authorized economic operator status.