Partnership Short of Alliance: Military Cooperation Between Russia and China

• 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.

According to data published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), between 1992 and 2014, Russia supplied China with over 100 combat aircraft, including Su-27 and Su-30 fighters. Russian specialists also contributed to the development of Chinese aircraft such as the J-10, JF-17, and L-15 trainer.¹ Additionally, China received construction blueprints for the Su-27SK, leading to the licensed production of the J-11 in Shenyang starting in 1998. Leveraging this acquired knowledge, China later developed carrier-based fighters like the J-15, incorporating both Russian and Ukrainian aviation technology.

Russia also shipped more than 300 Mi-17 transport helicopters, at least 12 S-300 air defense systems, a minimum of 35 Tor M1 air defense systems, and several hundred air-to-air missiles for the Su-27 fighters to support China’s ambition to develop its air forces. 

In terms of naval capabilities, Russia delivered altogether 12 diesel submarines (10 Project 636E “Varshavyanka”-class submarines and two Project 877E “Lada”-class vessels), hundreds of torpedoes and Kh-59 anti-ship missiles, and even some 120 AK-176 naval guns and air defense missiles for China’s newly built destroyers. China also obtained two decommissioned ex-Soviet aircraft carriers — the Minsk and the Varyag — to develop its own aircraft carrier program.² Albeit the latter was sold by Ukraine, the transfer could not have taken place without at least the tacit consent of Russia.

In this period before 2014, the two sides had asymmetric, but conveniently complementary, motivations to cooperate: China needed Russia’s military-technological know-how, while the Russian defense industry was eager to sell weaponry to China. 

For China, acquiring Russian technology has long served a dual purpose: It enhances Beijing’s military capabilities and provides a foundation for the development of indigenous weapons systems through military-industrial cannibalization. China has historically reverse-engineered Russian technology, adapting and improving upon it for its own needs — a situation that has irked the Kremlin and led to setbacks in the relationship. For instance, the J-11, derived from the Su-27 and the HQ-9 air defense system, and modeled after the S-300, exemplifies this approach. More recently, Chinese advancements in jet engines, radar systems, and missile technology can be traced back to Russian designs.

Meanwhile, Russia did not show much interest in China’s own defense technological solutions, as Moscow deemed them less advanced than what Russia could domestically produce. This was particularly so because Russia built its defense reform on the assumption that technological cooperation with the West would remain uninterrupted: The State Armament Program 2010-2020 envisioned ambitious defense cooperation programs with the West, not paying much attention to technologically inferior China.³ All in all, before 2014, Russia was an important provider of military hardware for China, dominantly based on commercial motivations.

Deepening Cooperation in the Context of the Post-2014 Sanctions

The international sanctions gradually introduced against Russia following the 2014 occupation and illegal annexation of Crimea started to change the overall dynamics of Russian-Sino military cooperation and the motives behind it. This affected both the political and military-technological dimensions of their cooperation, motivated by Russia’s sudden loss of access to Ukrainian defense industrial products, such as ship engines and missile technology, as well as Western sanctions against the Russian defense industry.     

Hence, from 2014 to 2022, military cooperation between Russia and China witnessed significant developments, marked by a rapid expansion in several key areas, as China became Russia’s only remaining alternative for technology imports. This period was characterized by the growing institutionalization of military-technological cooperation, joint exercises, and military diplomacy, which laid the foundation for the robust yet complex relationship between the two countries witnessed in 2025.⁴ 

The most notable phase of expansion occurred between 2014 and 2019, when both countries increased their military collaboration across multiple fronts. The establishment of regular high-level consultations and bilateral security dialogues, such as annual meetings among the heads of the security councils and the semiannual Northeast Asia Security Dialogue, strengthened the political and military foundations of their relationship. These meetings were complemented by five-year roadmaps, starting in 2017, which charted the course for their military cooperation. By 2021, the most recent plan, which extends through 2025, demonstrated continued commitment to deepening their strategic military ties.

During this period, military-technological cooperation grew at a rapid pace. China emerged as an increasingly important consumer of Russian military technology, particularly in the realms of air defense, aircraft, and advanced weaponry.⁵ While China has made strides in developing its domestic defense industry, it continues to acquire advanced Russian military hardware, including missile systems and cutting-edge aircraft. Unlike in the pre-2014 era, in this period, Russia already supplied China with some of its most advanced weaponry and equipment. In May 2018, China procured at least 8 pieces of the S-400 missile defense system, further enhancing its air defense capabilities. Additionally, Russia supplied China with 10 Su-35 fighters, completing an earlier contract that was fulfilled through deliveries in 2016 and 2017. Besides, according to SIPRI, among other data sources, Moscow also shipped more than 20 Ilyushin Il-76M modernized heavy military transport aircrafts.¹

In 2014, a new dimension of bilateral military cooperation emerged: Russia importing technology from China. The sanctions introduced gradually after 2014 isolated Russia from most of the Western defense industrial partners that Moscow intended to cooperate with in modernizing its armed forces. Some projects were scrapped entirely, for example, the plan to buy the Mistral-class helicopter-carrier attack ships from France. In other cases, the termination of contracts resulted in Russia being deprived of crucial Western components necessary for building its own systems. This significantly affected the Russian fleet. The building of several ship classes had to be either rescheduled or redesigned because the Western-made ship engines (primarily the German MAN and Finnish Wärtsilä) had become unavailable due to sanctions. The situation was further worsened by the fact that the attack against Ukraine also terminated Russia’s access to engines produced by Ukraine’s defense industry.

As a substitute, Russia tried to import the necessary technology from China, but the experiences were mixed at best. For the Buyan-M corvettes, Moscow originally planned to use German engines, and the first five vessels of the class were built with these. After 2014, Moscow had to rely on Chinese-made engines for the remaining four corvettes. However, though these engines were built in China using Western licenses, they were still hardly suitable for the task; they seriously underperformed in terms of power, flexibility, and fuel consumption.⁶ Russia had similar experiences with smaller Chinese engines built into the Karakurt-class corvettes and Rubin-class patrol boats: Their overall performance was much lower than it would have been with the originally planned Western engines.⁷

However, by the end of the 2014-2022 period, there was a shift in the trajectory of Russian-Sino military cooperation. China’s growing self-sufficiency in defense technology, along with the Western sanctions imposed on Russia, led to a plateau in arms sales. Despite this, joint technology projects, such as advanced radar systems and helicopter development, continued to form a crucial aspect of the bilateral military cooperation. Although the volume of arms sales diminished, the partnership evolved into one based more on the exchange of technological components and co-production of military systems. In other words, the dynamics changed: Instead of China unilaterally importing Russian technology, while Russia worked with the West, Beijing and Moscow engaged in joint development projects. This, however, did not prevent China from continuing to reverse-engineer various Russian systems: This reached such a level by 2019 that in a rare move Rostec, Russia’s state arms corporation, publicly criticized China for this practice, claiming that there were more than 500 cases of illicit technology transfers.⁵