Although the attempt to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow has failed, the Russian-Chinese alliance appears fragile and vulnerable

Parade against Trump

The visit of Chinese leader Xi Jinping to Moscow will serve as the key geopolitical highlight of the 80th anniversary celebrations of Victory Day. Xi’s appearance at the event, however, comes as no surprise. The ritual was first established during the 70th anniversary in 2015: Xi first visited Russia on 9 May, followed by Putin attending the anniversary of the end of World War II in the Pacific theatre on 3 September. Over the past ten years, the fact that Putin and Xi jointly, and separately from Western leaders, commemorate the surrenders of Berlin and Tokyo has taken on additional symbolic meaning.

This symbolism is deepened by the fact that China is engaged in a tariff war with the United States, while Moscow refused to accommodate Trump’s overtures, bringing to an end three months of diplomatic flirting from the new American administration. The aim of this overture was to draw Russia into new collaborative ventures with the US, which were meant either to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing or, at the very least, to offer an alternative to an overly tight Russo-Chinese alliance (→ Re:Russia: Three Hundred Days in Search of a Silver Bullet). It is symbolic that, on the very day of Trump’s inauguration, Putin and Xi spoke via video link, thereby demonstrating their readiness to face together the challenges posed by the new American presidency. On 9 May, they will once again stand side by side on Red Square, reviewing the 'Victory Parade', which will not celebrate victory over Ukraine, but at least presents an image of geopolitical unity between Moscow and Beijing in the face of Washington’s diplomatic offensive.

The Trump–Witkoff plan, hatched within a matter of months to sever the Sino-Russian alliance, seemed lightweight, simplistic, and inept from the very beginning. In economic terms, the proposed projects of energy and Arctic cooperation between the US and Russia remained vague and hypothetical and these plans are no more developed, in fact, than the proposed rare metals deals with Ukraine. Any tangible outcomes from them were, at best, beyond the horizon of Trump’s presidency. Meanwhile, Russia’s current dependence on China is critical and cannot be quickly reversed, even in the event of the lifting of US sanctions. Moreover, the strategic partnership between Putin and Xi is grounded in a broad set of shared values and long-term goals. At its core lies a strong preference for political and economic statism – belief in the leading role of the state in public and economic life – hostility to Western liberalism, and foreign policy revisionism: a desire to alter the global balance of power and rewrite the rules of international engagement.

The value-based (and anti-democratic) foundation of the Moscow–Beijing alliance is laid out convincingly in an article by Michael McFaul, a post-Soviet specialist and former US ambassador to Russia, and Evan Medeiros, a professor at Georgetown University. The conflict between Moscow and Beijing during the Cold War – a scenario today’s 'wedge diplomacy' advocates long to see repeated – was not the result of American machinations, they remind us, but rather emerged from the internal dynamics between two communist states. Today, as then, such a split cannot be imposed from the outside. In fact, any crude and obvious interference by a 'geopolitical adversary' is more likely to strengthen the alliance than weaken it. In this regard, Trump’s flirtations with the Kremlin were doomed to fail. A source in The Washington Post claims that discussions on how the US might provoke such a rupture have recently been a constant theme in communications between the Russian and Chinese leaders.

However, the paradox is this: despite the current alignment of interests and objectives between Putin and Xi Jinping in their opposition to the US and the West more broadly, the configuration of the current Sino-Russian alliance does not appear sustainable in the long term. This is primarily due to its asymmetry and inequality, which disproportionately favour Beijing. Although Russia is presently forced to accept this situation amid a phase of acute external confrontation, over time this imbalance is likely to generate discontent, mutual tension, and potentially serious deterioration in the relationship. In other words, while external diplomatic efforts are unlikely to weaken the alliance – just as they were not the cause of its past unraveling – patterns of mutual mistrust, suspicion, and historical revisionism may, under certain conditions, once again bring Sino-Russian relations to the brink of crisis

Asymmetric trade and its consequences

The main factor behind the probable long-term fragility of the Sino-Russian alliance is, without doubt, the asymmetry of their economic relations, which offers too few benefits to Moscow compared to Beijing.

According to China’s General Administration of Customs, bilateral trade between the two countries reached $245 billion in 2024, with China accounting for 35% of Russia’s foreign trade. Before the war, a similar share belonged to EU countries, while China’s share did not exceed 18%. Now, by contrast, Europe’s share has dropped to 11%. However, after a period of rapid growth, bilateral trade between China and Russia appears to have hit a ceiling, increasing by just 1.9% in 2024.

While Russian exports to China amounted to $129.3 billion in 2024, 78% of that figure, according to Chinese customs data, was made up of mineral resources. For comparison, in 2021, the share of such raw materials in Russian exports to the EU was only 62%. China is more rigidly focused on importing low value-added Russian products. A telling example: in 2024, China increased imports of copper concentrates from Russia by 71%, while imports of refined copper and copper products actually declined by 6%. The same trend is evident in the relocation of Norilsk Nickel's production to China, which, on the one hand, will allow it to ‘clean’ its products in order to bypass sanctions restrictions, but on the other, will also deprive Russia of part of the value-added processing.

At the same time, Russia accounts for only around 4% of China’s overall trade turnover. Russian supplies of oil, gas, and other raw materials are, of course, important to China – not least because they are sold at a discount (which at times reaches up to 45% compared to European prices) – but they are ultimately replaceable. The situation is entirely different for Russia: under sanctions and cut off from the West, it has neither an alternative buyer for its mineral resources nor an alternative supplier for essential imports. Over half, around 60%, of Russia’s imports from China consist of high-tech goods: machinery and equipment, vehicles, and electronics, which cannot be sourced elsewhere.

The political leverage that comes from being both a monopoly supplier and a monopsony buyer gives China significant room for expansion in Russian markets. For example, Chinese cars now account for 60% of all vehicles sold in Russia, according to data from Autostat. Chinese brands are not only replacing the Western-manufactured cars that ceased production in Russia, but are also squeezing AvtoVAZ into a low-margin segment by offering aggressive discounts to consumers, complained the company's president, Maxim Sokolov. However, the paradox is that after breaking with Renault, Russia's largest car manufacturer was forced to switch to assembling Chinese cars, onto which it now simply sticks its own logos.

In the commercial vehicle market, the Chinese presence is even stronger, making up nearly two-thirds of sales, according to Avtostat. In 2024, KAMAZ lost its position as the overall market leader for the first time, overtaken by the Chinese manufacturer Sitrak. KAMAZ’s sales dropped by more than a third over the year (due to tighter credit conditions and more expensive leasing linked to a higher key interest rate). Meanwhile, popular Chinese brands saw declines of no more than 27%, and Sitrak’s sales dipped by just 18%. As a result, Sitrak captured 20% of the Russian market, while KAMAZ fell to 17%. Rostec head Sergei Chemezov even demanded government restrictions on the import of Chinese vehicles. Although this demand was partially met – Rosstandart temporarily banned imports of one of Shacman's models – this will not change the trend.

Russia is paying the price for China being its sole major buyer of raw material exports and its sole major supplier of critical high-tech imports. That price is the erosion of its domestic market share by Chinese producers. If the US and China fail to swiftly resolve their trade war, China may devalue the yuan – a move that could pave the way for even greater expansion of Chinese imports into Russia, fears Kirill Tremasov, an adviser to the chairman of the Central Bank.

Risks instead of capital

Unlike trade volumes, Chinese investment in the Russian economy is barely growing. According to the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB), by mid-2024, the total stock of Chinese direct investment in Russia stood at just $18.2 billion – of which $4.3 billion came from a single project, Yamal LNG. A significant increase from $15 billion to $18 billion occurred in 2022. By the end of 2023, total accumulated direct investment was $17.8 billion. This is a very modest figure – less than 1% of Russia’s GDP. In comparison, China’s cumulative investment in Kazakhstan is $10.4 billion (around 4% of GDP), in Turkmenistan $9.5 billion (more than 15% of GDP), and in Mongolia $10.3 billion (about 50% of GDP). That said, Russia does rank first among Eurasian countries in terms of Chinese direct investment in the manufacturing sector: there are 14 active projects worth a total of $6.6 billion. However, the largest project launched in recent years, the production of EXEED vehicles, is not located in Russia but in Uzbekistan. 

Dynamics of accumulated direct investment by China in the Eurasian region, 2016–2024, billion dollars

China has always been cautious about investing in Russia, according to Russian financial analysts surveyed by Vedomosti. In China, Russia is viewed primarily as a sales market, while the sectors where Russia needs capital and the sectors China wants to invest in often do not overlap. It is also difficult to imagine China acting as an investor in high-tech enterprises outside its own borders. Moreover, a major limiting factor is the risk of secondary sanctions. This same risk also hampers efforts to attract Chinese debt capital. That said, even before sanctions were imposed, examples of Chinese lending to Russia were extremely rare, analysts admit.

At the same time, despite not being fully convertible, the yuan has effectively taken on the role of a reserve currency in Russia (exact statistics are not available, but in a report on the results of its work in 2023,the Russian Central Bank noted that options for diversifying reserve assets are limited, which 'predetermines the key role of the Chinese yuan' in their formation). This carries potentially high risks, as the Chinese government actively uses the yuan as a tool of export and industrial policy (→ Re:Russia: Anomalous Dependence). If China does indeed decide to devalue the yuan, as Kirill Tremasov fears, the damage would affect not just Russian producers, but also the country's reserves.

Such a scenario is more than likely, notes Bloomberg columnist Shuli Ren. In 2018, during the first trade war with the United States, China weakened the yuan by 10% to offset the impact of tariffs that were only 20%. Ren points out that just last week, the People’s Bank of China set the official yuan exchange rate above 7.2 per US dollar – a psychologically significant threshold that hadn’t been breached since September 2023, despite the weakening of the dollar relative to other currencies.

At the same time, the regulator asked state-owned banks to reduce dollar purchases in order to keep the yuan from falling further in trading. It looks as though the authorities have already cocked the trigger, Ren concludes. In other words, Russia’s financial pivot to the East is resulting in the import of risk rather than capital. 

During 2022–2023, the negative shock of declining foreign investment was largely cushioned by strong export revenues and increased fiscal stimulus. But as those effects wear off, the lack of accessible investment will increasingly become a slow stranglehold on Russian businesses.

China’s model of economic interaction with Russia appears far more colonial in nature than Russia’s partnership with Europe on the eve of the war. It more closely resembles the pattern of interaction Russia had with Europe in the 1990s – one it spent the next twenty-five years outgrowing. During those years, Russia gradually captured higher-margin segments of global value chains, supported in part by broader access to capital markets. Now, it has effectively reversed course, and the chances of repeating that earlier trajectory within the framework of a partnership with China are far slimmer.

Resigned to concessions

Experts and analysts also point to a number of areas of potential rivalry between Moscow and Beijing. For example, although the widely accepted goal of Russia’s crusade against the West is to preserve its sphere of influence, it is being forced to tolerate China’s expanding presence in Central Asia and, to a lesser extent, the Caucasus. While Russia’s position in the region remains strong, its imperial assertiveness is prompting local elites to hedge geopolitical risks by turning toward Beijing.

China’s strategy in Central Asia and the Caucasus differs notably from its approach to Russia. In these regions, China is investing in infrastructure and mineral extraction projects, effectively tying the export of those resources directly to itself. In 2023, China’s trade volume with Central Asian countries rose to $89 billion (a 27% increase from the previous year). Its largest economic partner in the region is Kazakhstan: by the end of 2024, their trade volume reached $44 billion. China imports more than 80% of Uzbekistan’s gas, notes Lorena Lombardozzi of the University of London. Over the past 20 years, China has brought three branches of a major gas pipeline into operation from Turkmenistan via Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, with a capacity of 55 billion cubic meters per year. This year, it plans to begin construction of a fourth branch. In Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, Beijing plays a dominant role in the extraction of key minerals and has invested heavily in transport infrastructure. The ongoing construction of the China–Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan (CKU) railway will give Beijing direct access to the region while reducing its reliance on Russian transit networks. China is also ramping up its security cooperation with Central Asian countries, according to experts from the E-International Relations project. This includes arms deliveries, the presence of Chinese private security firms, and the Global Security Initiative launched by Xi Jinping in 2022.

Other potential arenas for a clash of Russian and Chinese interests include the Balkans and Africa. 'While Beijing seeks influence and values a stable investment climate, Moscow sows chaos and sells private security services to disrupt it,' reads the subheading of an article on Russia-China tensions in Africa. However, China’s influence on the continent, with trade reaching $295 billion, is vastly greater than Russia’s, which stands at $24.5 billion, the authors note. Moreover, in the end, Russia’s activity in Africa, both through private military services and information operations, is aimed at undermining the West’s presence on the continent. This, in fact, aligns with Beijing’s interests, as China can benefit from Russia’s actions to achieve its own long-term economic goals.

Although China and Russia have points of direct intersection of interests in Africa, they are clearly not as significant as the current strategic alignment of Moscow and Beijing’s geopolitical objectives and the imperatives of their economic cooperation. The same can be said about the potential competition between the two powers in the Balkans.

Here, too, China’s efforts to expand its economic influence are at odds with Russia’s attempts to strengthen its political influence. While Russia may try to assert its interests in these areas, in practice it is severely constrained by its fundamental economic dependence on China and its lack of effective economic instruments in the region.

However, this is, in a sense, the core problem of Russia–China relations: Russia is doomed to make concessions to China and to see its geopolitical role diminish across these fronts. Its desperate struggle for a multipolar world ends up limiting its own freedom of action and leaving its ambitions unfulfilled, while China reaps the real dividends.

Imperial instinct: the Arctic and arms

Russia's economic dependence and, accordingly, its political inferiority in relations with China can be particularly acute in two areas: the Arctic and the military.

In military affairs, Russia traditionally held the upper hand in bilateral relations. In the 2000s, China made large-scale purchases of Russian weapons, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), and used them to significantly modernise its armed forces. However, since the late 2000s, these purchases have dropped off sharply for two reasons: China has focused on developing its own defence industry and has boosted its exports of non-Russian weapons.

China's defence imports, 1992–2024, trend indicator value

A new but short-lived spike in purchases occurred in the second half of the 2010s. However, it was at this point that tensions began to rise in Russia–China arms relations, according to experts from the ChinaPower project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Russia increasingly accused China of stealing and copying its military technologies, violating agreements with Russian arms suppliers, and reverse-engineering Russian equipment. In 2019, Rostec stated that over the previous 17 years, 500 cases of unauthorised copying of its products had been recorded and publicly criticised China for copying aircraft engines, Sukhoi aircraft, carrier-based jets, air defence systems, man-portable air-defence systems, and equivalents of medium-range surface-to-air missile systems like the 'Pantsir.'

By that time, however, China had grown increasingly self-sufficient in terms of weaponry and military technology. And after the war began, a complete reversal occurred in military cooperation: it was now Russia’s defence industry that had become dependent on Chinese supplies. Moreover, while Russia’s share of the global arms export market shrank from 20% in the mid-2010s to just 4% in 2024, China increased its own military exports and, over the course of two years – 2023 and 2024 – surpassed Russia in its share of the global arms trade, according to SIPRI data.

A similar trend is noted by ChinaPower experts in joint military exercises between Russia and China. These exercises began in the 2000s, gradually expanded in scale, and provided China’s military, which had not participated in large-scale military conflicts for decades, valuable experience in tactical cooperation. However, since the early 2020s, a shift has occurred: the exercises are increasingly held on Chinese territory, use primarily Chinese weapons and technology, and are conducted under Chinese command. Chinese military experts described the 'West/Interaction 2021' drills as a moment of 'role reversal' and the foundation of a new brand of Chinese-led exercises involving Russia.

Another area where Russia’s abandonment of its own ambitions remains a serious issue is the Arctic. Russia perceives its Arctic rights as exclusive due to its geographic location. China, however, promotes a different concept: it calls itself a 'near-Arctic state,' asserts that the Arctic belongs to all humanity, and insists on the right to freely use its air and maritime space (→ Re: Russia: Arctic Blitz). These differences are especially pronounced in the case of the Northern Sea Route. Russia views it as a national transportation corridor, while China views this as part of an international Ice Silk Road.

It is clear that Russia cannot develop the Arctic without foreign investment. However, from Moscow’s perspective, its Arctic sovereignty makes it a senior, or at least equal, partner in any Arctic alliance with China. Meanwhile, China’s approach deprives Russia of its advantage as a 'proprietor' and once again implies a dominant position for China in such an alliance.

For Vladimir Putin, Arctic sovereignty is one of the key attributes of Russia’s status as a great power – much like its military might, which, at least in the nuclear domain, remains uncontested. Ignoring or diminishing these status assets is likely to create a high degree of discomfort for the Russian leadership. The USSR–China conflict of the 1950s was the result of a similar asymmetry. Despite being economically and militarily much weaker than the USSR, China’s 'imperial instinct' did not allow it to accept that the USSR and its Politburo could dictate its behavior in the same way it did with its Eastern European satellites.

From honeymoon to ‘Chinese ressentiment’

The war and large-scale sanctions against Russia led to a pivot toward the East and a pro-China euphoria in Russian public opinion, which is strikingly similar to the euphoria of the first alliance era in the late 1940s to early 1950s.

At the same time, Sinophobia is a rather traditional phenomenon in Russia, firmly rooted in Soviet-era propaganda from the Brezhnev period, with spikes of it being observed even in the post-Soviet period, especially in the eastern part of the country. Only since the 2010s, against the backdrop of an expanding conflict with the West, has China started to be seen as almost the main pillar of Russia in this confrontation. These sentiments reached their peak in 2023, when China finally appeared as Russia's saviour from Western sanctions. According to the Levada Centre, between 2006 and 2012, only 20% of respondents considered China to be one of the most friendly countries to Russia. Between 2014 and 2021, after the annexation of Crimea, the first wave of sanctions, and the conflict with the West, this figure rose to 40%, and by 2024, it had reached 65%.

However, in the past two years, both within the Russian elite and in public opinion polls, the first signs of certain disillusionment with the China-Russia partnership have been noticed. The table below shows the results of polls conducted by FOM in 2023-2025, which clearly indicate that the share of positive evaluations of China and the nature of its relations with Russia, while still high, has decreased by 7–13 percentage points. The most noticeable shift occurred in responses to the question of whether relations with China had improved or worsened over the last year: while in 2023 the ratio was 63% to 23%, it has now shifted to 50% to 34%. The proportion of those who believe that China’s strengthening does not pose a threat to Russia has decreased from 72% to 65%, while the proportion of those who see it as a threat has increased slightly (from 14% to 16%), and the proportion of those unsure has risen from 14% to 19%. According to Levada Centre, 18% of respondents answer 'yes' or 'more likely yes' to the question of whether China poses a threat, 25% are confident that China does not pose a threat, and almost half (47%) answer 'more likely no.'

China in Russian public opinion, 2023–2024, % of those surveyed

These observations are also confirmed by the focus group data on the topic of China's perception. 'In recent years, it has been rare to hear focus group participants describe Russian-Chinese relations as allied. More often, they speak of mutually beneficial cooperation based on the calculated use of each other by both sides,' writes Denis Volkov, head of the Levada Centre. In China, focus group participants, on the one hand, see a savior, while on the other hand, they perceive relations with China as asymmetrical and more advantageous to China, he continues ('we give them resources, minerals, timber, and they flood us with cheap goods; they don’t want to share technology much'; 'they take raw materials at a big discount, almost for free'; 'they're milking us like a cow').

Optimism about China in the 2010s and early 2020s was largely shaped by the official ideology of the 'turn to the East,' promoted by the Russian leadership. According to this ideology, in trade with the West, Russia acted as a 'raw materials appendage,' receiving in exchange for its resources Western imports that hindered the development of Russian industry and the economy. While trade in the eastern direction was supposed to promote import substitution and the development of Russian industry. The economic dynamics of 2023-2024 initially seemed to align with this assumption. However, the shift in economic trends from late 2024 will push Russians to rethink the success of the ‘turn to the East.’

As can be seen from FOM data, Russians believe that, Russia, on the one hand, is developing much worse than China, but on the other hand, still has a higher status than China in the global hierarchy. 56% of Russians are confident that Russia has more influence in the world than China, and compared to 2023, this share has even increased. In response to a Levada Center question, 63% now recognise China as a 'great power' (compared to 48% in 2016). However, 80% of Russian respondents call Russia a 'great power.' In other words, Russians do not consider themselves the 'junior' partner in this relationship, even though they acknowledge China’s upward trajectory of development.

In these conditions, 'Chinese ressentiment,' or the growing spread of the feeling of being deceived by China’s promises, has significant prospects. As a result, it may displace 'Western ressentiment,' which formed the basis of Putin's state-driven nationalism in the 2010s and early 2020s. Such a shift can be expected in the context of two to three years of negative economic dynamics in Russia, showing that the 'pivot to the East' was a false bet. Given the negative trend in relations, in which Russia’s positions in its partnership with China will weaken across various directions, Russian propaganda will find it difficult to deal with the imperial instinct of the population and elites, even if it makes significant efforts to do so.