OPINION:
On June 6, China and Russia conducted a joint aerial patrol over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea, the third such joint air patrol since Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. China’s defense ministry said the patrol was part of the two militaries’ annual cooperation plan.
And according to China’s defense ministry, China and Russia will hold joint military drills again this year. These drills should remind the world that Beijing is hardly a neutral party, no matter how much it tries to position itself as an impartial mediator in the Russian-Ukrainian war.
China and Russia have become increasingly close under their respective leaders — Xi Jinping and Mr. Putin. Their bilateral cooperation in developing new military and space technologies has become an important pillar of their growing partnership.
The two countries are actively collaborating in the joint development of technologies in telecommunications, artificial intelligence, microelectronics, national defense and cyberspace.
Bilateral cooperation in these areas is driven by China’s and Russia’s respective geopolitical and economic interests. Chinese experts in these fields seek to benefit from Russia’s strengths in developing technological resources, which are difficult for Beijing to obtain elsewhere.
Against the backdrop of growing hostility between China and the United States, technological cooperation with Moscow appears to be crucial for Beijing, as Russia possesses significant technological capabilities in defense production and space exploration.
Cooperation in defense technologies
Russia’s military actions in Ukraine since the invasion, and the West’s responses to them, have catalyzed growing Sino-Russian cooperation in defense technologies. Despite the poor performance of Russian military equipment in the Ukraine conflict, Russia still has the ability to produce at least some classes of high-end weapons.
On the other hand, despite China’s dramatic economic rise, colossal manufacturing capacity and robust scientific research output, it still trails behind Russia in some areas of defense technology.
China is the second-largest recipient of Russian arms. Several major deals were signed between Beijing and Moscow in 2015, including contracts for the sale of fighter jets and air defense systems. Their defense cooperation reached a climax in October 2019, when Mr. Putin announced that Russia was actively helping China develop a missile attack early warning radar system.
Such a system would greatly enhance China’s defense capabilities and would require significant technological input from Moscow. In addition, in its latest demonstration of technological prowess, Russia recently announced that its new intercontinental “Avangard” hypersonic glide vehicle (which Moscow claims can reach a maximum speed of Mach 27), has become operational.
Again, China may offer some lucrative incentives, financial or otherwise, to seek cooperation in developing such technologies for its military as well.
In the past, China has been accused of copying Russian engine, aircraft and air defense systems. In the 1990s, China purchased Russia’s elite Su-27 fighter jets and S-300 missile systems. Beijing later used these as templates to develop its own J-11 fighter jet and HQ-9 surface-to-air missiles.
But despite Russia’s ongoing frustration with China’s reverse engineering and technology “cloning,” Moscow is likely to downplay the issue because Russia has been globally isolated by the West since its invasion of Ukraine, and it desperately needs China’s political and economic support to mitigate the impact of Western sanctions.
Russia’s new defense cooperation with China will focus on technology transfers and joint development projects in arms production. Beyond political and financial incentives, there are other reasons for Moscow to collaborate with Beijing on defense.
As for Russia, it wants to attract Chinese investment in high-tech areas, especially artificial intelligence. It also hopes to gain greater access to Chinese commercial technologies through joint ventures in the defense sector, which would help Moscow further develop its defense industry.
Collaboration on space projects
For Mr. Putin’s regime, working with the Chinese Communist Party to develop nascent technologies offers Russia an opportunity to pursue its own ambitious space program, which has suffered from Western sanctions and restrictions on technology exports in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia’s space program has been diminished by the conflict in Ukraine, as NASA and other Western space agencies have severed their partnerships with Roscosmos, Russia’s state-owned space corporation, on rocket launches and space exploration projects.
In April 2022, for example, the European Space Agency suspended cooperation agreements with Russia on several lunar missions, in addition to scrapping a project to send a spacecraft to Mars. And in March 2022, the London-based satellite communications company OneWeb Ltd. suspended its launches from a Russian-controlled launch pad in Kazakhstan.
Although Russia’s technological development projects have been severely hampered by Western reactions to the Ukraine invasion, even Moscow’s weakened space program and defense projects could still provide benefits to China.
For example, the two nations have agreed to collaborate on space-based sensors for satellites to detect hypersonic and ballistic missiles. In addition, some analysts believe that Moscow is ahead of Beijing in developing and deploying space surveillance technology.
Major joint projects between Russia and China include a robotic mission to an asteroid in 2024 and cooperation on lunar missions. Russia is still one of the biggest players in space, but its space program is steadily declining in terms of budget, personnel and capabilities.
Therefore, a synergistic collaboration that combines China’s technological and economic prowess with Russia’s deep experience in space missions could become a powerful alliance. Such an alliance would be detrimental to other nation-states, because Beijing, and to a lesser extent Moscow, are intent on setting the rules of space exploration.
To secure these interests and objectives, among other geopolitical and geostrategic goals, China will continue its diplomatic efforts to ensure that Russia ultimately prevails in the Russia-Ukraine war, since a Ukrainian victory would likely lead to Mr. Putin’s political demise and could usher in a pro-Western Kremlin.
Consequently, China will either continue to maneuver to end the war on its own self-serving negotiated terms, or to prolong the war in the hope that the ongoing conflict will continue to drain the economic, military and political resources of the democratic world.
• Jianli Yang is founder and president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China and the author of “It’s Time for a Values-Based ’Economic NATO.’”
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