Xi Jinping exchanged New Year greetings with Vladimir Putin last week, saying that both countries have always moved forward “hand in hand” on the right path. China Daily said both leaders vowed to “foster cooperation, deepen ties.” Recently, Igor Morgulov, the Russian ambassador to China, said that Xi will visit Russia in 2025 and that both countries will put up a “double resistance” to pressure from the U.S.-led West. For Western observers anxious about the extent of Sino-Russian collaboration at their expense, the turn of the year offered an opportunity to reflect on the state of China and Russia’s relationship and its implications for the world.
The economic and technological domain appears to be a growing pillar of the relationship. Last week, Putin instructed his government and Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank and a tech innovator, to team up with China to develop AI and deliver a progress report by April. This initiative is motivated partly by international sanctions that have limited Russia’s ability to access microchips and develop its AI industry. In an article last month sketching the future of China and Russia’s partnership, the Council on Foreign Relations described their “complementary economies” and mutually beneficial trade relationship: “Russia relies on Chinese companies and banks for critical investment in its energy and telecommunications infrastructure, while China benefits from Russia’s abundance of oil and natural gas to meet its enormous energy needs.” In an article last month for the U.S. Institute of Peace, Niklas Swanström and Andrew Scobell described how economics is the backbone to China and Russia’s relationship:
The Russia-China energy dyad has become the backbone of their economic cooperation, reshaping global energy markets. Russia has emerged as China’s primary energy supplier, with daily petroleum shipments reaching record levels. This arrangement has proven mutually beneficial with China securing discounted energy resources while Russia maintains critical export revenues despite Western sanctions. The search to develop new pipeline infrastructure, particularly the Power of Siberia 2 project, indicates a strategic commitment to this energy partnership. However, this relationship is unbalanced and favors China, which is now positioned as Russia’s primary long-term energy market on favorable terms and plum pricing.
[…] The transformation of bilateral trade extends far beyond energy markets. Chinese companies have systematically replaced Western firms in the Russian market, often acquiring assets at significant discounts and establishing dominant positions in previously competitive sectors. This process has accelerated technology transfer, particularly in sectors with dual-use potential. However, this trade relationship is increasingly asymmetric, with Russia becoming more dependent on Chinese imports while China diversifies its export markets. Chinese companies have shown remarkable adaptability in navigating sanctions regimes, often establishing complex networks of intermediaries to maintain trade flows while minimizing exposure to Western penalties. [Source]
Given their close cooperation, China and Russia have continued to generate commentary over the extent of their alignment in a variety of fields. Highlighting contrasts, The Guardian wrote a recent editorial that referenced the Chinese and Russian leaders’ different strategies and attraction “not by ideology but interests and grievances, threats and opportunities.” In a piece for Brookings last month, Patricia M. Kim, Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, Angela Stent, and Tara Varma mentioned various ways in which Chinese and Russian geopolitical interests are misaligned:
Chinese and Russian interests are not fully aligned. While Beijing and Moscow share the aim of eroding Washington’s global influence and its alliance networks, the two states have fundamentally different strategic outlooks. As the world’s second-largest economy and largest trading state, China has a far greater stake than Russia in regional and global stability. China does not ultimately benefit from prolonged conflicts in Europe or the Middle East, even if Beijing tends to view these conflicts as greater problems for the United States than for itself. While some Chinese strategists believe a United States tied down in Europe and the Middle East diverts attention from China, others point out that U.S. pressure on China has continued to mount despite these conflicts and that strategic ties between the U.S. alliance networks in Asia and Europe have actually been strengthened in spite of, or in some cases because of, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Moscow, on the other hand, has no interest in serving as a junior partner to Beijing and seeks to expand its freedom of strategic maneuver, as evidenced by its outreach to Iran, North Korea, and India, among others. Both capitals fear being drawn into an alignment that could threaten their independent decisionmaking or entrap them in a war that they have no interest in fighting. In fact, such fears contributed to the Sino-Soviet split during the Cold War.
Finally, despite their pronouncement of a “no limits” partnership, mistrust and rivalry run deep in the Sino-Russian relationship. The two states have a long history of conflict, thin cultural and people-to-people ties, and overlapping spheres of influence in Asia, Africa, and the Arctic—all of which limit the depth of their alignment. These tensions could drive them apart over the medium to long term, as they have in earlier iterations of partnership between Beijing and Moscow. [Source]
Prominent figures have also chimed in with claims about the ever-present question of which country has more leverage over the other. On the one hand, according to a recent interview with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, China may have pressured Russia against using a nuclear weapon. On the other, as outlined in the latest Sinification newsletter, Yan Xuetong, Dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University, claimed it is “impossible” for China to influence Russia on major policy decisions regarding Russia’s war against Ukraine.
When it comes to the media domain, Hans W. A. Hanley, Yingdan Lu, and Jennifer Pan published an article last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that described how Russian state media shapes discussions of the Russian-Ukrainian war on Chinese social media, even more so than Chinese state media:
Comparing narratives on Weibo with 8.26 million unique news articles from 2,500 of some of the most trafficked websites in China, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States (totaling 10,000 sites), we find that Russian news websites published more articles matching narratives found on Weibo than news websites from China, Ukraine, or the United States. Similarly, a plurality of Weibo narratives were most associated with narratives found on Russian news websites while less than ten percent were most associated with narratives from Chinese news sites. Narratives later appearing on Weibo were more likely to first appear on Russian rather than Chinese, Ukrainian, or US news websites, and Russian websites were highly influential for narratives appearing on Weibo. Altogether, these results show that Chinese state media was not the main gatekeeper of information about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for Weibo users. [Source]
