The story of the failed project to place Russian goods on China’s AliExpress (they sell goods worth $170 billion a year) is highly revealing: the predictable collapse of a warped and incomprehensible public-private partnership. A bureaucratic whim dressed up as support for business.
For some damn reason, the Ministry of Industry and Trade jumped in to promote goods on AliExpress. Naturally, in a style of crude, provincial patriotism—decorations with the tricolor and so on. Here is their press release from October 21 of last year:
Here are the results a year later:
They probably assumed this worked like government procurement: the main thing is to build a relationship with the buyer, and then you can dump goods on them at a markup over the retail price.
The “entrepreneur” Anna Chapman can win as much favor with the bureaucracy as she likes by taking part in mocking Ukrainian politicians, but that will not help her sell her handbags in a real market environment.
Nor will marketing from the Ministry of Industry and Trade do anything to help Russian business.
Political reform, judicial reform, the repeal of laws that repress business—if work on that started now, then in a few years some Russian manufacturers might be able to compete even with the Chinese.