Bank of China's Singapore operation stops financing Russian oil trades | Hacker News Reader

Bank of China's Singapore operation stops financing Russian oil trades

reuters.com

115 pointsawb73 comments

Is this as a result of the Singaporean government sanctioning Russia? https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/singapore-impose-...

I assume that if Bank of China wants to do business in Singapore, their Singaporean branch must comply with Singaporean law.

Maybe both https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-25/chinese-s...

Other state banks are also doing sanctions: Stopping financing for purchases of Russian commodities. Complying with western sanctions. Reducing compliance risks

Something that people here might be missing: If the Russia companies/banks/brokers get sanctioned, they might be in a situation where they can't honor their engagement. Who'd want to deal with that? The Chinese might be thinking pragmatically after all.

Exactly. I would be very suprised if this is driven by anything other than pragmatic self interest.

At the very least, I’d be surprised if they weren’t renegotiating eye-watering rates: it’s not like Russia has many options and I suspect the Chinese government would like Putin to collapse and be replaced with someone better for business.

I suspect the Chinese government would like to conquer Taiwan, especially if they could do so as part of a multi-front world war in which they weren't the one who shot Archduke Ferdinand. No matter which way it turns out, they'd prefer that history remember the whole conflagration as something started by Russia rather than by China.

Putin is definitely getting a holiday card from Xi this year.

That seems like a stretch — the interest is certainly there but I don't think there's any path to Taiwan which isn't a transparent “you were tied up with Russia” pretext, and there's a lot more precedent now for a large chunk of the world's economy being willing to sacrifice money to punish aggression. They just don't seem to have the appetite for risk that Putin does — spread money around, build soft power while locking up valuable resources, etc. and you get most of the same results they care about without bloodshed.

It's worth mentioning that Bank of China is a bank in China. The central bank of China is actually called People's Bank of China.

The question is, is it one of the largest banks, like Deutsche Bank in Germany, or is it relatively insignificant?

One of the Big Five

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Four_(banking)#China

China actually has a regulation that requires only significantly large or central-government owned enterprise can be named after "China"

Yes, but Bank of China is a state owned/controlled entity.

Does anyone know whether this is relevant to the Russians at all?

I presume China wants to stay neutral. This is just a signal to the West, without doing anything actually meaningful against Russia, perhaps?

> Does anyone know whether this is relevant to the Russians at all?

This is huge, and absolutely crippling to Russia.

It’s unlikely that this will continue as the sanctions have actually excluded energy, because neither side want to disrupt the flow of oil and gas which would be too expensive for everyone. What we’re most likely seeing is risk/compliance managers pause activity until they can review everything.

Or just some virtue signaling followed with some PR.

Hint: HN's algo autodownvotes you, hard, for using that phrase. It's on the banned phrases list.

Which one, "just some virtue signaling" or "some PR"?

Both is my guess?

Crippled Russia plays in to China`s cards as well. Russia is going to be at mercy of China if Putin stays in power after this war. Which is most likely unless there is massive revolution in Russia.

Last I heard Khabarovsk's elected leader fell out of the Kremlins graces and his detention led to mass protest. Then add the pressure of all the sons coming back making it look like the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan, I think the ingredients are in the cupboard.

It is worst than Afghanistan. Russian losses for 5 days are at the scale of a year in Afghanistan. And Russia doesn't even pick a lot of bodies. There is ton of videos of aftermath of various fights across the Ukraine with Russian bodies strewn around. Ukraine asked Red Cross to be a receiver of all those bodies.

Russia isn't going for democratic revolution as people just aren't capable of it. Russia is kept together by the strong centralized power. Once that power gets critically wounded (like 30+ years ago USSR by Afghanistan) the regional, especially in the far from Moscow regions like the mentioned Khabarovsk, elites will try to split out to have their own autocratic dukedoms, and naturally becoming China's client states.

China's support of that Russian war is a non-loosing bet - if Russia succeeded China would have gotten the agreed upon Russian support of the Taiwan takeover, and if Russia loses, especially catastrophically like it looks now, it gets very weak and sky is the limits for China's actions in that scenario.

It doesn't have to be a massive revolution, a "palace revolt" (or some combination thereof) would also do - not sure how likely it is, but I was in Romania when Ceausescu was toppled, and his regime also didn't look like it would be possible to end it in a week (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Revolution). Ok, there were up to 1300 victims (estimates vary), and it was the only one of the regime changes in Eastern Europe in 1989 that actually led to violence, but compared to what we are seeing in other countries around the world, Romania still got off relatively easy...

A crippled Russia is not in China's interest. After the US and its allies are done destroying Russia, they will go after China next. One of the reasons why China and Russia are strategic partners is because they live in a world in which they need each other.

After the US and its allies are done destroying Russia, they will go after China next.

Doubtful, given the state of the global economy.

The US is already going after China. Russia merely distracted them — for now. There is even precedence for this. In the 1960s, the Pentagon proposed nuking 200+ million Chinese (1/3rd population) in case a nuclear war between US and USSR happened, just to prevent China from being a viable surviving society. And the only reason why they capped at 200+ million was because Chinese population was too dispersed so it would take too many nukes to kill more. Source: declassified document https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2018-0...

In the 1960s, the Pentagon proposed nuking 200+ million Chinese

And in the meantime, China became the United States' largest source of imported goods and 3rd largest export target (or 4th largest if you count the EU as a single block).

Yes after the normalization of diplomatic relations. But as you've noticed, these relations are increasingly being torn apart. War hawks are filling the ranks in US government. See e.g. AUKUS. There is no guarantee we wouldn't return to a time when Pentagon would seriously contemplate first-time-use nuking China.

Wargaming involves lots of proposals. I suppose it's a very good thing that one never got its chance at being carried out, and not just for China's sake.

But that will take 30 years to play out. The Russian issue will be over long before that, one way or another.

There's also the BRICS group which consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. All 3 of the smaller countries have squashed any negative comments coming out of the government against what's currently happening.

Their whole goal is an informal grouping of non-interference, equality and mutual benefit.

As a South African I can't say I very much want to be a part of the group, but here we are.

I was surprised to see this alignment among BRICS.

In diplomacy and realpolitik there are no permanent friends and enemies and upcoming powers need to toe the line even more carefully. Additionally India, South Africa and Brazil (observer) also belong to the NAM (Non Aligned Movement)

exactly. Brazil is always neutral in that matters. They aren't NATO, they are friend from US, China, Ukraine and Russia. That's the external politics from Brazil since years.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-28/bolsonaro...

Brazil has gone further than quashing negative comments, Bolsonaro is going on about how great Putin is, what a joke Zelensky is and how lots of Ukrainians speak Russian anyway.

wow, spreading fake news live? Ukraine said Brazilian position voting against Russia at UN is already an official position https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFw_u7X2oLM

As explained by someone from the Government, Ciro Nogueira:

"In Nogueira's view, Bolsonaro's rivals ”want to transform Ukraine into the 28th Brazilian state, as if it were a new pandemic (coronavirus), as if Brazil's position in the face of the crisis was the most important thing in the world.“

You can look up Bolsonaro's statements yourself.

"Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has declined to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, departing from his government's official stance..."

"Bolsonaro, a far-right populist, recently snubbed US pleas not to visit Putin in Moscow ahead of the invasion, and angered Western allies by saying he was 'in solidarity with Russia'."

"A big part of Ukraine's population speaks Russian."

https://7news.com.au/news/conflict/brazil-neutral-over-ukrai...

For Ukraine just the official position in the UN matters. Brazil voted against Russia. Bolsonaro is just trying to avoid any polemic around the topic.

BTW, in 2022, reading an article with "the far-right populist" makes it less credible in my opinion. After 4 years, Brazil still the same (for the bad and for the good).

The same, minus 649k people.

Ah right, looks normal to me, https://countrymeters.info/pt/Brazil under "História população do Brasil"

Tell that to the families of the dead.

China is in a very uncomfortable situation imo. More than staying neutral, they are probably trying to find a way out.

They have: (0) enabled an unprovoked attack from Russia on Ukraine, undermining peace in Europe, (1) said that their ties to Putin have "no limits", (2) shared intelligence coming from the US with Russia, (3) not moved their own citizens out of Ukraine and (4) enabled a nasty rhetoric about Ukrainians

By going for self-interest and mercantilism over a principled and fair approach to international affairs, what China is doing is destabilizing and dangerous. China needs to be contained.

How did China "enable an unprovoked attack from Russia on Ukraine"?

This was all Russia initiative, wasn't it?

China has willingly accepted to support Russia confront NATO directly and said Putin they will help in case of unilateral sanctions from the West. China may not try to backtrack a bit, but that support directly enabled Putin to invade (even though China may not have been given the details).

China must pay for that.

I suspect its because Singapore has imposed sanction, rather than a willing thing from HQ.

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