Russia and China: Strategic Partnership, Unequal Dependency

Jiang Zemin and Vladimir Putin signed the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation in Moscow. The treaty supplied a durable legal and political basis for cooperation after decades of Sino-Soviet rivalry. It did not create a mutual-defense alliance, but it established a framework for long-term consultation, territorial stability, and broad bilateral cooperation.

Gazprom and CNPC agreed to a 30-year pipeline-gas arrangement that would send up to 38 billion cubic meters per year to China through Power of Siberia. The pipeline gave Russia a physical route into China's energy market and gave China overland gas diversification. It also created infrastructure whose value depended on Chinese willingness to absorb Russian volumes on acceptable terms.

The Power of Siberia pipeline began deliveries in December 2019, turning the 2014 contract into operational energy dependence. The line connected eastern Siberian production to China and became the central symbol of Russia's eastward gas strategy. It did not replace the European market in scale or pricing power, but it gave Moscow a working non-Western gas outlet.

On the opening day of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Russia and China issued a joint statement opposing NATO enlargement and presenting their relationship as a new kind of international partnership. The statement said friendship between the two states had no limits and identified no forbidden areas of cooperation. The document became the defining public marker of the relationship immediately before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered a wider Western sanctions regime and a collapse in many European commercial channels. China did not become a formal combat ally, but it became more important to Russia as a buyer of commodities, supplier of manufactured goods, and payments partner. From this point, Russia's dependence was driven less by long-term strategy than by sanctions pressure and wartime isolation.

Rosatom's TVEL dispatched the first batch of nuclear fuel for China's CFR-600 sodium-cooled fast-neutron reactor at Xiapu. The project was civil nuclear cooperation, not documented weapons assistance. It still matters strategically because fast-reactor fuel supply is a technically sensitive field in which Russia held capabilities China wanted.

By 2023, China accounted for 36.5 percent of Russia's goods imports and 30.5 percent of Russia's goods exports, according to SWP. From China's side, Russia remained much smaller: its share of China's trade turnover rose from 2.5 percent to more than 4 percent after 2022. The asymmetry was already visible before the 2024 trade record.

The U.S. Treasury announced sanctions against nearly 300 targets and singled out entities in the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong that supplied high-priority technology, microelectronics, communications equipment, and machine-tool components to Russia. The official record establishes that the United States sanctioned these networks for supporting Russia's military-industrial base. It does not by itself prove that Beijing directed every transaction.

During Putin's state visit to Beijing, Xi and Putin signed and issued a joint statement on deepening the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era. The timing, on the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations, reinforced that the partnership had survived the first two years of the Ukraine war. The statement was a political renewal, not a formal alliance treaty.

NORAD detected, tracked, and intercepted two Russian TU-95 and two PRC H-6 military aircraft operating in the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone. The aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter U.S. or Canadian sovereign airspace. CSIS assessed the flight as the first joint China-Russia bomber patrol near Alaska and interpreted it as a signal of strategic-air cooperation close to North America.

A later Treasury action designated Hong Kong and PRC-linked companies accused of sending thousands of microelectronics and dual-use shipments to Russian end users. The release described shipments linked to precision-guided weapons, electronic components, machining centers, and sanctioned Russian firms. The pattern supports the narrower finding that China-linked commercial networks became a major route for Russia's sanctioned technology procurement.

In 2024, Russia supplied 20 percent of China's crude-oil imports, ahead of Saudi Arabia's 14 percent share, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The shift gave China a major discounted supply source while giving Russia a critical outlet after Western restrictions. OSW's 2026 assessment says China used Russia's dependence on its market to demand deeper price discounts.

Chinese customs data reported by TASS put 2024 bilateral trade at $244.81 billion, up 1.9 percent from 2023. The figure showed that wartime trade did not merely survive sanctions pressure; it reached a new high. The composition still reflected asymmetry: Russia sold raw materials and bought finished goods, machinery, and technology-intensive products from China.

CSIS ChinaPower's database recorded at least 113 China-Russia joint military exercises through June 2025. The count demonstrates that military cooperation is not symbolic diplomacy alone; it is repeated operational signaling across years. The exercises still fall short of a NATO-style command structure or binding defense commitment.

OSW assessed that in 2025 trade with Russia accounted for just over 3 percent of China's exports and about 5 percent of China's imports, while China had become a core supplier and buyer for Russia. OSW also reported that China had become a key market for Russian crude oil and coal after the EU embargo. The entry establishes OSW's documented asymmetry finding; the broader leverage conclusion is handled in the interpretation section.

AP reported that Putin and Xi met in Beijing in May 2026 and emphasized strategic ties and growing energy trade. Putin described energy cooperation as a driving force of the economic relationship, while China presented itself as a responsible consumer of Russian resources. The meeting showed continuity: even after years of war and sanctions, energy remained the relationship's central material pillar.