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President Vladimir Putin on Sunday met personally with China's defense chief in Moscow, in a further sign of deepening military ties between the two countries.
Li Shangfu, whose three-day visit ends on Tuesday, is the first Chinese defense minister to set foot in Moscow since Russia's invasion of Ukraine began nearly 14 months ago. Li was greeted by Putin as well as his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, according to footage released by the Kremlin.
The 65-year-old's trip comes less than a month after China's president, Xi Jinping, paid an official state visit to Russia in an unmistakable demonstration of political backing for Putin, who days earlier had become the subject of an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Ukraine.
Western officials in recent months said Beijing was considering the supply of offensive weaponry to Moscow to help its forces prosecute the now drawn-out military campaign, but they saw no evidence of such transfers taking place. Ukraine's military commanders, meanwhile, were said to be finding more and more Chinese parts in Russian hardware captured or abandoned on the battlefields.
In brief remarks with Russia's president, Li conveyed "the warmest greetings and the best wishes" from Xi, according to a readout published on Sunday by the Kremlin.
"As of late, military and military-technical cooperation between Russia and China is developing very well. This is making a major contribution to maintaining global and regional security," he said.
Li was appointed defense minister last month and spent five years as head of equipment development in China's Central Military Commission. The U.S. government sanctioned him in 2018 over the acquisition of Russian fighter aircraft and air defense systems from Rosoboronexport, Russia's state-owned arms exporter.
"I specially chose Russia, so as to emphasise the special nature and strategic significance of our bilateral relations," Li said, telling Putin: "In addition, your personal friendship with the president of China plays a major role" in closer military-to-military ties.
"We have a very strong relationship that goes beyond the Cold War-era military and political alliances. This relationship hinges on the principles of non-alignment and non-confrontation with third parties, and these principles are very stable," he said.
"Under your strategic leadership and that of the president of China, we are actively developing cooperation in practical spheres. Our relations have already entered a new era," said Li.
China's Defense Ministry said last week that Li's visit from April 16-19 was by Shoigu's invitation, and that he would meet other Russian military leaders, too.
Beijing, ostensibly neutral on the war, refuses to condemn Moscow but hasn't officially endorsed the Kremlin's war aims either. Xi has been unwilling to lean on Putin, who he sees as his most competent partner in what is a defining rivalry with the West over the future of the international order.
So far, Kyiv's own overtures to Beijing have been largely met with silence, but President Volodymyr Zelensky is content to give China the benefit of the doubt—so long as Chinese arms don't pour onto the battlefields of Ukraine.
Russia has increasingly turned to the Chinese economy to backstop various sectors amid biting sanctions from the West, which look set to remain in place for the foreseeable future. However, as the conflict rages on, transactions between China's arms and technology industries and their Russian buyers have come under intense scrutiny.
Vladyslav Vlasiuk, a senior adviser in Zelensky's office, told Reuters on Sunday that Ukrainian forces were finding Chinese-made dual-use technology in weapons recovered from Russian fighters. Microchips and other electronics of Chinese origin were increasingly replacing previously Western-made components, he said.
"The trend is now that there is less Western-made components but more—not hard [to] guess which country–made components. Of course, China," Vlasiuk said. "We're picking [up] a lot of different stuff, China made."
China said in February that it doesn't export weapons to parties at war. A month earlier, the U.S. blacklisted Chinese satellite firm Spacety China for allegedly gathering images over Ukraine and providing them to Russia's Wagner paramilitary group.
Speaking last week alongside German counterpart Annalena Baerbock, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang repeated China's assurance that its arms export policies were "prudent and responsible."
"China will not provide weapons to relevant parties of the conflict, and will manage and control the exports of dual-use items in accordance with laws and regulations," he said.
American and European leaders have in recent weeks upped their pressure on China with a collective message that Beijing's own future relations with the West were on the line.
Separately last week, the U.S. Commerce Department added 28 companies, including five from China and Hong Kong, to its "entity list" for allegedly supporting the Russian defense industry's sanctions evasion.
China's Commerce Ministry on Saturday said the U.S. move "has no basis in international law and is not authorized by the United Nations Security Council." It added: "It is a typical unilateral sanction and 'long-arm jurisdiction,' which seriously damages the legitimate rights and interests of the enterprises and affects the security and stability of the global supply chain."
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About the writer
John Feng is Newsweek's contributing editor for Asia based in Taichung, Taiwan. His focus is on East Asian politics. He ... Read more