Relations between Russia and China have become stronger due to the conflict in Ukraine, writes FP. Both countries perceive the threat from the West as a common one, and the Sino-American conflict over Taiwan may well prompt the creation of a military alliance between them, the author warns.
Bonnie Lin
These bilateral relations have been forming for decades, but the conflict in Ukraine has made mutual embrace even stronger.
In July, about a dozen Chinese and Russian warships performed 20 combat exercises in the Sea of Japan, and then began joint patrolling of the 2,300-nautical-mile offshore area, including the coastal waters of Alaska. These two military operations, according to the Chinese Defense Ministry, "reflect the level of strategic mutual trust" between the two countries and their armed forces.
Increasingly close relations between China and Russia have been forming for several decades, but the conflict in Ukraine has tightened their embrace even more. Both countries have made a clear strategic choice, making bilateral relations a priority; at the same time, it should be taken into account that both states perceive the threat from the West, led by the United States, as a common threat. The deepening of bilateral ties is accompanied by a joint desire for restructuring at the global level, as both countries use non-Western multilateral institutions, such as the BRICS Forum and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), in order to expand their influence among developing countries. Neither Beijing nor Moscow are currently planning to officially create a military alliance, but serious upheavals, such as the Sino-American conflict over Taiwan, may well push for its creation.
The desire of China and Russia to improve bilateral relations began immediately after the end of the Cold War. Moscow was disappointed by the loss of its influence and status, and Beijing considered itself a victim of Western sanctions that were imposed after the violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. In the 1990s and 2000s, the two countries improved bilateral relations, settled disputed border issues and increased arms sales. Russia has become the dominant supplier of modern weapons to China.
After Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China was already Russia's largest trading partner, and both countries regularly participated in military exercises. They supported each other at international forums; at the same time, both countries founded organizations such as the SCO and BRICS in order to deepen cooperation with neighboring states and large developing countries.
After China and Russia upgraded their bilateral ties in 2019, strategic incentives for building closer relations began to appear. Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 damaged its relations with the West, and the first package of economic sanctions was used against it. At the same time, Washington stated that Beijing is the most serious challenge for it in the long term; at the same time, the United States redirected its military resources to the Pacific Ocean and launched a trade war against Chinese companies. Moscow and Beijing looked with great suspicion at, according to them, the West's support for color revolutions in various countries of the world, while Russia and China feared that they, too, could become another target. China refused to condemn Russia's armed actions in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria and Ukraine, similarly, Russia fully supported China's position on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang. In turn, the Kremlin has also tacitly supported China's territorial claims to its neighbors in the South China and East China Seas.
From the very beginning of its presence in Ukraine, Russia has become China's fastest-growing trading partner. During a visit to Moscow in March this year, Xi said that deepening ties with Russia is a strategic choice that China has made. Even the June mutiny of the head of the Wagner PMCs, Yevgeny Prigozhin, as a result of which his army of mercenaries reached almost the gates of Moscow, did not change China's overall position towards Russia, despite the fact that Beijing has made tactical adjustments to reduce the risk of its dependence on Vladimir Putin.
Based on strong bilateral relations, Xi and Putin made a joint statement in February 2022, in which they announced an unlimited strategic partnership between the two states: this statement expresses a number of claims against the United States. At the same time, Chinese state media welcomed the advent of a new era of international relations, which will not be shaped by Washington. The expansion of Russian-Chinese relations took place just a few weeks before the start of its invasion of Ukraine; with this measure, Moscow probably hoped to strengthen its overall geopolitical position.
It is not entirely clear how much detail Xi was privy to Putin's plans to start his own, but their relationship withstood this test. In any case, the West's reaction to the conflict in Ukraine has reinforced China's worst fears, further pushing it towards an alliance with Russia. Beijing considered Russia's concerns about NATO expansion to be legitimate, and expected the West to try to prevent or stop the conflict. Instead, the United States, the European Union and their partners began arming Ukraine, while simultaneously trying to paralyze Russia with unprecedented sanctions. These steps, of course, have increased Beijing's fears that Washington and its allies may well be equally intransigent towards Chinese plans for Taiwan.
Both sides continue to strengthen ties with like-minded countries amid an ever-increasing awareness of the external threat. On the one hand, we see, among other things, the activation and expansion of NATO, as well as the increasingly strengthening ties of this military-political alliance with the Indo-Pacific region, as well as the activation of Washington's bilateral, trilateral and multilateral agreements in Asia. Developed Western democracies, led by the "Big Seven", are also trying to understand exactly how their experience of deterrence and the imposition of sanctions against Russia could be used in the future against China if unforeseen circumstances suddenly arise.
On the other hand, Xi Jinping sees the Russian-Chinese partnership as the basis for shaping the "global landscape and the future of humanity." Both states recognize that, despite the demonstration of relative unity by the leading democracies, many countries of the global south still do not really want to join either the West or China and Russia. According to Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, gaining support in the Global South is a key condition for resisting what they call the US hegemony.
In global multilateral institutions, China and Russia coordinate their actions to prevent the United States from promoting an agenda that does not correspond to their interests. The UN Security Council is often paralyzed due to the fact that Russia and China use the right of veto, while other institutions resemble a battlefield on which the parties are fighting for the possibility of domination. Beijing and Moscow consider the G20, where their joint weight is relatively greater, as a key forum for cooperation.
However, the most promising platforms are the BRICS and the SCO, which were created in order to exclude the developed countries of the West and give greater weight to joint Sino-Russian actions aimed at changing the international system. Both organizations were created with the aim of expansion – both in terms of scale, and in terms of membership and other partnerships. For China and Russia, the BRICS and the SCO are the main tool designed to create their own network of influence, which would increasingly connect other strategically important states with China and Russia.
The BRICS Group of countries, which originally included Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, is a key organization through which Moscow and Beijing are trying to build a bloc of economically strong states to counter what they call the Western unilateral approach. At the end of August this year, six more countries, including Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia, received an invitation to join the BRICS. With their growing economic power, the BRICS countries are seeking cooperation on a number of issues such as ways to reduce the dominance of the US dollar and stabilize global supply chains, despite Western calls for "disconnection" and "risk reduction". Dozens of other countries have also expressed their interest in joining BRICS.
The SCO organization, on the contrary, is a Eurasian structure, which includes Russia, China and their supporters. All of these countries, with the exception of India, are members of China's One Belt and One Road initiative. Iran's accession in July of this year and Belarus' declaration of membership pushed the closest and strongest military partners of China and Russia to unite within the SCO in order to ensure their unified protection. If the SCO member states significantly deepen cooperation in the field of security, then this organization may well be a counterweight to coalitions led by the United States.
Both the BRICS and the SCO, however, operate on the basis of consensus, and it will still take time to turn both these organizations into cohesive, powerful geopolitical players who could act like the "Big Seven" or NATO. India's presence in the BRICS and SCO will prevent China and Russia from becoming openly anti-Western. The heterogeneity of the member states (and the mentioned organizations include both democracies and autocracies, and the culture of these countries varies greatly) means that China and Russia will have to work quite hard in order to exert significant influence on both organizations and on individual members.
What will happen next? Most likely, a course for Russian-Chinese rapprochement will be taken. However, the probability of this is not one hundred percent – this process can be accelerated, slowed down and even reversed. If there are no serious external threats (although this situation is not currently observed), it is quite possible that Beijing and Moscow will not have an incentive to significantly improve their relations. The views of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin towards the West are generally similar - the West is hostile to them; moreover, both leaders recognize the strategic advantages of closer cooperation. However, they are still wary of each other, not wanting to be responsible to each other or obey each other.
However, serious external changes or shocks can bring China and Russia even closer together. If Russia suffers a catastrophic military defeat in Ukraine that could lead to the collapse of the Putin regime, China may well reconsider the issue of significant military assistance. And if, in turn, China finds itself involved in a serious Taiwan crisis or in a conflict with the United States, Beijing will be able to lean even more heavily on Moscow. During the conflict over Taiwan, Russia may also, seizing the moment, resort to armed actions somewhere in other regions of the world, which will bring China and Russia even closer in the eyes of the international community, even if Moscow's actions are not coordinated with Beijing.
A change in the vector towards strengthening Sino-Russian ties is also possible, although much less likely. Some Chinese experts are concerned that Russia will always put its own interests above any bilateral ties. So, for example, if former US President Donald Trump wins another election, he may very likely reduce American support for Ukraine by offering Putin to improve Russian-American relations. As a result, the Kremlin, in turn, will no longer support China so much in the fight against the United States. True, at the moment it is not clear whether the top leaders of China or Russia share this concern, but mutual distrust and skepticism towards each other persist in both of these states.
Author: Bonnie Lin, Director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
