The world’s second-biggest economy has imported around 8.42 million tonnes of oil from Russia last month, as Beijing continued to deny to condemn Moscow’s war.
The latest number was a hike from the 5.44 million tonnes China imported in May 2021, as per the figures from the Customs Administration, helping Russia to overtake Saudi Arabia as China’s main source of oil.
In May, China imported 7.82 million tonnes of oil from Saudi Arabia. This new customs data comes four months into the war in Ukraine, with other buyers avoiding Russian energy imports.
The demand in China although remains muted, there has been some improvement in the past month as cities began to loosen virus restrictions after the country’s worst Covid outbreak since the early days of the pandemic.
This has also allowed some supply chain problem to ease and industrial production to pick up, official data showed.
China’s latest purchases of Russian oil marked a record amount.