This feature is part of a series on China-Russia relations. Click here to see other content in this series.
China’s decision to tacitly side with Russia despite its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine renewed fears of a China-Russia military alliance. The two countries have so far eschewed a formal alliance, but they share deep military ties centering on arms sales and joint military exercises. Russian arms sales to China have been invaluable to China’s efforts to rapidly modernize the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Joint military exercises have likewise aided the PLA and offered Beijing a suite of other benefits.
Yet military ties between Beijing and Moscow are not without considerable hiccups. China’s repeated theft of Russian technology is a major sore spot, and arms sales are becoming a less important focal point of the broader bilateral relationship. With respect to joint exercises, shifting power dynamics between China and Russia are upsetting the status quo with mixed results for China.
Military Aid and Arms Sales
Through the decades, cooperation on military technology has at times been an important and symbolic element of China-Russia relations. Politically, Russian military aid and arms sales have helped undergird the broader diplomatic relationship. Militarily, arms sales have provided the PLA with equipment that it struggled to produce on its own, like advanced aircraft, engines, and air defense systems. However, China has repeatedly stolen Russian technology and know-how, creating friction between Beijing and Moscow. Going forward, however, the China-Russia defense-industrial relations may be reversed as the Russian defense industry becomes more dependent on Chinese supplies.
The Ebb and Flow of Russian Military Aid and Arms Sales
Military aid and arms sales played a major role in cementing ties between the newly founded People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union. After entering the Korean War in October 1950, China suffered heavy losses and turned to the Soviets for aid. In October 1951, Moscow agreed to provide massive amounts of equipment and assistance from Soviet experts. Soviet aid included around 700 MiG-15 fighter jets and 150 Tu-2 light bombers and effectively tripled the size of China’s air force fleet. In total, Chinese historical data suggests the Soviets provided the equivalent of $1.5–2 billion worth of aid during the war.
The Soviet Union also abetted China’s nuclear development, for both civilian and military purposes. Soviet aid included training Chinese scientists, supporting China’s weapons-grade uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing, and assisting with warhead design and production and missile technologies. The Soviets, however, stopped short of directly providing China with nuclear weapons.
This massive influx of Soviet aid catalyzed China’s indigenous weapons production. Moscow encouraged and assisted Chinese production through licensing and technical support, and by 1956 China was producing the J-4, its first indigenous combat aircraft modeled on the Soviet MiG-17. China likewise leveraged Russian aid to eventually develop its first successful atomic bomb by 1964.
Yet this military cooperation did not last. By 1960, ideological and political differences resulted in the Sino-Soviet Split, which effectively lasted until the normalization of relations in 1989. During this period, the two countries ceased virtually all forms of military aid and arms sales.
Following the resumption of normal relations between Beijing and Moscow in 1989, arms sales again played a major role in strengthening political ties between the two sides. The Soviet Union was one of the only major arms-producing countries willing to sell weapons to China after the deadly crackdown on protestors in Tiananmen Square in 1989, which left Beijing an international pariah. The benefits were not one-sided. Chinese arms purchases were a lifeline for Russia’s defense industry in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Russian arms sales to China burgeoned in the 1990s and early 2000s. Some of the most big-ticket purchases were of Russian fighter aircraft. According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), between 1990 and 2005, China placed several orders for some 270 Su-27 and Su-30 fighters at a cost of approximately $10-11 billion.1 In the years following the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis—during which China’s navy was outmatched by U.S. naval forces in the region—Beijing ordered eight Russian Kilo-class diesel-powered submarines and four Sovremenny-class destroyers.2 China also bought thousands of missiles and several S-300 surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems, among other equipment. Altogether, between 1990 and 2005, China purchased more than 83 percent of its arms imports from Russia.
As in the 1950s, this influx of major weapons systems in the 1990s and 2000s significantly aided the PLA by filling modernization gaps. Russia’s willingness to license production rights to China catalyzed the development of China’s own defense industry. By selling China kits of Russian aircraft parts, Chinese engineers gained manufacturing experience, which aided China in developing indigenous designs.
Problems in the China-Russia Arms Trade Relationship
After a flurry of orders, Chinese arms purchases from Russia slowed considerably in the late 2000s. This was due in large part to decreased Chinese demand for foreign equipment as China’s own defense industry developed. China’s overall arms imports were down 40 percent during the 2009-2023 period compared to the previous 15-year period.
Declining orders from Russia drove much of this fall. China has procured around 68 percent of its arms imports from Russia since 2009—a notable drop from 85 percent during the previous 15-year period.
This decline is partly the result of growing frustration with China’s repeated theft of Russian military technology and intellectual property through espionage and hacks. According to ChinaPower analysis, there have been at least 21 cases of Chinese espionage and hacking to steal Russian military technology during the last two decades. China has most heavily targeted Russian aerospace technologies. In 2004 alone, three court cases saw seven Russians convicted of providing China with information on Russian airplane and satellite technologies. Between 2021-2023, there were four incidents of Russian researchers passing sensitive aerospace and laser technological research materials to China.
Espionage and hacks are only part of the story. China has frequently breached agreements with Russian arms suppliers by reverse-engineering Russian equipment to produce its own. China copied Russian Su-27 fighters to develop its J-11 fighter and it reverse-engineered S-300 SAM systems to produce its HQ-9 SAM systems. This has not gone unnoticed in Moscow. In 2019, Russian state-owned defense firm Rostec claimed that there had been 500 cases of unauthorized copying of its equipment in the preceding 17 years. In a rare move, the company publicly criticized China, stating that “‘China alone has copied aircraft engines, Sukhoi planes, deck jets, air defense systems, portable air defense missiles, and analogs of the Pantsir medium-range surface-to-air systems.’”
The relative decline in Russian arms sales to China is also largely due to China’s shrinking reliance on foreign-made equipment. Decades of growing defense spending and intensive efforts to modernize its defense industry have rendered China increasingly capable of producing its own advanced fighter jets, naval vessels, and other equipment.
China does still depend on Russian-made engines for many PLA aircraft. Between 2017 and 2023, aircraft engines accounted for over half of China’s arms imports (by value), with the overwhelming majority coming from Russia. Some of China’s Chengdu J-20 stealth fighters are equipped with Russian Saturn AL-31 engines and versions of China’s developmental Shenyang J-35/FC-31 jet fighter have used Russian RD-93 engines.3
However, China appears to be making headway toward replacing Russian engines. A domestically built WS-15 engine is reportedly being used in variants of the J-20, and new variants of the J-35/FC-31 are likely to be outfitted with Chinese WS-13E engines. Over the next decade, both planes are expected to feature more advanced Chinese-made engines, including the WS-19. China also aims to phase out the Russian Soloviev D-30KP-2 currently powering China’s Y-20 large transport aircraft and H-6K bombers and replace them with Chinese WS-20 engines.
Shifting Dynamics
Russia’s invasions of Ukraine have upended these dynamics in recent years. At the same time, China’s efforts to modernize and develop its defense industrial base have made it less reliant on Russia, and Beijing has positioned itself as an important supplier to Russia of materials needed to sustain the War in Ukraine.
After Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, international sanctions disrupted Russia’s ability to deliver certain equipment to Vietnam, one of Russia’s top arm export markets. The United States and its allies placed additional unprecedented new sanctions on Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, putting further strains on the Russian defense industry.
Due to these sanctions—and the demands of sustaining the Ukraine War on Russia’s industrial base—Russia’s share of global arms exports has plummeted. In 2012, Russian arms sales accounted for nearly 30 percent of the global total. By 2023, its share fell to just 4 percent.
This has allowed China to gain relative market share. In 2023, China surpassed Russia in global arms exports for the first time, capturing a record high of 8.4 percent of global arms sales. However, China remained well behind other established leaders like the United States and Germany, which respectively took 39 and 11 percent of global sales.
Beyond these trends, Russia is increasingly leaning on China’s massive manufacturing capacity to sustain its own defense industry. The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence reports that Chinese state-owned defense firms have been linked to shipping dual-use components and equipment, including semiconductors, drones, jet-fighter parts, and jamming technology to Russian state-owned defense firms.
The international sanctions against Russia have rendered the Russian defense industry particularly reliant on China for advanced machine tools valuable for defense manufacturing. Between January 2022 (the month before Russia’s invasion) and July 2023, China’s monthly CNC unit exports to Russia surged nearly tenfold, from $7 billion to over $68 billion.
This growing dependence on China could provide Beijing with more bargaining power in acquiring certain advanced Russian military technologies, which Moscow has been reluctant to provide. This may be especially important for China’s development of advanced combat aircraft and helicopters, where Russian technologies remain important inputs.
Joint Military Exercises
Unlike military aid and arms sales, which have waxed and waned over the decades, joint exercises are a newer and thriving element of China-Russia military ties and a driver behind the strengthening of China-Russia relations in recent years. Joint military exercises provide China and the PLA with myriad benefits, such as operational experience and opportunities for deterrent signaling. These benefits could change, however, as China’s power grows and the nature of China-Russia relations evolves.
The Evolving Nature of China-Russia Joint Exercises
China and Russia first participated in a military exercise together in 2003. The multilateral exercise, dubbed Coalition 2003, featured a series of counter-terrorism drills and brought together 1,300 troops from China, Russia, and three other members of the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Two years later, China and Russia held their first bilateral military exercise, known as Peace Mission 2005, which began in the Russian far eastern city of Vladivostok and moved to China’s Shandong Peninsula. The exercise was a major undertaking involving 8,000 Chinese troops and 2,000 Russian troops conducting both land and amphibious maneuvers. Exercises such as these, consisting of large ground or multi-domain operations, were the norm during the early years of China-Russia joint exercises.
As China and Russia strengthened ties, they dramatically scaled up the number and type of exercises. In 2007, they conducted their first joint paramilitary exercise Cooperation 2007, focused on anti-terrorism drills, and in 2009 they held their first joint naval drill in the Gulf of Aden. Starting in 2014, China and Russia began to participate in large-scale competitions such as the Aviadarts air force competition and Tank Biathlon, both of which were annual exercises until Russia stopped the competitions in 2023. The two have further widened the aperture of their cooperation by participating in computer-based simulations and by conducting joint aerial patrols. Altogether, China and Russia have participated in at least 102 joint military exercises through July 2024, with more than half of these taking place since 2017.
China-Russia joint exercises have also expanded in terms of geographic reach. Early exercises largely took place in the rugged terrains of western China and Central Asia, but more recent naval exercises saw the two operate in the distant waters of the South African coast, the Mediterranean Sea, the Bering Sea, and even as far as the Baltic Sea. Joint strategic aerial patrols have likewise seen the two flying across broad swaths of the Pacific Ocean.
Mapping China-Russia Joint Military Exercises
This interactive map visualizes China-Russia joint military exercises that took place between 2003 and mid-2024. Bubbles indicate the approximate location of exercises and are colored based on exercise type. Exercises that took place in two locations have bubbles for both locations.4 View the full dataset that drives this map here.
Please view the map on a desktop computer for best results.
How China Benefits from Joint Exercises with Russia
China reaps many benefits from joint exercises with Russia. First and foremost, joint exercises have allowed the PLA to gain valuable experience operating with the far more experienced Russian military and afforded the PLA opportunities to practice maneuvering in a variety of geographies and climates far from China’s borders. These experiences are invaluable to the PLA, which has not engaged in large-scale military conflict in several decades.
Joint exercises provide additional benefits to China (and Russia) as a tool for sending political signals and deterring perceived adversaries. Chinese officials have long claimed that joint exercises do not target “third parties”; however, the 2020 edition of Science of Military Strategy—an authoritative textbook published by China’s National Defense University—states that an exercise “not only demonstrates the Chinese army’s combat capabilities to adversaries, but also causes doubts, making them uncertain about our intentions.”
In recent years, China and Russia have increasingly exploited joint exercises to signal to the United States and its allies. In September 2016, just two months after the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling that invalidated China’s claims over much of the South China Sea, China and Russia launched Joint Sea 2016, which featured island seizure operations in the South China Sea. It was their first and only naval exercise held there, sending a clear signal that it was a response to the tribunal’s ruling.
In May 2022, China and Russia conducted a joint aerial patrol over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea that coincided with a summit of the leaders of the Quadrilateral Strategic Dialogue (also known as the Quad) in Tokyo. The move was widely seen as a direct response and intentional provocation in protest of the summit. More recently, in July 2024, they held their eighth aerial patrol, which entered the U.S. air defense identification zone (ADIZ) near Alaska for the first time.
Beijing also aims to use the exercises to positively signal to friends and neighbors. More than half of China-Russia exercises are multilateral. SCO member states and other neighbors participate in the lion’s share of these. These exercises help to level up the military capabilities of these countries while also helping to assure them that China and Russia have the capability and will to aid them in addressing regional security threats. They also aim to ease worries in neighboring countries about Beijing’s own intentions, making the exercises an important element of China’s peripheral diplomacy.
Finally, joint military exercises help to strengthen the broader bilateral relationship by facilitating exchanges at multiple levels. The recent Zapad/Interaction 2021 exercises were viewed by Chinese experts as being unique in that the two sides not only jointly conducted the exercise but also collaborated in planning and commanding the exercises. More broadly, exercises have provided opportunities for Chinese military leaders—including vice chairs of China’s Central Military Commission and defense ministers—to meet with their Russian counterparts.
On top of this, exercises increase mutual trust and transparency by revealing to each other their respective capabilities. At Zapad/Interaction 2021, more than 80 percent of China’s equipment used in the exercise was new—including the PLA’s KJ-500 airborne early warning and control aircraft, J-20 and J-16 fighters, Y-20 transport planes, and surveillance and combat drones—giving Russia a look at some of China’s most advanced systems
The Shifting Dynamics of China-Russia Joint Exercises
The benefits that China gains from joint exercises with Russia are changing as China-Russia power dynamics shift. Chinese analysts increasingly emphasize China’s military capabilities are catching up with, or surpassing, Russia’s. One expert argues, for example, that Chinese battalion groups have surpassed their Russian counterparts in terms of weapons and equipment and that Russian battalion tactical groups “are only suitable for the kind of battlefield in East Ukraine…and are easily defeated on high-intensity battlefields by advanced adversaries like the U.S. military.”
China has even started to lead some exercises while Russia participates from a more junior position. Official Chinese media described the Zapad/Interaction 2021 exercises as the first in which the PLA led, as well as the first joint exercises held entirely in China using mostly Chinese weaponry. Li Shuyin, a researcher at the Academy of Military Sciences, emphasized the uniqueness of Zapad/Interaction 2021 and described it as “a change of roles” and a chance to create a joint exercise “brand” centered on the PLA.
This emerging dynamic is likely to be cemented as China’s power grows and Russia stagnates. Russia’s war in Ukraine may accelerate this trend. The Russian military surprised many with how poorly it initially performed in Ukraine, and the conflict has proven costly and deadly for Russia. The strain of the war may already be contributing to a trend that has seen Russia and China pivot toward exercises that are focused less on large-scale troop operations and more focused on political signaling—such as the May 2022 aerial patrol that was timed to coincide with the Quad summit and the July 2024 aerial patrol near Alaska. Future exercises could also see China more consistently leading as the senior partner. 
Authors:
Brian Hart, Bonny Lin, Matthew P. Funaiole, Samantha Lu, Hannah Price, Nicholas Kaufman, Gavril Torrijos