China–Russia relations

Based on Wikipedia: China–Russia relations

In February 2022, just weeks before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping stood together in Beijing and declared their partnership had "no limits." It was a remarkable statement—two nuclear powers, representing nearly a fifth of the global economy and over a billion and a half people, announcing to the world that they would back each other come what may.

But here's what makes this alliance so fascinating: these two countries spent much of the twentieth century as bitter enemies. They fought a brief but bloody border war in 1969. Soviet and Chinese troops faced each other across thousands of miles of contested frontier, each side preparing for the possibility of nuclear annihilation. The idea that they would become partners, let alone declare their relationship "superior to the political and military alliances of the Cold War," would have seemed absurd to anyone watching in the 1970s.

What changed? And what does this partnership mean for the rest of us?

Four Centuries of Neighbors

The relationship between China and Russia stretches back further than most people realize—to the sixteenth century, when the Qing dynasty first encountered Russian settlers pushing eastward into Manchuria. The Chinese were not pleased. They viewed these newcomers as interlopers on their territory, and the resulting conflicts were only resolved in 1689 with the Treaty of Nerchinsk, one of the first formal agreements between China and a European power.

That treaty held for about a century and a half. Then came the nineteenth century, when a weakened China—battered by the Opium Wars with Britain and internal rebellions—could no longer resist Russian expansion. Between 1858 and 1860, Russia annexed large chunks of Chinese Manchuria, establishing the borders of what we now call the Russian Far East. The port city of Vladivostok, whose name literally means "Ruler of the East," sits on land that was Chinese territory until 1860.

This history matters. It explains why the Chinese Communist Party, even when allied with the Soviet Union, never fully trusted Moscow. And it explains why border disputes continued to simmer until remarkably recently—the final demarcation wasn't completed until the early 2000s.

The Brief Communist Honeymoon

When Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China in 1949, it seemed natural that the world's two great communist powers would join forces. And for about a decade, they did. Soviet advisors flooded into China. Moscow provided technical expertise, industrial equipment, and military hardware. Stalin and Mao, whatever their personal tensions, presented a united front against the capitalist West.

Then it all fell apart.

The Sino-Soviet split of 1961 is one of history's great ruptures. On the surface, it was about ideology—whether to pursue "peaceful coexistence" with the West or maintain revolutionary militancy. But underneath lay deeper tensions: Chinese resentment of Soviet condescension, competition for leadership of the global communist movement, and genuine disagreements about everything from nuclear weapons to agricultural policy.

By the late 1960s, these former allies had become mortal enemies. In March 1969, Chinese and Soviet troops clashed on Zhenbao Island in the Ussuri River, leaving dozens dead. Both sides began preparing for full-scale war. The Soviets reportedly considered a preemptive nuclear strike against Chinese nuclear facilities. American intelligence analysts watched in amazement as two communist giants turned their weapons on each other.

The enmity only began to thaw after Mao's death in 1976, and even then, relations remained frosty until the Soviet Union itself collapsed in 1991.

The Yeltsin Years: An Awkward Reset

Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first post-Soviet president, initially had little interest in China. He was focused on the West—on joining the club of democratic, market-oriented nations, on securing economic aid and political recognition. His foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, even criticized China's human rights record during an official visit. Russia began strengthening unofficial ties with Taiwan.

The Chinese Communist Party's response was characteristically blunt. A leaked Politburo meeting from January 1992 captured the mood: "Even if Yeltsin is very reactionary we can internally curse him and pray for his downfall, but we shall still have to maintain normal state relations with him."

Pragmatism, in other words. The Chinese were playing a long game.

By summer 1992, Yeltsin began to reconsider. His romance with the West was proving disappointing—economic reforms were causing chaos, Western aid was less generous than hoped, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) showed no signs of dissolving despite the Cold War's end. Perhaps Russia needed to balance its relationships.

Yeltsin visited Beijing in December 1992, meeting with Communist Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin and Chinese President Yang Shangkun. One person refused to meet him: Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader who had overseen China's economic transformation. Deng apparently hadn't forgiven Yeltsin for dismantling the Soviet system.

Still, the visit produced results. The two countries signed twenty-five agreements on everything from technology cooperation to space exploration. Yeltsin declared that "the ideological barrier" between the nations had been removed. China and Russia were now "friendly countries."

Step by Step, the Partnership Builds

What followed was a careful, deliberate construction of closer ties. Each step was given a formal name, a diplomatic label that signified progress.

In 1994, the relationship upgraded from "friendly countries" to a "constructive partnership." In 1996, it became a "strategic partnership of equality and mutual trust for the twenty-first century." By 1997, the two nations were issuing joint statements calling for a "multi-polar world"—diplomatic code for challenging American dominance.

What drove this rapprochement? Shared interests, mostly. Both countries wanted to limit American influence. Both resented what they saw as Western interference in their internal affairs. Russia bristled at NATO expansion toward its borders; China bristled at American support for Taiwan. They found common cause in opposing the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, which both viewed as an illegitimate exercise of Western power.

The partnership deepened further under Vladimir Putin, who succeeded Yeltsin in 2000. In 2001, China and Russia joined four Central Asian nations—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan—to form the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. A month later, Putin and Jiang signed the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, a comprehensive strategic and security agreement that would be renewed twenty years later.

Xi and Putin: A Genuine Friendship?

When Xi Jinping became China's paramount leader in late 2012, he inherited a strong but still somewhat cautious relationship with Russia. What followed over the next decade would transform it into something unprecedented.

Xi and Putin met more than forty times between 2013 and 2025. This wasn't just diplomatic protocol—the two men appeared to genuinely enjoy each other's company. On the eve of Xi's first state visit to Moscow in 2013, Putin described their nations as forging "a special relationship." Xi was granted access to the Operational Command Headquarters of the Russian Armed Forces, the first foreign leader ever to enter the building.

But Russia's government initially had reservations about drawing too close to China. Russia had traditionally balanced between East and West, and many in Moscow worried about becoming too dependent on their giant neighbor. China's economy was already much larger than Russia's, and the power imbalance would only grow.

Then came Crimea.

How Sanctions Pushed Russia East

When Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, the United States and European Union responded with severe economic sanctions. Russia found itself isolated from Western financial systems, locked out of technology transfers, and cut off from international capital markets.

China offered a lifeline.

That same year, China and Russia signed a thirty-year natural gas deal worth four hundred billion dollars. Russian energy would flow east; Chinese investment would flow west. The two economies began integrating in ways that would have seemed unthinkable a decade earlier.

China never endorsed Russia's seizure of Crimea—it couldn't, given its own concerns about territorial integrity and separatism in places like Tibet and Taiwan. But China also refused to condemn it. This ambiguity suited both parties. Russia got a major economic partner that wouldn't lecture it about international law. China got access to Russian energy and military technology without having to take sides publicly.

The relationship upgraded again in 2019 to a "comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era." By this point, both nations had serious grievances with the United States. For China, the issues were American naval patrols in the South China Sea, trade tariffs, and restrictions on Chinese technology companies like Huawei. For Russia, the grievances centered on sanctions and what Moscow saw as NATO's relentless expansion toward its borders.

The Ukraine Invasion and Its Aftermath

The February 2022 "no limits" declaration came just three weeks before Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The timing was probably not coincidental—Putin may have wanted to secure Chinese support before embarking on his most dramatic gamble.

China's response to the invasion has been carefully calibrated. Beijing says it respects Ukraine's sovereignty while also arguing that Russia's security concerns about NATO expansion deserve consideration. China has abstained from United Nations votes condemning the invasion. It has opposed Western sanctions on Russia. It has continued buying Russian oil and gas, providing Moscow with crucial revenue even as its other export markets dried up.

But China has also set limits. It has not recognized Russia's annexation of the four Ukrainian regions—Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia—that Moscow claims to have absorbed in 2022. Chinese banks and companies have sometimes refused to cooperate with Russia for fear of triggering American secondary sanctions. And when Russia damaged the Chinese consulate in Odesa during a July 2023 attack on Ukrainian grain facilities, the incident highlighted the awkwardness of China's position as both Russia's partner and one of Ukraine's largest grain customers.

The Economic Reality

Beneath the diplomatic language lies a stark economic fact: Russia has become increasingly dependent on China, while the reverse is not true.

China is now Russia's largest trading partner by far. Bilateral trade reached two hundred forty-five billion dollars in 2024. Russia provides China with oil, natural gas, and other raw materials; China provides Russia with manufactured goods, electronics, and consumer products. This is the classic pattern of a relationship between a developed industrial economy and a resource-exporting one.

For Russia, this dependency creates vulnerabilities. If China ever decided to reduce its imports of Russian energy, Moscow would have few alternatives. The pipelines and infrastructure built to serve Chinese markets cannot easily be redirected elsewhere. And as Western sanctions continue, Russia's economic options narrow further.

China, by contrast, has many alternative sources for the commodities Russia provides. Middle Eastern oil, Australian natural gas, African minerals—Beijing has cultivated relationships around the world precisely to avoid depending on any single supplier.

Military Ties: Not Allies, But...

Russia and China have an interesting formulation for their security relationship. They are, in their own words, "not allies, but better than allies."

What does this mean in practice? The two countries conduct joint military exercises. They share some military technology, though Russia has historically been reluctant to transfer its most advanced systems. They coordinate positions in the United Nations Security Council, where both hold veto power. And they back each other on sensitive issues: Russia supports China's positions on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang; China supports Russia's position on NATO expansion and generally refrains from criticizing Russian military actions.

But they have not signed a formal mutual defense treaty. Neither has committed to fight alongside the other in a conflict. This ambiguity serves both parties—it creates uncertainty for potential adversaries without locking either country into obligations they might not want to fulfill.

Where They Disagree

For all their alignment, China and Russia are not identical twins. They have different interests, different priorities, and occasionally different positions.

Russia has stayed officially neutral on China's claims in the South China Sea, even as it criticizes "non-regional powers"—a not-so-subtle reference to the United States—for getting involved. This neutrality reflects Russia's own interests in the Pacific and its reluctance to endorse expansive maritime claims that might set uncomfortable precedents.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed some tensions. In late 2020, China drastically reduced imports of Russian seafood, citing coronavirus concerns about fish packaging. Chinese restrictions on Russian cargo traffic at border crossings led to a drivers' strike. These were minor irritants, but they showed that the partnership had limits.

More fundamentally, the two countries have different historical experiences and different strategic cultures. Russia sees itself as a great power that deserves respect and fears encirclement by hostile alliances. China sees itself as a rising power reclaiming its rightful place in the world after a century of humiliation. These narratives overlap in their opposition to American dominance, but they are not identical.

What It Means for the World

The China-Russia partnership matters enormously for global politics. Together, these two countries possess more nuclear weapons than the rest of the world combined. They hold two of the five permanent seats on the UN Security Council. They span the Eurasian landmass from the Pacific to the borders of NATO.

Their alignment challenges the American-led international order that has dominated global affairs since the Cold War's end. When they coordinate votes at the United Nations, block sanctions, or issue joint statements criticizing "certain states" seeking "global hegemony," they are signaling that the era of unchallenged Western dominance is over.

But the partnership also has inherent tensions. Russia is the junior partner, and that status grates on a nation that still sees itself as a great power. China's economic weight gives it leverage that Russia cannot match. And their interests, while aligned on many issues, are not identical.

The future of this relationship may depend on factors neither country fully controls. How long will the Ukraine war last? Will Western sanctions ease or intensify? Will China's economy continue to grow, or will it face the kind of slowdown that has afflicted other rapidly developing nations? Will new leaders in either country have the same personal chemistry that Xi and Putin appear to share?

One thing seems clear: the relationship forged over the past three decades has fundamentally reshaped global politics. Whether it endures for another thirty years, or fractures under the weight of its contradictions, remains one of the great uncertainties of our time.

The Border That Finally Got Settled

One often-overlooked achievement of the modern China-Russia relationship is the resolution of their border disputes. For decades, the two countries argued over islands in the Amur and Ussuri rivers—Abagaitu Islet, Tarabarov Island, Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island. These were tiny pieces of land, but they symbolized the unresolved tensions dating back to Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931.

In 2004, the two sides finally reached agreement. Russia transferred parts of these disputed islands to China. Both countries' legislatures ratified the deal. The 4,209-kilometer border—the world's sixth-longest—was finally settled.

This might seem like a minor diplomatic footnote. But consider what it represents: two former enemies, nuclear powers that once prepared for war against each other, resolving their territorial disputes through negotiation rather than force. It's a reminder that even the most bitter rivalries can be overcome—and that the partnership between Beijing and Moscow, whatever its limitations, rests on a foundation of genuine reconciliation.