All is not sweetness and light in the Russia/China multipolar orbit. From Andrew Korybko at korybko.com:
Russia and China aren’t “against” one another, but they still prioritize their corresponding national interests. These largely overlap, in which cases they cooperate to pursue their shared goals, but they sometimes diverge and thus lead to developments like Chinese companies complying with US sanctions.
China’s Wison New Energies announced in a LinkedIn post on Friday that they’re immediately stopping all their Russian projects “in view of the strategic future of the company” following the latest imposition of US sanctions against that country’s LNG industry in mid-June. Oilprice.com wrote that this will “deal a blow” to Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 project after Wison was contracted to build its modules, “which are massive, prefabricated structures that facilitate the rapid construction of LNG processing plants.”
They also reminded their audience that Arctic LNG 2 “has been considered key to Russia’s efforts to boost its global LNG market share from 8% to 20% by 2030-2035.” The EU’s US-pressured “decoupling” from Russia’s pipeline gas network compelled that country to ramp up its LNG projects in order to freely export this resource in the coming future so as to make up for tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue. These plans might therefore be further delayed by Wison’s compliance with US sanctions.
