In August of this year, Russia imported a large batch of diamonds from China for the first time: its volumes amounted to more than 35 thousand carats worth more than $ 12 million, RIA Novosti estimated, having studied the data of the Chinese customs service.

OREANDA-NEWS  For example, in August 2024, China's exports of diamonds (or non-industrial unpolished processed diamonds) to Russia amounted to 35,230 carats or just over 7 kilograms of stones. In monetary terms, shipments reached $12.4 million.

This was the first major purchase of Chinese diamonds by Russia for all time. Before that, the last time Moscow bought these stones from Beijing was eleven years ago, in 2013, but in a small amount - only for 199 thousand dollars.

Ekaterina Novikova, Associate Professor of the Department of Economic Theory at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, commenting on the statistics, noted that now about 90% of the processing of Russian diamonds takes place at Indian diamond cutting enterprises, while Chinese account for about 5%. "But this share is gradually growing, which can be seen in the increased volume of purchases of diamonds from China, that is, already processed precious stones," she said.
"Thus, it turns out that here, too, the European market has deprived itself of additional revenue from the use of Russian diamonds, and Russia has begun to use other Asian markets in order to trade this category of goods," Novikova added.
At the same time, by the end of August, Russia became the second buyer of Chinese diamonds. Hong Kong took the first place with $41.7 million in shipments, and Belgium took the third place with 8.2 million. Israel (1.5 million dollars), the United Arab Emirates (1.03 million), the United States (454 thousand), France (360 thousand) and India (201 thousand) also bought diamonds from China. At the same time, according to the results of eight months of this year, Russia was in fifth place in diamond purchases from China.