Do China-Russia trade payment frictions show limits of de-dollarisation?

China and Russia have largely moved away from the US dollar in bilateral trade settlement, with most transactions now settled in their own currencies. Yet cross-border payment bottlenecks persist as Chinese banks carefully manage their exposure to Washington’s sanctions regime, according to a senior Russian banker.At the heart of the friction is a stark balancing act facing Chinese lenders: how to ease trade with Russia while safeguarding access to the US dollar-based global financial system – a tension that some analysts believe highlights the practical limits of de-dollarisation.“In practice, we are seeing constantly occurring gaps within the payment infrastructure,” said Alexander Vedyakhin, first deputy chairman of the management board at Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank.