FX.co ★ Russia and China share ideas of withholding aid from people

Russia’s authorities are scrutinizing China’s experience of restarting the national economy in the wake of the pandemic. Perhaps Moscow shows this interest as it wants to check whether it is a good idea to stand aloof from supporting the population with financial aid. Besides, the Kremlin wants to figure out how long the economy will keep afloat without small and mid-sized businesses. Remarkably, Russia and China are the countries which have not provided its citizens with direct financial aid. Citing Russia’s ambassador to China Andrey Denisov, Russian economists are researching measures which are employed by Beijing to stamp out the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, it does not make sense to compare the scale of the stimulus packages to the national economies. Indeed, China is the second largest global economy whereas Russia does not belong to the top 10. Nevertheless, Moscow is interested to get insight into the principles and, above all else, efficiency of these measures. It would be curious to see how the people who lost jobs during shutdown will survive on their own without any stimulus payments from the government. “Economists and analysts in China are brainstorming how to distribute the rescue package efficiently. To provide bailout is a painstaking and large-scale challenge. It is complicated to arrange everything, but China’s government copes well with this,” Andrey Denisov commented on China’s efforts.