Political and economic analysis of Russia’s economic ruling strategy since its accession to the WTO

¹YU Miao-jie  ²WU Shuang:National School of Development&Institute of Area Studies,Peking University

Abstract：In order to better understand the internal logic of Russia's economic ruling strategy, and deepen Chinese-Russian cooperation, this study takes Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization(WTO) as an important time point, systematically analyzes the fundamentals of the Russian economy and the key directions of Putin's economic ruling strategy, and provides an explanation of the mechanism from the three “international-national-society” dimensions in the international political economy perspective. According to the study, the main directions of Russia's economic ruling since its accession to the WTO include promotion of economic structure transformation and upgrade, enhancement of market vitality by reducing regulatory restrictions on businesses, stimulating consumption and investment, mitigation of population aging, and improvement of living standards. At the international level, Russia's accession to the WTO has made Russia more deeply integrated into the global economic system. However, the factor endowment advantage of resource-based countries under open trade has crowded out the development resources of other economic sectors, which may lead to impoverished growth in Russia, and it is imminent to adjust the economic structure transformation that is overly dependent on energy and other raw material products. Russia firmly promotes the Eurasian Economic Union, and the formulation of foreign economic strategies reflects national autonomy. At the domestic society level, Russia has formed an industry-based political alliance, which directly affects the political decision-making on specific economic issues. Its economic and trade policy not only closely unites the CIS countries but also implements the strategy of “Looking East”.

Keywords：Russia; economic policy; international political economy; social union theory; factor endowment; internal and external interaction; Russia-Ukraine crisis