Over the past ten years, Belarus has tripled its trade with China and doubled its exports to the country, First Deputy Prime Minister Nikolai Snopkov said at a meeting to discuss cooperation with China hosted by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko in Minsk on 27 January.
Expanding on the President’s thesis that cooperation with China is serious and long-term, Nikolai Snopkov emphasized that the results of interaction with this country should be assessed over an extended period of time. He highlighted three key achievements in Belarus-China economic relations over the past ten years.
“During this period, Belarus-China trade has tripled and exports have doubled. Trade in goods was $2.5 billion [ten years ago]. [In January-November 2025] it amounted to $8.9 billion,” the First Deputy Prime Minister said. “Moreover, the average annual export growth rate in the last five-year period was 117%, which is 1.5 percentage points higher than the growth rate of exports to Russia, our main market. This shows that we have been working quite actively in the Chinese market.”
According to him, over the past ten years the average annual export growth rate amounted to 111.4%. “Trade in goods and services has approached a record high level of $12 billion. China’s share in foreign trade has doubled, rising to 11%,” Nikolai Snopkov emphasized. “It is Belarus’ second trading partner after Russia.”
Belarus exports to China 30% of its total potash output, 45% of rapeseed oil, 50% of flax tow, 33% of timber, and 37% of whey.
Second, direct Chinese investments doubled in a decade. “The gross volume of investments from China into Belarus over 10 years exceeded $2 billion, about half of which are foreign direct investments. Over 9 months [of 2025] compared to last year [the same period in 2024], they grew 2.6 times, and the volume of gross investments from China reached $443 million. If in 2015 China ranked fifth among donors in terms of gross investments, then based on the results of 9 months, it ranked second,” the First Deputy Prime Minister said.
According to him, the number of organizations with Chinese capital in their authorized funds has increased 3.4 times over 10 years: from 67 such organizations in 2015 to 230 in 2025. In 2025, more than 60 investment projects with the stated investment volume of about $1.6 billion were being implemented in Belarus with the attraction of Chinese capital and technology. Mostly - 52 investment projects - are in the Great Stone Industrial Park.
China is a key industrial lender for Belarus, and this is the third significant result of bilateral cooperation named by Nikolai Snopkov. He noted that over 20 years, 28 major industrial projects worth $5.5 billion have been financed through Chinese preferential and commercial loans, including in the fields of industry, energy, and transport. “Projects implemented with China accounted for about one-tenth of the growth of the Belarusian economy over the decade,” the First Deputy Prime Minister stressed.
