China and Russia will use yuan and ruble for their energy commodity transactions

 The Chinese attitude towards Russia, regarding the invasion of the Ukrainian country, has so far been ambiguous from a political point of view, but clearer from an economic point of view. This reflection, in fact, explains the behavior adopted by Beijing since the beginning of the hostilities against Kiev, regarding the rejection of the sanctions against Moscow, intended as an unexpected opportunity for economic benefits for China. Of course, political closeness with Russia exists anyway, but it is to be framed more in an anti-American function, rather than with genuinely shared motivations, if not as a fact that has created a sort of precedent for an eventual invasion of Taiwan. This possibility, albeit concrete, is nevertheless still considered distant by most analysts. It all starts with Moscow's need to find other markets for raw materials, after the fact that it lost the European one in retaliation. China has always been looking for energy supplies to support the growth necessary to raise the country to the level of a great power and to create the internal wealth necessary to avoid too many challenges to its system of government. The Chinese country is thus the market that Moscow needs to sell its raw materials, even if heavily discounted, due to the lack of demand. The two countries have reached an agreement on exchange currencies that excludes both the euro and the dollar, in favor of the yuan and the ruble: with a payment system that provides for the use of half of the two currencies for each transaction. If for Russia the intent is to give a political signal to the West, avoiding the use of the currencies of hostile countries, which have frozen Moscow's reserves abroad, for China the increase in the use of the yuan on the international level it has a very significant economic significance, because it allows its currency to reach fifth place after the dollar, euro, British pound and Japanese yen, in the ranking of the most used currencies. The ambition is to overcome the Japanese currency and get closer to the podium, as a functional tool for its foreign policy, with a view to favoring its expansion in the emerging markets of Asia and Africa and therefore exercising an even greater share of soft power in these regions. The ruble, on the other hand, has even dropped out of the twenty most used currencies and, with this agreement, it could try to move up the rankings, even if at the moment, with the country subjected to sanctions, this more than remote possibility seems unattainable, even if Moscow's intention is to enter into a similar agreement with Turkey, which, despite being a member of the Atlantic Alliance, has not joined the sanctions. Ankara has practical reasons to take advantage of the Russian gas sale because its economy is in great difficulty and having favorable access to energy raw materials could favor a development of its production system. Currently, Russia's position vis-à-vis China on supplies of energy materials ranks as the top supplier, having overtaken even Saudi Arabia on supplies to the oil sector. The trade balance between the two states is clearly in favor of Moscow, which exports goods for 10,000 million euros to Beijing, of which eighty percent relates to the energy sector, while China exports only goods to Russia for 4,000 million euros. EUR. Beijing does not seem to suffer from this imbalance because it allows access to Russian energy resources at favorable conditions and, at the same time, does not consider the export of its products to the former Soviet country potentially convenient. Facilitated access to Russian resources, on the other hand, favors greater productivity of Chinese companies, which could favor competition from Western, US and European companies, generating an indirect consequence of the very dangerous sanctions. On the other hand, interrupting the policy of sanctions and aid, including military aid, for Ukraine is certainly impossible, despite some right-wing politicians in the West who have expressed this intention. The unity and compactness of the West is also a protection against Chinese expansionism, which fears more than anything else the blockade of its goods to the richest markets, which continue to be those of the West lined up against Russia.