Economic Projection of Political Relations between Russia and China on the Features and Prospects of Development of Foreign Trade Cooperation of the Irkutsk Region with the Provinces of China

Political relations between Russia and China have always had ambiguous consequences for the dynamics of indicators of foreign trade relations at both national and regional levels. For cross-border regions, to which the Irkutsk Region belongs, explicit and implicit political and economic "vibrations" between countries, in connection with Russia's special military operation in Ukraine, in turn, directly and indirectly affect the state of the region's trade with the provinces of the PRC. The Irkutsk Region has long been one of the centers of polarization of foreign trade relations with the Northeastern Provinces of the People's Republic of China. But given the high degree of importance of further implementation of the "eastern direction" of the foreign trade policy of the Russian Federation due to the increasing deconstruction of international economic relations “West-East” for the Irkutsk region, the question of its place, role and status in the trends of Russian-Chinese discourse in the near and medium term is being actualized to determine the prospects for the development of the external economic space of the Irkutsk region. The article analyzes the dynamics of foreign trade relations between the Irkutsk region and the provinces of China in order to identify regional traditionally inertial and corrective factors for further adaptation of the region in the conditions of geopolitical and geo-economic transformation of relations between Russia and China. Based on the results of the study, conclusions are formulated about the emerging contradictions between the level of production capabilities and economic needs in bilateral relations between the Irkutsk Region and the Northeastern Provinces of the PRC, which nevertheless do not prevent the preservation of the leading positions of the Irkutsk region relative to other regions of the eastern economic zone, but suggest the intensification of existing ties and their geographical diversification.