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In the West, Russian President Vladimir Putin is an outcast—a man who unjustifiably invaded a sovereignty country, kills or jails his political opponents, is wanted for war crimes, and single-handedly destroyed whatever democratic system Russia had during the Boris Yeltsin era.
In China, however, Putin is a legitimate head-of-state, a partner and a personal friend of Xi Jinping, the strongman president and head of the Chinese Communist Party. In February, after a phone conversation between Putin and Xi, the Kremlin stated that relations with Beijing were at "an unprecedentedly high level," a consequence in part of the U.S.-led sanctions regime driving Moscow into China's orbit. Ties between the two countries are perhaps the warmest they have been in modern times. Putin's state visit to China this week, where he will meet with Xi and other senior Chinese officials, is merely the icing on top of the cake.
It's hard to overstate just how dependent Putin is on China. "Never since the fall of the Soviet Union has Russia been so distant from Europe, and never in its entire history has it been so entwined with China," Russia scholar Alexander Gabuev wrote in The New York Times. He is absolutely correct. The Russian economy, which was reliant on Western markets for centuries, has moved east, with China seen as Russia's main source of exports and imports. Bilateral trade between Moscow and Beijing amounted to $240 billion in 2023, up 26 percent from the year prior. Russia was China's largest supplier of crude oil last year, surpassing Saudi Arabia. This has earned the Kremlin tens of billions of dollars in crucial revenue at a time when it's waging a very expensive war in Ukraine. The Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air assessed that Russia received more than $87 billion from oil exports to China between January 2023 to the present day.
For China, the deeply-wedded relationship with Russia serves its interests just fine. Economically, Russian oil is cheaper than other crude available on the market today. This isn't due to generosity on the Russians' part but rather necessity; because Moscow is now walled off from Europe, its traditional consumer, Russia needs to entice alternative buyers. That requires Moscow to throw in some sweeteners, like discounted barrels, to make the offer more attractive. China, the world's second-largest economy and a country keen to diversify energy suppliers, fits the bill.
Geopolitically, China also sees Russia (at least under Putin's leadership) as a useful partner in the shared objective of undermining U.S. power and complicating Washington's ongoing pursuit for global primacy. A shared animosity of U.S. foreign policy and power projection is the glue holding the Russia-China relationship together, something U.S. officials have long understood but have been unable to counteract.
The benefits for Russia are pretty outstanding as well. In addition to offloading millions of barrels of crude on a weekly basis, the Russians see in China a country willing to export some of the same dual-use items that are vital for Russia's war effort in Ukraine. The Center for Strategic and International Studies found that China's export of electronics, rotors, computer chips and drones to Russia accelerated sharply after Xi met Putin in March 2023. This is a god-send to the Russians, who would have serious difficulty maintaining the current pace of operations otherwise. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said exactly that during his own trip to Beijing last month.
China, however, must be extremely careful. While it's true that Beijing has backed up Russia economically, diplomatically, and in some respects militarily—China's peace plan for Ukraine, for instance, is widely viewed as skewed in Russia's favor—Xi can't afford to be as brusque with the West as Putin has. China's economy is still very much pegged to exports, and the last thing the powers-that-be in Beijing want is jeopardize those flows when economic output is slowing down. As much as China's trade with Russia has ballooned since the war in Ukraine began, it's still less than half of what Beijing traded with the U.S. last year. China-EU trade, meanwhile, was nearly $738 billion in 2023, more than triple the value of its commerce with Russia. All of this means Xi is unlikely to sacrifice economic ties with the West in order to go all-in for Putin. In fact, some Chinese banks this year are moving away from providing financing for Russia, a reaction to Washington's warnings that any financial institution involved with the Russian defense sector will be locked out of the U.S. financial system.
This is why Putin and Xi's declaration of a "no-limits" partnership is off the mark. If you didn't know any better, you might believe that Russia and China struck up a formal alliance, where the two countries commit themselves to defending one another both in the court of public opinion and on the battlefield if need be. This isn't the case. Russia-China ties are at best a strategic partnership, where common interests, similar threat perceptions about Washington, and mutual convenience are binding the two formerly antagonistic powers together.
How long this trend lasts is anybody's guess. But if the U.S. wants to stop it—assuming it can be stopped—it should think first before pursuing policies that give Russia and China an even greater incentive to cement their relationship.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
