China and Russia have expanded trade and defence ties over the past decade. They both share the desire to curb the United States’ power and challenge its hegemony using different approaches –Russia has used force, while China has worked to compete with the United States.
Though some experts say Russia’s war in Ukraine has exposed the limits of the relationship. China hasn’t defended Russia on the battlefield, though Chinese officials have refused to condemn the war.
It is only formal for China to be like this at a time like this since both countries are not formal allies yet. China and Russia are not formal treaty allies, meaning they aren’t bound to come to the other’s defence, they call each other strategic partners and have grown closer in recent years.
At a meeting in February 2022, days before Russia invaded Ukraine, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin said their partnership has “no limits” and vowed to deepen cooperation on various fronts.
Xi and Putin are believed to have a close personal relationship, having met with each other more than forty times since 2012.
China is a better ally for Russia than EU since Russian government has a whole lot to gain from their growing relationship. China’s economy is the second largest in the world, only behind the United States’, and more than eight times the size of Russia’s. And it is still growing, despite a slowdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The binds are visible in bilateral trade, which has more than doubled since 2015 to almost $150bn. China is Russia’s biggest trade partner. While Russia is almost a rounding error in China’s global exports, the two countries collaborate in military exercises, regional security arrangements and technology trade.
A while ago, EU, in particular, and the US came together purposefully and forcefully freezed Russia out of the world economy system. China has been ‘many good things” to Russia, the biggest of all, an economic colossus with strong dependencies.
