On The Triangle’s Ruins: Why the partnership between Russia and China is far less reliable than it seems

The disappearance of the triangle

On 23-24 September, Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Washington on an official visit. The format is tightly constrained and the agenda narrow: the trade balance and the fate of the tariff truce, access to advanced semiconductors and the export control regime, Taiwan, Iran, and the contours of nuclear stability following the expiry of New START. There is no Russian issue on the agenda in its own right. Ukraine, if it comes up at all, will most likely be mentioned only in passing. Following the US president's visit to Beijing in May, he merely noted that the war had been ‘discussed’.

The absence of issues directly related to Moscow is not simply a technical detail. It is a diagnosis of the position into which Russia has manoeuvred itself. And the recent speculations by Putin’s aide on international affairs, Ushakov, about a possible meeting between Trump, Xi and Putin at the November APEC summit in Shenzhen does not alter that diagnosis. If anything, it confirms it. The Kremlin is publicly testing the possibility of a trilateral format, while Washington and Beijing remain silent. Moscow's desire to sit at the same table as the two principal centres of power, or even simply to signal the possibility of such a meeting, demonstrates how acutely it perceives the threat posed by the disappearance of the ‘Great Triangle’ of Washington, Beijing and Moscow.

Kissinger’s classic formula, which shaped US diplomatic strategy within this triangle, was that the United States should maintain better relations with both Moscow and Beijing than they had with each other. This allowed Washington to occupy the apex of the triangle and benefit from the mutual distrust of the other two sides. This was precisely how Nixon and Kissinger exploited the Sino-Soviet split in the early 1970s.

However, this arrangement had one essential prerequisite: all three vertices had to be sufficiently autonomous, while the weakest of them had to retain freedom of manoeuvre. In the 1970s and 1980s, this position was occupied by China; by the 2010s, it had shifted to Moscow. The ability to manoeuvre was itself a form of strategic capital. As long as Russia could, at least theoretically, move towards Washington, its alignment was highly valuable to both Beijing and the United States. Its potential to shift made Russia an actor in the game rather than a prize in someone else’s rivalry.

Today, Moscow has very little of this capital left. The war against Ukraine has made Russia structurally dependent on China, precluding a partnership in the Kissingerian sense. This dependence is not determined by the existence of any particular channels, but by their cumulative effect. China has become an almost irreplaceable market for Russian hydrocarbons, and one where the buyer, rather than the seller, sets the terms. It has also become Russia’s key supplier of technology and dual-use components, without which Russian military production is struggling; its main source of parallel imports, which ease the pressure of sanctions; and the principal pillar of the payment infrastructure through which Russia conducts transactions following its rupture with the Western financial system. Iran and North Korea, Moscow’s newer partners, merely supplement this structure. But it is China that provides the economic and technological depth without which individual military supplies could not translate into a sustained capacity to wage a prolonged war under sanctions.

The depth of this asymmetry was demonstrated by Putin’s visit to Beijing in May. Outwardly, it looked triumphant: state honours comparable to those accorded to Trump just days earlier, around forty memoranda signed, and mutual praise. Yet Putin failed to achieve his key objective of an agreement on the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline, which Moscow has been seeking for almost two decades. Beijing is keeping its options open and bargaining over price and volumes because it has alternatives and is in no hurry to commit itself. Symbolically, the visit looked like a meeting of equals. In substance, however, it was a visit by an energy supplicant to an almost irreplaceable buyer.

This leads to the main conclusion. The ‘reverse Kissinger’ strategy, with its temptation to recreate the 1970s configuration in mirror image by this time separating Russia from China, is constrained not by a lack of political will or diplomatic ingenuity, but by the changed structure of the relationship. The triangle has contracted into an asymmetric ‘senior-junior’ axis, in which Russia no longer controls its choice of pole, but merely the terms of its subordinate position vis-à-vis China.

It is precisely this shift that makes both the empty space for Russia in the September US-China summit agenda and Moscow’s attempt to propose a trilateral format so revealing. Moscow is seeking to compensate for its loss of structural autonomy by preserving its symbolic status as a third great power. For the Kremlin, a meeting between Trump, Xi and Putin would be a way of masking its asymmetric dependence on China behind the public image of an equal-sided triangle. But that is precisely why such a meeting is unlikely to actually take place.

The fault lines of the partnership

However, the argument that ‘a reverse Kissinger is impossible has in recent years often served Western policymakers as a justification for inaction. This conclusion has acquired an interpretation that effectively legitimises passivity, that is, if Russia cannot be separated from China, the argument goes, the West can only watch as their partnership deepens. The principal argument advanced by proponents of this approach is that the foundations of the Moscow-Beijing rapprochement are too deep for a ‘wedge strategy’ to break it apart. These foundations include a shared rejection of US primacy; economic complementarity reinforced by sanctions; and convergence on questions of strategic security, which the West cannot overcome with any conceivable inducements.

However, the validity of this conclusion by no means implies that we should remain inactive. Efforts should be directed not towards an unattainable ‘divorce’, but towards increasing the costs of the partnership for both sides. The Russia-China partnership is real, but it is far from seamless. And its asymmetry, the relationship between a ‘senior’ and a ‘junior’ partner, is a source not only of resilience but also of vulnerability. Moscow is acutely conscious of this position. This is not a matter of conjecture among Western analysts, but of real frictions recognised within the Russian elite itself.

Let us take economic dependence as the clearest manifestation of the deepening asymmetry. In 2024, China accounted for around 30% of Russia’s goods exports; according to the EU Institute for Security Studies (EUISS), Chinese products accounted for 57% of Russian imports. For Beijing, the significance of these ties is incomparably smaller, as Russia accounted for around 5% of Chinese imports and absorbed just 3.2% of its exports (→ Caruso, Rühlig: The Dependence Gap; Stolyarov, Marrow: Russia’s Slowing Economic Growth). The imbalance is even more pronounced in critical technology categories. According to estimates by the US administration, in 2023 China supplied around 90% of Russia’s imported microelectronics and, in the final quarter of that year, almost 70% of imported machine tools. Interdependence does, of course, exist. For example, in 2024, Russia supplied 20% of China’s oil imports and around a quarter of its coal imports. However, Beijing retains diversified sources of raw materials, making it considerably easier for China to replace Russia than it is for Moscow to replace China as a market, a source of equipment and a channel for access to critical components.

Equally telling is the gap between trade and investment. Beijing is in no hurry to compensate for the departure of Western capital with major new investments in Russia’s energy sector or economy more broadly. In 2022-23, the average annual inflow of Chinese foreign direct investment amounted to only around $400 million, compared with $1.2 billion in 2011-18. Russia accounted for just 0.4% of China’s accumulated overseas investment (→ Rudnik, Kalwasinski: Closing Ranks; CEPA: The China-Russia Authoritarian Meta-Threat; Kluge: Russia-China Economic Relations). Beijing is happy to take the resources, particularly Russian energy, but avoids commitments that would tie it to Russian risks for the long term.

Central Asia also remains an arena of competition between the two countries. China’s economic penetration is displacing Russia’s primacy in the region: China’s trade with the five republics is already more than twice Russia’s. The gap has widened sharply during the war, as Chinese trade with the region has doubled, while Russian trade has grown by only around 30%. The two sides manage the resulting frictions quietly, but their interests are gradually diverging. Chinese loans, infrastructure, energy equipment and even arms supplies are altering the balance in a region that for decades was predominantly under Russian influence. And while Moscow has effectively accepted China’s economic dominance there, Beijing’s ever-deeper penetration into the security sphere is naturally causing concern.

Despite the notable deepening of Russia-China military-technical cooperation, Moscow continues to restrict the transfer to China of its most sensitive defence technologies, above all those on which its remaining technological advantages depend (→ Zakharov: Russia-China Defence and Security Partnership). Under the pressure of war and sanctions, these barriers are being eroded, but they have not disappeared. Having assumed the role of junior partner, Russia is giving Beijing greater access than before while simultaneously seeking to avoid giving away too much. The continuing wariness is also highlighted by the cases of Russian scientists accused of passing on classified information to China.

Even more telling is an allegedly internal FSB document that was published following a leak, concerning the Entente-4 counter-intelligence programme. The document explicitly describes China as an ‘adversary’ and assesses its systematic attempts to recruit Russian specialists and obtain military technologies as a serious threat. The document’s authenticity cannot be definitively confirmed, although, according to The New York Times, six Western intelligence agencies have deemed it genuine. The strongest argument for its credibility, however, is that cases of Chinese industrial espionage in Russia and the subsequent copying of Russian technologies are well documented and, naturally, known to the Russian side (→ China Power: How Deep Are China-Russia Military Ties; Re:Russia: The Attempt To Drive A Wedge Between Russia and China Has Failed). Mistrust, therefore, is embedded deep in the very foundations of the relationship.

China’s behaviour on sanctions issues also exposes clear limits to the ‘partnership’: Chinese companies operating in international markets, and particularly Chinese banks, have systematically restricted Russian counterparties and created difficulties for them, responding sensitively to each tightening of Western pressure. Ties with Russia impose tangible costs on China, and this calculation is a constant factor in its sanctions policy. China pays a real price in Europe for its tacit support of Moscow and, unlike Russia, remains sensitive to that price. Beijing has a reputation, markets and supply chains that it values. Russian businesses also recognise these limits and understand their place in this hierarchy, as time and again, they have found that access to Western markets matters more to their Chinese partners than relations with Moscow.

A clear asymmetry and underlying tension are evident in many areas of cooperation. The division of roles in the Arctic partnership is particularly revealing. Russia provides geography, ports and icebreaker expertise. China, increasingly, provides cargo, capital, vessels and demand. This is not equal cooperation. Beijing is increasingly in the driving seat, while Moscow acts as the custodian of territory and infrastructure whose value is determined by foreign demand and foreign capital. At the same time, Russia itself signals that there are limits to the partnership in the Arctic that it is unwilling to cross (→ Dagaev: The Arctic Is Testing the Limits of the Sino-Russian Partnership; Re:Russia: Arctic Blitz). Moscow is limiting China’s direct involvement in projects within its Arctic zone, seeking alternative partners, including India, the UAE, and South Korea, and jealously guarding its primacy in polar research. Even where its dependence is greatest, Russia is trying, with varying degrees of success, to preserve the assets and leverage it still possesses and prevent its junior status from becoming irreversible. The Arctic story therefore reproduces, in miniature, the broader asymmetry of the partnership as a whole: even in the area of greatest dependence, Russia is bargaining over the limits of its ‘junior’ status.

Another point of tension increasingly highlighted by analysts is North Korea. Moscow’s deepening military cooperation with Pyongyang, including the transfer of sensitive technologies in exchange for ammunition and troops, concerns Beijing, which for decades has remained North Korea’s exclusive patron. China conspicuously remained silent both on the deployment of North Korean troops on Russia’s side and on the comprehensive strategic partnership treaty signed by Putin and Kim. The key question for Beijing is what price Kim is extracting from Moscow, and to what extent this is weakening Chinese influence over Pyongyang (CSIS: President Xi’s High Wire Act on the Russia-North Korea Entente; CSIS: Renewed China-DPRK Diplomacy: Symbolism or Substance?).

Strategic or situational?

The ‘fractures’ outlined above are not simply a collection of individual frictions that the two sides will overcome over time. The framework within which both countries describe their relationship is itself revealing. Officially, Moscow and Beijing consistently speak of a partnership, but not an alliance, maintaining a model of strategic cooperation without formal alliance commitments (→ RIAC: Should China and Russia Form an Alliance?). Moreover, official Chinese rhetoric increasingly rarely characterises this partnership as ‘limitless’ (→ CSIS: The Russian Situation Under Prolonged Warfare). Behind the façade of declared closeness, there has long been a recognised combination of close cooperation and deep mutual distrust, as for Russia, China is simultaneously a genuine partner with which interests converge and its principal long-term security threat (→ Bobo Lo: The Sino-Russian Partnership).

If the old triangle is gone, the question is no longer how to ‘split’ the Moscow-Beijing partnership, but what kind of change in their relationship should actually be regarded as desirable. This distinction matters not only for policy but for the diagnosis itself. A weakened Russia fully integrated into China’s orbit is not necessarily more convenient for the West than a Russia retaining a limited ability to distance itself from Beijing. Dependence reduces Moscow’s autonomy, but not its capacity to create risks.

At the same time, the more forcefully external pressure is applied to the Russia-China relationship as a single entity, the easier it becomes for Moscow and Beijing to portray their rapprochement as a form of compelled self-defence against a common adversary. Direct pressure on the partnership becomes the external challenge around which the two sides draw closer. But the fault lines themselves do not disappear. They remain a reminder that the partnership is resilient not because the two sides’ interests have converged, but because the cost of divergence is currently far higher for Moscow than for Beijing.

For the current Russian regime, China has become a partner of last resort, that is, an external force that helps sustain both the domestic political system and the country’s foreign policy, including the war against Ukraine. This relationship is deeply personalised. Putin sees China as a condition not only for the security of the regime but for his own hold on power. Beijing, for its part, is unlikely to be interested in an overly decisive Russian victory, as a strengthened Putin might seek to renegotiate the extent of Russia’s dependence on China. This is why the current relationship is so resilient: it sustains not simply a state, but a particular regime and a particular policy course.

However, the stability of the current model does not mean that Russia’s long-term subordination to China is inevitable. Structural dependence is not a law of geography. It emerged from a specific political course, a specific war and a specific set of sanctions and trade consequences. That is why it is important to distinguish between Russia’s current dependence and its permanent ‘belonging’ to China’s orbit. The former has already become a reality. The latter remains a hypothesis.

Western policy can counteract the course pursued by the current authorities while preserving the possibility of a future strategic shift by Russia. If the West itself helps entrench Russia in China’s orbit, it will turn the consequences of the current policy course into a long-term condition of the country and thereby strengthen precisely the bloc whose consolidation it seeks to prevent.

Alternative strategies

The realistic task for the West, therefore, is not to engineer a ‘divorce’ between Moscow and Beijing, but to limit their ability to dictate terms to neighbouring states, sustain the war in Europe with impunity, and establish rules in the Arctic by fait accompli. None of the fault lines identified above is capable, on its own, of breaking the Russia-China partnership apart. Together, however, they define an area in which Western policy can genuinely exert influence: not over the existence of the Russia-China relationship, but over its terms, the pace of interaction and the costs it imposes on both sides. Targeted pressure on specific nodes in the relationship can raise the cost of particular operations without giving the regimes the impression of being under attack.

This is further complicated by the fact that the ‘West’ as a unified strategic actor remains, to a considerable extent, a convenient fiction. There is no agreement among transatlantic capitals either on the ultimate objectives towards Ukraine or on whether China is a systemic adversary or still a trading partner whose behaviour can be changed. The US administration tends towards bilateral bargaining with Beijing on a ‘deal-for-deal’ basis, often over the heads of its allies, and treats the Russian issue as secondary. Much of Europe, by contrast, sees Russia’s dependence on China as a strategic threat that Washington is prepared to set aside in pursuit of agreements on semiconductors and tariffs.

A comprehensive common doctrine towards China remains a distant prospect. Western countries can, however, coordinate export controls. They do not need to share a common ideological interpretation of the ‘China issue’ to impose targeted sanctions in a coordinated manner on specific intermediaries. There is no agreement on the ultimate objectives in Ukraine, but compatible mechanisms for putting pressure on Russia’s military-industrial imports are entirely feasible.

The key question, therefore, is not whether it is possible to mechanically drive a wedge between Russia and China. The serious answer today is no, and clinging to the phantom of a ‘reverse Kissinger’ is unproductive. The real question is whether the West is prepared to bear the economic and political costs of making the strategic integration of Moscow and Beijing more difficult, more expensive and more conditional.

Export controls, sanctions lists, the disruption of Iranian and North Korean procurement networks, investment offers to Central Asia and Arctic standards do not require Washington and Berlin, Paris and Warsaw to share a single philosophy of containing China. It is enough for them to deploy compatible instruments in the same direction.

At the same time, it is becoming increasingly difficult to view the Russian-Chinese partnership in isolation from Moscow’s military cooperation with Tehran and Pyongyang. The familiar phrase ‘authoritarian-totalitarian axis’ both captures the threat and distorts its nature. This is not a formal alliance of four equal states, nor does it involve a common command structure or even a unified hierarchy. It is more accurately described as a flexible network connected by flows of weapons and technology, energy and money, transport and payment channels, mechanisms for circumventing sanctions and reciprocal diplomatic support.

Iran has contributed Shahed-family drones, production capabilities and experience in building cheap, scalable strike infrastructure to Russia’s war against Ukraine. North Korea has gone further in its direct military support: it supplies large quantities of artillery ammunition and ballistic missiles, while the deployment of North Korean troops has turned cooperation into direct participation in the war. Moscow pays not only with money and energy resources. In return, it provides political cover and access to military experience and technologies capable of strengthening Iranian and North Korean capabilities well beyond the Ukrainian theatre.

China occupies a special place in this network. It does not command Tehran or Pyongyang and does not bear the same risks as direct arms suppliers. Its role is structural: a market for Russian energy, a source of machine tools, electronics and dual-use components, a logistical and financial ecosystem, and a source of diplomatic weight. Iranian drones and North Korean shells help Russia wage war today. Chinese support enables it to retain the resources to wage war tomorrow.

It is precisely the networked nature of this cooperation that may make it more resilient than a rigid alliance. It does not require a common treaty or complete trust. Each bilateral channel can expand or contract independently of the others, while pressure on one node can partially redirect flows through an adjacent one. Western policy should therefore target not an imagined unified ‘axis’, but its connective tissue: specific banks and payment channels, shipping and insurance arrangements, suppliers of machine tools and electronic components, intermediaries and cross-border procurement networks.

Each of these available levers comes at a price. Linking access to the European market to Beijing’s behaviour requires a willingness to accept some economic losses. Closing the investment gap in Central Asia would entail significant financial commitments. Secondary sanctions against Chinese companies and intermediaries facilitating Russia’s military ties with Iran and North Korea would inevitably generate friction with particular business interests and third countries.

That price is worth paying only for a clearly defined outcome: preventing the Russia-China partnership and the wider network of military-technical ties surrounding it from becoming a consolidated bloc. The goal should be an order in which neighbouring states retain the ability to pursue multi-vector foreign policies, while Russia itself retains room for future choices.