The world is a huge economy, and no country is immune from the economic crisis. Among them, the economic crisis hit Russia the hardest.
For the economic crisis in the United States, some Russian experts were too optimistic about the impact of this incident from the beginning. They believe that the real economy on which Russia depends is very stable and will not be knocked down by the financial crisis.
Indeed, Russia is the third largest foreign exchange reserve country in the world, with a vast territory and abundant resources and a substantial national treasury. At the same time, oil and natural gas, which are very much needed by all countries, are abundant, so it seems that there is no need to worry about the economic crisis. Therefore, from the beginning, Russia can even be regarded as a "safe haven" for the economic crisis. At one time, the financial situation developed positively, and the Russian stock market continued to grow, which seemed unaffected by the economic crisis.
However, things got worse.
In August 2008, the Russian stock market began to show a downward trend. 16 In September, within one day, Russian stocks plummeted, Russian trading index (RTS) fell 1 1.47%, and Moscow interbank foreign exchange trading index (MICEX) fell 17.75%. The next day, on September 17, the stock market plunged again, with the RTS index falling by more than 9% and the MICEX index falling by 15%. The two exchanges were forced to suspend trading to prevent the stock market from falling further.
Twenty days later, "Black Monday" was staged again, the stock market plummeted again, and the exchange was forced to suspend trading again. At the same time, in order to save the depressed stock market, the Russian government injected capital into the banking system many times. However, the injected money is like a water drop meeting a flame, which quickly evaporates, and as a whole, it can't stop the continuous decline of stocks.
RTS index once fell from the highest point of 2478.87 in mid-May 2008 to the lowest point of 758.7 1 on June 3, 2008, with a drop of 69.39% in just five months.
The huge hidden danger caused by the defects of Russian economic policy has completely erupted.
Due to the relatively low interest rates in European and American markets, many foreign investors will deposit their funds in Russian banks, which makes the foreign debts of Russian banks increase year by year. In this context, Russia is also known as the "safe island of the world economy". However, when the financial crisis broke out, the "safe island" was not safe. Many foreign investors fled and withdrew their previous savings. As a result, Russian banks are facing bankruptcy.
You know, bank funds are never fixed. It is necessary to rely on the liquidity of funds to obtain income. If we can't get out, the bank will eventually have no money and no money to pay customers.
In 2008, the problems faced by Russian banks caused a large amount of capital to flee, but no new capital came in, because the whole international financial market was seriously short of funds. At this time, no one wants to save money, so there will be no bank loan. At the same time, the previous loans faced compensation problems, which made the Russian banks unable to support them at all.
In addition, because of the liquidity crisis of banks, Russian residents began to withdraw money from banks in large quantities, and Russian banks lost hundreds of billions of rubles in just a few months.
In order to support domestic banks, the Russian government is actively helping them. Not only did the government inject capital from the national treasury reserve many times, but the amount of capital injection reached 1 1 trillion rubles.
At that time, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev also held an emergency economic meeting to help the bank obtain huge credit. It is estimated that the bank received 84% of the national anti-crisis funds. However, most of the rescued banks are large state-owned banks such as savings banks, foreign trade banks and natural gas banks, and other small and medium-sized banks are still doomed to bankruptcy and merger.
The impact of the financial crisis goes far beyond this. Just like dominoes, Russia's domestic economy has been affected one after another.
First of all, the problems brought by banks directly affected the devaluation of the ruble, capital flight, the rapid decline of Russian foreign exchange reserves, the slow entry of new foreign capital, and the continuous depreciation of the ruble. At the same time, the Russian economy is too dependent on energy exports, and the value of the ruble is closely related to energy prices.
However, at this time, international oil prices continued to fall, oil prices fell, and the ruble depreciated. The vicious circle makes the Russian economy worse and the situation is not optimistic.
The spread of the financial crisis has also affected the real economy. Russian oil exports have decreased, Russian oil and gas companies are facing bankruptcy crisis, and the company's operating funds are short. Not only do Russian banks need money, but these companies also need a lot of money to maintain stability. In 2008, Russia's four major natural gas giants sent a letter to then Prime Minister Putin, asking the Russian government to allocate funds to repay the foreign debt owed by 80 billion US dollars.
In addition to oil and gas companies, Russia's construction enterprises, real estate prices, automobile manufacturing, metallurgical companies, and retail enterprises have all experienced a large shortage of funds, the number of unemployed people has soared, domestic consumer demand has declined, and Russia is facing huge debt repayment, and everything is developing in a bad direction.
However, in 2009, everything got better.
In fact, Russia has had more than one financial crisis. There were two financial crises as early as 199 1 and 1998, so even in the face of such difficulties, the Russian government has some past experience to deal with it.
Although the financial crisis is a blow to Russia, it is also an opportunity for Russia to change. Western capital has long been jealous of Russia's rich natural resources, and they also want a piece of it. The economic crisis facing Russia is exactly what they want to see, and they want to eat into Russian energy enterprises.
At this time, Russia made an important political decision. Looking east, it's time to cooperate with China, a neighboring eastern power.
Russia has been planning the "Far East Development Plan" for a long time, and the devaluation of the ruble will accelerate Russia's integration into the "Asia-Pacific Economic Circle". At the same time, Russian-Chinese cooperation can also help Russia avoid over-reliance on western markets, ease its own pressure and achieve the purpose of political checks and balances.
For China, Russia's economic problems will naturally affect itself. Russia's economic situation is not good, and China's export trade to Russia will also be affected. Therefore, it is also beneficial to China to help Russia recover its economy as soon as possible.
Therefore, it was not so much China's "blood transfusion" that saved Russia at that time, but rather that the two sides took this opportunity to achieve mutually beneficial cooperation.
China's economy has been developing at a high speed, and the demand for energy is increasing. At the same time, because of China's large population, China has always been a big country in energy consumption and import, and this economic crisis is just an effective opportunity for China to enter the Russian market on a large scale. Moreover, Russia has a long history of oil and gas exploration and development and is rich in resource reserves. Their technology and energy are what China needs, which is a rare opportunity.
Although there have been many oil trade between Russia and China, and the trade volume is increasing day by day, most of them are spot transactions. China has not yet formed a stable and long-term cooperation scale when purchasing Russian oil.
In this way, on February 17, 2009, China and Russia formally signed the famous "loan for oil" agreement. China provides Russia with a long-term loan with a total amount of US$ 25 billion, with a fixed interest rate of 6%. Russia will exchange oil for loans at the annual interest rate of11-50,000 from 2030.
In this way, "trade oil" became "contract oil".
On September 23rd, 2009, then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and China signed the Outline of the Cooperation Plan between the Far East and East Siberia of the Russian Federation and Northeast People's Republic of China (PRC). The mutual benefit of the energy cooperation strategy has been strengthened again.
At the same time, on June 5438+ 10, 2009, China and Russia established the first joint-venture oil and gas company, symbolizing the closer cooperation between China and Russia in the energy field.
The "loan for oil" of 25 billion seems small. After all, the Russian government has invested far more than this figure in order to save its banks and enterprises, but this has given a signal to western capitalists, not only the rich reserves in the West, but also in the East. If western capitalists don't choose to stop at this juncture and let them check and balance each other, then Russia and East Asia will join forces to confront each other, and the final result will be mutual loss. For the status quo of the country, Russia will not be ruined.
In the end, Russia survived the financial crisis, the Sino-Russian energy cooperation continued, and gradually formed a model of international energy cooperation between China and Central Asia-Russia. So far, China has established a "Belt and Road" trade development model to better cope with the problem of excessive dependence on foreign imports of oil, natural gas and mineral resources.
With the close cooperation between Europe and Asia, one day, "super hegemonic" countries may not exist, but the world pattern will be multipolar, and everyone has the right to speak independently.
This cooperation between Russia and China not only improves Russia's own economic environment, but also becomes a political constraint on the EU and the United States in the long run.
When it comes to the cooperation of oil and gas resources, in various games between energy consuming countries and host countries, it has to be said that Central Asia is an important region that all countries are vying for.
As the middle zone between Europe, Asia and the Middle East, Central Asia naturally has its unique position. Especially after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Central Asia became a power vacuum zone, which mainly formed a political pattern of competition and wrestling between China, Russia, the United States and China in the game of great powers.
Russia has always been the core force of energy politics in Central Asia. The most important components of the European energy corridor, such as the natural gas pipeline in Central Asia and the natural gas pipeline crossing the Caspian Sea, are under the control of Russia, but this control is naturally not what the United States wants to see.
Over the years, the United States has been using its capital advantage to enter the Central Asian energy circle, taking Central Asia as its own energy supply base and breaking Russia's monopoly on Central Asian energy. At the same time, the United States also intervened in Central Asian affairs politically and militarily, establishing military bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan respectively, and obtaining the exploration and exploitation rights of several Central Asian oil fields by virtue of financial and technological advantages.
After the economic development, China is also actively building natural gas pipelines and crude oil pipelines with Central Asian countries, and has successfully broken the previous dependence of Central Asian countries on Russia and the United States, so as to give full play to the foreign policy of balancing Central Asian countries, and more importantly, to promote China's own position in international energy politics.
Therefore, Russian-Chinese cooperation is also the result of energy political game.
In 2009, Russia adjusted the strategic direction of energy export, and the energy strategy began to spread to East Asia. Due to geographical reasons, the production of oil and coal in the Asia-Pacific region is limited, and a large part of it depends on imports, so the demand for oil in the entire Asia-Pacific market is huge.
Among them, China, as a superpower with a large population, naturally has huge oil and gas energy demand and huge trade space.
The success of Russian-Chinese "Loan Agreement" shows China another way of energy cooperation among Central Asian countries. In 2009, after signing a "loan agreement" with Russia, China signed a "loan agreement" with Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and other countries, and established a stable cooperative relationship.
The energy cooperation between China and Central Asian countries has gradually diversified, from simple oil and gas trade at the beginning to exploration and development, pipeline transportation, oil refining and oil and gas sales.
In addition, China has developed a variety of new energy cooperation models.
The first is the "loan-for-resources" model, which determines the supply of oil and gas resources in the future and guarantees China's own oil and gas demand.
For Russia and Central Asian countries, easing financial pressure is a win-win situation. However, because it was essentially a "blank check" when it was signed, it did not actually control oil and gas resources in essence, and it was still uncertain, so there was no way to optimize the price.
Following the "loan for resources", China and Russia developed a "two-way cooperation" model, established an energy investment company, and Sino-Russian energy capital began to cooperate. China can learn from Russia's advanced technology and experience, and at the same time lay a foundation for China's exploration and development cooperation in Russia, which has bright prospects for the energy politics of the two countries.
In addition, the background of the joint operation mode with the national oil company is that the western international oil giants have formed a relatively mature cooperation foundation in Central Asia, and the Central Asia region is extremely unstable due to political, war, religious and other factors. Although China's oil exploration and development in Central Asian countries is relatively stable, there are hidden dangers. If China directly forms a strategic alliance with Central Asian countries and Russian oil companies, it can avoid risks and cooperate effectively.
Finally, it is the "oil and gas-economic and trade" cooperation model, that is, the "Belt and Road".
Today, China has deeply developed the Belt and Road Initiative, which is not only a sustainable development in energy. China's cooperation with other countries in other fields, such as railways, highways, aviation, power grids and other internet, has made great progress in capital trade. At the same time, due to its status as a big consumer, China has more say in the Belt and Road Initiative, which ensures the stability and sustainability of energy supply.