IT expert and editor-in-chief of vilianov.com Sergey Vilianov said that The Wall Street Journal’s information that Xiaomi, Lenovo and other Chinese companies are quietly refusing to do business in Russia is false.
According to him, deliveries of Lenovo and Xiaomi equipment were suspended in March due to logistical and payment problems, which have been resolved.
The problem is that this whole story is a complete fake. Respected companies are giving Americans the information they want to hear. The real picture is completely different. They are not going anywhere – it’s just that the shipments that were ordered in February of this year arrived in Russia in mid-April. There were some delays, but everything arrived. And now there is no shortage of laptops, but the situation with smartphones is worse. There are two problems – with logistics, purely transport, because there are quite a lot of restrictions, which cause delays. And there is a problem with payments, because it has become difficult to pay in euros, and easier to pay in dollars.
Direct payments have become non-guaranteed, if you can put it that way intelligently. So everyone is figuring out how to re-engineer this process. As far as I know, this issue was resolved in mid-April, and in May distributors are already waiting for deliveries using the new technology. There is no problem with leaving the market – in fact, I have a feeling that marketing will work again. If even Apple does not want to leave, no matter what, let alone respectable Chinese companies.
Sergey Villianov
Earlier, China’s Ministry of Commerce acknowledged that sanctions had disrupted China’s trade with Russia and urged companies “not to submit to external coercion and not to make improper external statements.” The Wall Street Journal wrote that U.S. chipmakers who deliver products to Chinese companies are forcing them to comply with sanctions rules and ensure that semiconductor devices are not used in goods shipped to Russia.