On Saturday, some southern Chinese merchants urgently called companies to stop goods shipments to Russia after hearing that mercenary Wagner forces were racing toward Moscow in a brief uprising.
While the mutiny, the biggest test of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s leadership since his February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, rapidly dissipated, some exporters now worry about their future dependency on Beijing’s closest friend.
“We thought there was going to be a big problem,” said Shen Muhui, head of the trade group for enterprises in China’s southern Fujian province, recalling the race among its members selling car parts, machinery, and clothing to Russia.
Despite the crisis’s easing, “some people remain on the sidelines, as they’re not sure what will happen later,” he said, declining to name the companies halting shipments.
China had downplayed the weekend’s events and supported Moscow, with which it had a “no limits” cooperation before Russia attacked Ukraine in a “special military operation.”
On Monday, a top U.S. official said the weekend rebellion had rattled Beijing’s cloistered elite, and some observers inside and outside China have begun to ask whether Beijing should reduce its political and economic connections to Moscow.
“It has put a fly in the ointment of that ‘no-limits’ relationship,” said Singapore-based security analyst Alexander Neill.
China’s foreign ministry, which called the abortive mutiny Russia’s “internal affairs” and supported Moscow’s stabilization measures, did not immediately answer Reuters’ comment request.
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