On paper, China’s banks and its homegrown payments system could offer Russia respite from crippling Western sanctions. China has helped other nations evade sanctions, and both China and Russia share an interest in weakening the dollar’s hold on the international financial system.
In practice, it isn’t that simple.
Western countries have imposed an array of penalties on Russia in the past week, from freezing much of its central bank’s foreign-currency reserves to booting some Russian banks off Swift, the payment network widely used in international banking transactions.
China has long been concerned about what it calls “dollar hegemony,” especially as the trade war with the U.S. worsened, and has found an ally in the Kremlin, which was previously sanctioned after its 2014 annexation of Crimea.
The two countries increasingly trade with each other without using…
