Following the 2014 Donbas War and the military intervention in Syria, Russia has been facing isolation in the international community. However, amid the enmity of the international community, China has grown closer both economically and politically with Russia in the second decade of the 21st century, particularly through the trading of natural resources and cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative. As Dan Coats, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, noted in the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, “China and Russia are more aligned than at any point since the mid-1950s”. During the 2022 Ukrainian crisis, China has been considered by U.S. officials as the largest potential aid towards Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. Directly following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry described China as one of Russia’s key remaining friends, and Moscow hoped that Beijing would continue to provide rhetorical and substantive assistance. As Wang Yi, the Chinese Foreign Minister announced, China and Russia “will always maintain strategic focus and steadily advance our comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era.”
China-Russia Defense and Economic Cooperation
China and Russia appear to be moving toward a higher level of defense cooperation in recent decades. Since the normalization of relations between China and the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, the two countries have engaged in close military interactions from cooperation in training and arms trade. Suffering from the western arms embargo after 1989, China saw Russia as a crucial source of advanced military equipment and technologies. In 1996, Beijing and Moscow began a “strategic partnership of coordination” that established high-level dialogues on a range of issues, including security and military affairs. The military ties between the two countries reached a higher level in the past decade. Since 2012, the PLA and Russian Armed Forces have conducted 14 joint military exercises. The Russian government also approved the selling of some of its most advanced military equipment to China, including the S-400 surface-to-air missile (SAM) defense system and Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jet.
The two countries’ converging economic interests also incentivized them to engage in further cooperation in trade and financial strategies. Since the 2014 Dunbas war, state firms and banks in Russia have faced sanctions from the Western powers, hindering the ability of Russia to raise financing in Western markets. After the trade war with the U.S. in 2018, China also began seeking greater independence from the global financial market. Consequently, in order to reduce their reliance on the U.S. dollar and Western capitals, both China and Russia began to embrace the possibility of dedollarization. In 2014, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang signed 38 agreements on a visit to Moscow deepening cooperation on energy and establishing a three-year currency swap deal worth 150 billion yuan (about $24.5 billion). This deal was renewed for another three years in 2017, marking the joint effort for the two countries to pursue financial autonomy. The trading relationships between the two countries received more attention from the public. China and Russia both recognized each other as one of the most important trading partners in the world. China considered oil and natural gas imported from Russia as major substitutes for imports from the OPEC countries and was thus crucial to the energy safety of China.
Impact of the Ukraine Invasion on Sino-Russian Relations
Despite the shared economic and security interests between China and Russia, China remained ambiguous about providing support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Following the invasion, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi restated China’s understanding of “Russia’s legitimate security concerns” and criticized NATO’s five consecutive rounds of eastward expansion for threatening the national security of Russia. However, China gradually abandoned its anti-west narrative and its emphasis on national security. Although the Chinese leaders continued to reaffirm the close ties between the two countries, China intended to establish itself as a mediator of the Ukrainian crisis and thought to mitigate the conflicts by facilitating peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
While China hoped to expand its influence in Europe by mitigating the Ukrainian crisis, Russia’s ineffectiveness on the battlefield, paired with the increasing investments European nations are making in their defense, gives the United States a better opportunity than ever to pivot to Asia and focus on the more formidable challenge China represents. On the other hand, the military cooperation between the U.S. and its European allies also reached higher levels. The possibility of a Russian invasion contributed to more defense spending across the NATO countries. While the Russian military is proved to be depleted from the war in Ukraine and European countries are willing to increase investments in their defense, the United States can now relocate limited resources to Asia.
However, a peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian crisis is still necessary for securing U.S. strategic interests in national security and ideology. Firstly, Ukraine has proven to be an important ally of the United States in nuclear proliferation in the past decades. The partnership between Kyiv and Washington D.C. in nuclear proliferation eliminated the large Soviet nuclear arsenal. Second, the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 established Ukraine as a buffer state between the United States and Russia. Therefore, an escalation of the Ukrainian crisis into total war between Russia and the West is a further violation of the Budapest Memorandum and damages the public images of both sides. Third, as two major autocracies in the world, an ideological tie is forming between China and Russia in their collective interests against the United States and the democratic values it represents. Therefore, any direct confrontation between the United States and Russia in Ukraine may turn the Ukrainian crisis into a proxy war like North Korea and Vietnam and eventually lead to a new cold war between the East and the West. In order to protect Ukraine, prevent potential nuclear threats against the U.S. and its European allies, and prevent the conflict between the East and the West from escalating into a new cold war, the United States is likely to seek a peaceful resolution of the on-going war rather than escalation of the conflicts in Ukraine.
Conclusion
For Russia, the cost of losing the war in Ukraine may be too high for the Putin regime. The possibility of further Western sanctions and losing public support encouraged Putin to rely on China for further support. Although China is taking cautious steps to position itself in the Ukrainian crisis, a potential Sino-Russian alliance is the last thing the United States wants to see. On the other hand, as a rising power, China is seeking to increase its political and economic influence across Eurasia through programs like the Belt and Road Initiative and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. As a result, China is hoping to initiate peace talks, and establish itself as a mediator of the conflict.
