This Is The Reason China Deliberately Disobeys The US On Sanctions For Russia?

JAKARTA - The United States (US) and a number of its allies have agreed to remove Russia's membership from the international interbank payment system, namely the Society Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).

The move is a sanction imposed on Russia related to its invasion of Ukraine. However, China has decided not to comply with the imposition of these sanctions and will continue to carry out all trade transactions between China and Russia as usual.

"China and Russia will continue normal trade cooperation in the spirit of mutual respect and mutual benefit", said Chinese Foreign Ministry (MFA) spokesman Wang Wenbin, in an official statement, as reported by Antara on Monday, February 28.

Not only confirming its positioning opposite to that of the US, some believe that China is now trying to take advantage of the feud between Russia and the world financial community.

The reason is, if the US and Western countries have SWIFT, China since 2015 has also had a similar financial system called the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS). By still insisting on maintaining its trade transactions with Russia, China is allegedly 'wooing' Russia to start using CIPS.

For information, the value of Russia's exports in 2021 alone was estimated to reach 490 billion US dollars, with a record import of 304 billion US dollars. To date, the number of Russian financial institutions affiliated to the SWIFT system is estimated at more than 300 companies.

So, if the scenario of embracing Russia as a user of the CIPS system really happens, China will certainly benefit greatly because the existence of CIPS in the world financial community will be increasingly taken into account. Moreover, the position of the yuan will also be boosted up, considering that all transactions at CIPS use the yuan currency.

As of January to 2021, the number of transactions using CIPS was reported to have reached 2.68 million transactions, with a transaction value of 64 trillion yuan. This achievement was calculated to grow by 58 percent in number of transactions and 83 percent in nominal terms, compared to the achievement in the same period the previous year.