Trade in goods between Russia and China rose 26.3% year-on-year to $159.2bn in January-July 2026, the Russian Trade Mission in China said on August 7, citing Chinese customs data, Vedomosti reported.

Russia's exports to China rose 23.7% to $86.4bn, while imports from China grew 29.5% to $72.8bn, according to the trade mission. China's total foreign trade grew 21.8% over the same period to $4.3tn, with exports up 18.5% to $2.5tn and imports up 26.7% to $1.8tn.

The pace has picked up through the year: Russia-China trade grew 25.6% year-on-year in the first half of 2026 to $134.2bn, with Russian exports up 23.3% to $73.6bn and imports up 28.4% to $60.6bn, according to Chinese customs figures reported at the time.

China's trade with the wider region is also expanding, with turnover with ASEAN countries up 24.7% to $744.4bn and with the EU up 13.6% to $530bn over the same seven months; trade with the US grew a comparatively modest 2.3% to $344.9bn.

The pace also puts Russia and China comfortably clear of the $200bn bilateral trade target Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping set at a Moscow summit in June 2019 - a threshold the two countries first cleared in 2023, a year ahead of schedule, before turnover dipped slightly to $228bn in 2025 as the initial post-2022 sanctions-driven surge cooled.

Extrapolating the January-July growth rate across the rest of the year points to a 2026 total of roughly $288bn - applying the current 26.3% pace to the $228bn recorded for full-year 2025 - which would mark a return to growth after last year's dip, though the final figure depends on whether the pace holds through the second half.