China, being the world’s leading economy, is already today Russia’s largest trading partner. Complementarity of the countries’ economies, the common border, large-scale transport projects, cooperation in key sectors, participation in BRICS and SCO — these and other factors serve as major drivers for all existing and new bilateral initiatives. The potential of these relationships is to a large extent determined by their content and current trends.

Over the past year, rates have fallen for container shipping from China (according to the Drewry World Container Index). Pricing has approached pre-crises levels. Will this trend be reflected in retail business, and what issues are transport operators concerned with? Retail.ru took these questions to key players on the market.