Executive Summary:
- Before 2014, military cooperation between Russia and China was characterized by pragmatic, practical considerations: Russia contributed to the modernization of China’s armed forces by selling various types of weaponry, while Beijing was a lucrative market for Russia’s military-industrial complex.
- Since the illegal annexation of Crimea, Russia has lost access both to Ukraine’s defense industry and to its Western military-industrial partners. This has left Russia with China as the sole remaining major source of much-needed imported military technology and components. In exchange, China has received access to advanced Russian missile, air defense, and electronic warfare technology. Deepening cooperation has also been demonstrated by the growing frequency of joint military exercises. As of early 2025, Beijing was a crucial, irreplaceable enabler of Russia’s sustained war efforts against Ukraine.
- Meanwhile, despite declarations about a “no-limits” partnership, the cooperation is indeed limited. While Russia and China share a strong anti-US stance, Beijing is unwilling to limit its own strategic autonomy and freedom of maneuver by making any commitment to Russia that would lead to an open conflict with the West or the introduction of sanctions.
- A prime example of the limits of Sino-Russian relations is Beijing’s refusal to officially recognize any Russian territorial gains since 2014. Limited trust is also reflected in the joint Russian-Sino military exercises, as these maneuvers are more about demonstrating the will of cooperation to the outside world than improving interoperability between Russian and Chinese armed forces.
- Due to these limitations, while military cooperation along shared interests will continue, it is extremely unlikely that it will develop into any functioning, institutionalized alliance.
The growing military-technical partnership between Russia and China has become an increasingly influential factor in shaping global security dynamics, particularly in the context of Russia’s ongoing full-scale war against Ukraine. Since February 2022, China has gradually become one of the key enablers of sustaining Russia’s war effort, particularly when it comes to the defense industry. However, to understand this change, it is necessary to study the earlier periods of military relations between Beijing and Moscow, because many elements of their contemporary cooperation were built on foundations laid down well before 2022.
This paper assesses the depth and dynamics of Russian-Sino military cooperation, by comparing the era that preceded the breakout of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2014 to the 2014-2022 period and to the one that followed the full-scale escalation. The “fog of war” means there is very limited reliable information about the details of contemporary military-technological cooperation between Moscow and Beijing. This particularly concerns details about ongoing weapons and arms component transfers. Nevertheless, we can draw some conclusions about the general trends of military cooperation between the two countries, especially given the absence of certain actions and commitments, which are indicative of the limits of their military cooperation.
The Beginning: A Pragmatic, Practical Partnership
The military cooperation of post-Soviet Russia and China began as a relatively straightforward arms trade relationship in the 1990s and has evolved into a complex partnership. Beijing needed weapons and military equipment from Russia to increase and modernize its armed forces. Meanwhile, Russia desperately needed export markets for the survival of its large military-industrial complex inherited from the Soviet era. The massive stockpiles of ex-Soviet weaponry enabled Moscow to provide Beijing with less advanced weapons, but in huge numbers. China particularly needed Russian technology for modernizing its air force, air defense, and navy.