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Comment by Qwertious | Hacker News Reader

Putin mainly benefits from the increased price of oil - black-market oil prices are a discount relative to standard-market oil, so he'll have a much healthier budget, even if his sanctions stay "airtight".

China benefits here - they import Russian crude oil over land, so their costs won't increase as much as the international market (unless Russia uses the leverage to absorb all the benefit, which I doubt), but more crucially: the alternative to oil fuel is renewables, and China dominates renewables so a spike in demand for solar/batteries will be a godsend for them.

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> China benefits here - they import Russian crude oil over land,

No, they don't. 54% of their oil comes from the middle east. Only 20% comes from Russia.

China does have a healthy oil reserve at the moment, so this may be marginally less bad for them. And yes, their electricity comes from renewables, but like in any other country, all of their logistics run on diesel.

By starting this war, the United States, unsatisfied with flipping the table on bilateral trade with other countries just flipped the table on multipolar international trade. What a time to be alive.

Most of their trains are electric, and 50% of semi tractors sold in 2025 were electric. Lots of their logistics run without diesel.

But at least for now, their fret trains have limited reach. They have a big country, with sparse population once you leave the coastal areas. I think this will help them push their railroad infrastructure though.

It's not a sparse population until you're significantly further inland than Chengdu. A billion people are living in an area that's roughly comparable to west-of-missippi USA. It's cities and high-density farmland, nothing else. If there's a few square meters of unoccupied space, somebody planted vegetables there.

75% of track is electrified.

No, they don't import crude oil, but Russian gas by land pipelines.

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