Russian-Chinese Military-Technological Cooperation and the Ukrainian Factor

Since the mid-1990s, China has been on a quest to transform its military into a modern, networked (or “informationized,” xinxihua) force. This ambition has long been hampered by a Western arms embargo that was imposed on China after the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen massacre and remains in place to this day. To make up for lost opportunities to import state-of-the-art weapons systems, China focused strongly on indigenous innovation, but combined it with technology imports and know-how transfers mostly from post-Soviet arms producers Russia and Ukraine. While both countries have in the past mostly supplied older, Soviet-era arms technologies to China, their deliveries had a slightly different focus and impact, with Russia exporting complete weapons systems and Ukraine chiefly supplying subsystems and the expert knowledge that Russia was unwilling to provide. According to an assessment by Jane’s Defence Weekly, in 2000–2011 China imported Russian defense products worth US$1 to 3 billion annually and accounted for about 20% of all Russian export orders from 1997 to 2007, while Russia was China’s prime supplier of defense technologies in that timeframe (Anderson, 2011a, June 20). In contrast, Ukrainian exports to China were worth on average only a few hundred million US$ per year, but despite that smaller figure, some Ukrainian exports had a particularly strong qualitative impact on China’s military modernization due to their type (Grevatt, 2011, August 9).

The dynamics in this arms-industrial triangle shifted markedly in 2014, when, as a result of its annexation of Crimea, Russia was sanctioned by the West while Ukraine and Russia severed their mutual defense-industrial ties. Until early 2014, the Chinese-Russian and Chinese-Ukrainian arms trade had been conducted against the backdrop of a near symbiotic arms production relationship between those two suppliers (Kofman, 2014, December 4; Anderson, 2014, February 25). After the annexation of Crimea, that symbiosis came to a sudden end as Russia found itself in a similar position as China in 1989 by becoming the object of international arms trade sanctions. This led to a massive restructuring of the Russian and Ukrainian arms-industrial complexes, resulting largely in new and enhanced opportunities for China to acquire arms technologies and know-how.

After its founding in 1949, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) relied heavily on Soviet military aid (see Chapter “Russia-China Naval Partnership and Its Significance” by Alexandre Sheldon-Duplaix). Complete weapons systems and entire production facilities as well as teaching materials were transferred wholesale (Li, 2009, pp. 122–125). The history of Soviet arms exports during the Mao era (1949–1976) was, however, by no means a linear success story. From the start, the Soviet Union hesitated to transfer state-of-the-art technologies to a potential geopolitical rival and restricted its exports to the supply of older systems. Initial support for China’s nuclear arms program was withdrawn in the context of the Sino-Soviet split from about 1960 onward. When ties began to sour, China resorted to reverse engineering its previously imported vintage systems and embarked on the difficult road of indigenous innovation, eventually succeeding in some strategically important fields such as nuclear warheads and nuclear propulsion systems (Bussert & Elleman, 2011, pp. 5–6).^{Footnote 1}

2.1 A Brief Period of Western Arms Transfers During the 1980s

From 1978 onward, Deng Xiaoping’s policy of economic reconstruction initially focused on enhancing people’s welfare while putting defense modernization on the back burner. Massive overcapacities, a depletion of skilled workers due to better-paid job options in civilian industries, and over-bureaucratic practices afflicted the arms production sector.

At the same time, modern Western arms technologies became available to China for the first time. Following a warming of relations between the United States and China during the Nixon era and given the US interest in containing the Soviet Union, the Reagan administration decided to relax technology transfer restrictions and in 1984 made China eligible to receive support for US arms purchases within the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) system (cf. Bussert & Elleman, 2011, pp. 5–6; Zhang & Hyer, 2001, pp. 96–98). China received US and European arms technologies including missiles, sonar, propulsion, and defense electronics in transfers that included joint production in avionics, aircraft power plants, and naval gas turbines. Chinese industries, furthermore, used every opportunity to upgrade production plants with the help of Western experts (Cheung, 2009, p. 62). Notable systems transferred to China during this brief honeymoon included the French Exocet and Crotale missiles, TAVITAC combat direction system, and Sea Tiger air search radar, Italian Aspide missiles and sonars, and American gas turbines (cf. Friedman, 2006, p. 516; Shambaugh, 2004, p. 268). Some of these systems later formed the basis of indigenous Chinese innovation attempts.

2.2 The Impact of the 1989 Arms Embargo Against China

After the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen massacre, when the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was deployed to suppress unarmed dissidents, Western support for lethal arms exports to China ended. Military exchanges were suspended and an arms embargo was imposed by the United States, the EU, and US allies in the Asia-Pacific that has to this day not been lifted, even though individual countries have interpreted the restrictions differently.

Although loopholes continued to exist, e.g., in dual-use technologies such as helicopters, sonar systems, marine diesel propulsion plants, or space systems, the embargo nonetheless caused large-scale disruption to China’s then ongoing procurement projects due to a sudden unavailability of key components. Curiously, that situation was mirrored in Russia from 2014, when ongoing Russian surface shipbuilding projects had to be suspended due to a sudden lack of access to key Ukrainian and Western systems around which these vessels had been designed.^{Footnote 2}

Apart from slowing down the pace of China’s military modernization during much of the 1990s, the embargo had two other effects: China’s reorientation toward post-Soviet arms producers Russia and Ukraine, who provided alternative sources of high technology, and the employment of various strategies by Chinese experts to overcome the effects of the embargos. With the Chinese leadership’s approval, Chinese arms developers resorted to various methods to alleviate technological bottlenecks, from exploiting academic exchanges with Western countries (cf. Joske, 2018) to capturing technology through forced technology transfers (cf. Hannas & Chang, 2021, pp. 6–7), to reverse engineering Western arms (including those from wreckages and unexploded shells that were indirectly obtained via third countries or collected from war zones),^{Footnote 3} to outright state-sponsored espionage (cf. Hannas et al., 2013). These activities were not limited to Western targets. They also led to friction between the Chinese and Russian arms industries on several occasions when China was accused of having developed weapons systems through reverse engineering imported systems, such as the Su-27 fighter plane, the Kilo-class submarine, or the Mineral-ME fire-control radar system.^{Footnote 4} Frictions notwithstanding, Russia and Ukraine remained the only available suppliers of some advanced military technologies that China’s arms industries were not yet able to develop indigenously.

From the point of view of the Russian arms industries, export relationships with large, rapidly modernizing countries such as China and India became a priority after the breakup of the Soviet Union. A massive contraction of the national economy and shrinking defense budgets had a dramatic impact on the Russian arms industries, as is evident from their declining share in the world’s total arms production. In 1985, Russian arms production had still represented about one third of the world’s total, but in 1996, this share dropped to merely 4%. In the early 1990s, about one-fifth of the Russian industries were considered close to bankruptcy. Given the fact that the defense sector constituted about 60% of the entire Russian industrial production output and employed about four million workers, the difficulties of the defense sector affected a large portion of the country’s industrial production capacity overall (Tsai, 2003, p. 121).^{Footnote 5} Furthermore, some Russian regions were affected disproportionally due to their high degree of dependence on local defense industries. More than a decade later, Russian news reports still indicated that by 2009, approximately 30% of the Russian defense companies were at the verge of bankruptcy, with only 36% considered solvent, many solely due to export orders.^{Footnote 6}

The Western withdrawal from the arms trade with China in 1989 thus almost coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the breakup of its giant military-industrial complex now spread over the post-Soviet states. The Russian need to bolster arms exports for keeping its defense industries afloat thus came at a time when the arms embargo had already hit China’s ongoing naval programs hard, causing delays and disruption. This likely prompted China’s decision in 1996 to sign a contract with Russia over the import of two ex-Soviet steam-powered Project 956E Sovremenny-class destroyers, with two further ships procured in 2002. Despite the fact that China, in the same period, was developing its own guided-missile destroyers and submarines, these and other Soviet-era ships were imported as complete weapons systems. They gave China access to a range of new technologies, which included the Sapfir-U combat direction system that was later also installed on China’s indigenous Type 051C-class DDGs, the Mineral-ME fire control radar (NATO reporting designation “Band Stand,” later copied by China) controlling the supersonic sea-skimming SS-N-9 or SS-N-22 SSMs, as well as a long-range air defense capability through the SAN-7 Shtil SAM and MR-90 “Front Dome” tracking radar (cf. Kirchberger, 2015, pp. 188–189; see also Chapter “Russia-China Naval Partnership and Its Significance” by Alexandre Sheldon-Duplaix). The Mineral-ME radar provided the Chinese Navy with an over-the-horizon fire-control radar system for the first time. It was subsequently integrated (either in the original or as a cloned version) into all major modern Chinese surface warships up until the Type 052D destroyer.^{Footnote 7}

Because the decision to procure two additional Sovremenny-class destroyers was made as late as 2002, it is safe to conclude that China was at that time not fully satisfied with any of its three simultaneously developed destroyer classes—the Type 052B, the Type 051C, and the Type 052C.^{Footnote 8} However, the Type 051C destroyer became the first Chinese ship outfitted with two Russian 30N6E1 phased array Flap Lid antennae (Bussert & Elleman, 2011, p. 43). This was a first step toward the development of an AEGIS-like combat system: In the US Navy, a passive phased-array radar system (AN/SPY-1) constituted the cornerstone of AEGIS.

A similar pattern of foreign procurement supplementing simultaneous indigenous development could be observed regarding diesel submarines. China decided to import two batches of submarines from Russia while developing its own designs, the Project 877 Kilo and the more advanced, improved Project 636 Kilo-class. In the area of fighter planes, China chose to import the Russian Su-27, but quickly made an indigenous copy (Johnson, 2015, November 25). On the downside, the fact that most of the imported technologies were alien to Chinese industries at the time meant that China had to rely on extensive Russian maintenance and training support to operate them, a fact that led to recurring friction (cf. Bussert & Elleman, 2011, p. 33, and “Frictions Between Russia & China,” 2009).

To sum up, after decades of blocked Sino-Russian arms-industrial contacts, economic pressures after the implosion of the Soviet Union created strong incentives for Russia to cooperate more closely with China, while China was out of alternative options due to the Western arms embargo. These exigencies were reflected on the political level: In 1996, Russia and China formed a “strategic partnership of coordination” and in 2001 jointly founded the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) for a closer coordination in Central Asia (Sinkkonen, 2018, January 16, p. 3).

Meanwhile, post-Soviet arms industries that were now located in different independent countries continued to engage in joint production with each other and accepted a division of work between them. Ukraine in particular had inherited some key Soviet arms-industrial capacities that Russia continued to rely upon.^{Footnote 9} This was a sensible arrangement from Ukraine’s point of view at the time, not least because Ukraine had inherited control over some ex-Soviet capacities and unfinished projects that its own armed forces had no use for, e.g., an unfinished Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier hull and the Nazyemniy Ispitateiniy Treynirovochniy Kompleks Aviatsii (NITKA) aircraft carrier flight training center near Saky on Crimea. Russia leased the latter facility as well as the naval fleet base of Sevastopol, a base critical for Russian fleet access to the Black and Mediterranean Seas (Brzezinski, 1997, p. 93; Kashin, 2015, p. 17). Russia also continued to rely on the supply of key systems and components as well as repair and maintenance services from Ukraine, while Ukraine successfully marketed some of its unwanted Soviet-era arms technologies to China.

3.1 A Dip in Russian-Chinese Arms Trade During 2005–2012

During the period from about 2005–2012, the volume of Russian-Chinese defense trade markedly declined. China’s defense-related imports in general dropped approximately 58% from 2007 to 2011; while the country began to be more active on the arms export market from 2001 to 2011, Chinese defense exports increased by 95%. To many experts this indicated a growing sense of self-sufficiency by Chinese arms producers and seemed to signify a decreasing degree of dependency on Russian systems and Russian technical support (Lague & Zhu, 2012).

Another factor contributing to the decline of Russian arms transfers to China during that time was frictions arising from Russian allegations of Chinese reverse engineering^{Footnote 10} and illegal copying of Russian systems (Tsai, 2003, pp. 173–175). Russian arms industry representatives voiced some of their complaints in interviews with the magazine Kanwa Asian Defence in 2009: As one unnamed Russian source explained, China had officially procured eight Mineral-ME radar systems plus a large amount of spares that in sum were “sufficient to assemble several additional sets” (“Frictions Between Russia & China,” 2009). According to that same source, after China’s acquisition of the Project 956E Sovremenny-class destroyers, “almost identical ‘cloned versions’” of the Mineral-ME and Fregat-ME radar systems were produced by Chinese experts and integrated into the Chinese Type 054A-class frigate (cf. Figs. 1 and 2).

Combat systems of mid-generation Chinese destroyers: Main functional chains

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Combat systems of modern Chinese surface combatants: Main functional chains

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Furthermore, the Chinese repeatedly requested Russian assistance to solve technical problems in the radar systems purchased that upon inspection were found to be caused by unsuccessful attempts at replacing original Russian components with Chinese imitations. “Through such contacts with our experts, they intended to identify the problems in their imitation projects.” When confronted about the sudden appearance of seemingly identical Mineral-ME radars on the new Chinese frigate, the Chinese side implausibly claimed that the system in question was wholly indigenously developed (“Frictions Between Russia & China,” 2009). The copied version of the Mineral-ME radar was subsequently integrated into all the major Chinese surface combatants up until the Type 052D destroyer (cf. Fig. 2).

This friction was likely exacerbated by Chinese attempts to obtain technical information from Ukraine on imported Soviet-era systems that Russia had not been willing to provide, such as maintenance blueprints for the Kilo-class submarines. Russian experts themselves wanted to perform the maintenance services at specialized yards in Russia rather than educate their Chinese counterparts. As Kanwa reported, at least one of the Kilo subs was berthed for at least 2 years in a row, which points to either operational problems or attempts at reverse engineering. Furthermore, the indigenously developed Chinese Type 041-class submarine appeared to Russian experts to be a clone of the Kilo-class submarine (cf. “Russia and China Have A Widening Difference,” 2009). The operation of the imported Sovremenny and Kilo-class vessels reportedly necessitated the buildup of specialized Russian “support cocoons” staffed with Russian assistants and specially trained Chinese personnel, one for the Sovremenny destroyers at the port of Dinghai on Zhoushan Island and another at the harbor of Xiangshan (Bussert & Elleman, 2011, p. 33).

China’s acquisition of Su-27 fighter jets under a license agreement gave rise to similar complaints of reverse engineering after China halted the licensed production ahead of schedule and instead developed its supposedly indigenous Shenyang J-11B (Johnson, 2015, November 25). The tensions between both sides’ arms industries were partly resolved at a higher leadership level through an intellectual property agreement signed in 2008, although distrust continued to exist (Sinkkonen, 2018, January 16, p. 6). In the above-cited 2009 interviews with Kanwa Asian Defence, Russian representatives named India rather than China as their top priority for advanced Russian arms technology exports in the coming years.

In the context of the complicated Russian-Chinese arms trade relationship before 2014, it is instructive to look more closely at the role played by Ukraine. In the period after the fall of the Soviet Union and in the face of increasing friction between Russia and China due to the Russian unwillingness to share its most advanced technologies, Ukraine saw a chance to become an alternative supplier of some Soviet-era arms technologies to China. For China, this had the benefit of alleviating China’s one-sided dependency on Russian support at least in a few areas. But even more important were Ukraine’s contributions in several key fields that had strategic importance for China’s military development. Notably, Ukrainian experts advised China regarding the development of nuclear warheads and offensive power-projection vessels. As pointed out by Chen (2017, December 28), “As early as the 1990s, Beijing received help from the Ukraine-based Yuzhnoye Design Office, when the PLA’s infant nuclear division was seeking breakthroughs in multi-warhead technology and miniaturization of its nuclear warheads.”

Another transfer from Ukraine that was critical for China’s attempts to build blue-water naval power projection capability came in 1998 when Ukraine sold an unfinished Admiral Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier hull to China, where it was then finished and outfitted and rechristened the Liaoning. China’s first indigenously designed and built aircraft carrier, the Shandong, was modeled on that ship (Farley, 2018, October 6).

Ukraine also provided substantial help with the training of Chinese carrier pilots. In that context, it is interesting to consider the role played by the Soviet-era aircraft carrier training facility NITKA near Saky on Crimea, which was “the only former USSR base equipped with the hardware necessary to train pilots to fly the Sukhoi Su-33 and Mikoyan MiG-29K carrier-capable fighters off Admiral Kuznetsov-class carriers” (Johnson, 2012, August 29). As such, this facility was of special interest to China as well as Russia.^{Footnote 11} Due to its location on Crimea, Ukraine had inherited it after 1992, but the Ukrainian Navy had no use for it. Until the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, Russia leased NITKA from Ukraine under a countertrade agreement that included “aircraft parts for Sukhoi fighter aircraft still operated in Ukraine” (Johnson, 2012, August 29). Political tensions after 2008 led to Russia temporarily being denied access to NITKA, but a new leasing agreement was concluded when Ukrainian president Yanukovich came to power in 2010. Russia meanwhile began building its own, more modern carrier pilot training facility in Yeysk in the Krasnodar region in 2009, and by early 2013 Russia indicated that it would eventually discontinue the use of NITKA.^{Footnote 12} This likely led to Ukraine’s late 2013 decision to offer NITKA to the Chinese Navy Air Force (PLANAF) for exclusive use (Johnson & Hardy, 2013, November 14). Despite having already built an indigenous carrier pilot training facility near Xi’an that was modeled after NITKA, China was reportedly interested in leasing NITKA. These negotiations ended when during the annexation of Crimea in early 2014, Russia forcefully took control of NITKA.

Apart from providing China with a carrier hull and invaluable consulting services for carrier pilot training, Ukrainian experts were reportedly also instrumental during the vessel’s lengthy finishing process, with the Varyag’s lead designer, Valery Babich, acting as a consultant throughout. Even though China has in the meantime turned toward building larger flat-top carriers for which the ski-jump design of the Liaoning can no longer serve as a model, Ukrainian experts are reportedly continuing to assist China in the design of its future carrier fleet. A Chinese-language report claimed that the then 76-year-old Babich, who had been intimately involved in the design of all the three Soviet-era Moskva-class helicopter carriers, the three Kiev-class aircraft carriers, the two Kuznetsov-class carriers, and the unfinished Soviet nuclear-powered steam catapult-equipped flat-top carrier Ulyanovsk, was serving at a research institute in Qingdao named the Qingdao Chinese-Ukrainian Special Ship Design and Research Institute Co., Lt. established in September 2014, that is, shortly after the breakdown of Russian-Ukrainian defense relations (“Liaoning jian zong sheji shi,” 2017, September 4).

Babich’s case seems far from unique: unnamed experts from other major Ukrainian defense industries, among them the aerospace company Antonov, the engine maker Motor Sich, the tank producer Malyshev Factor (formerly known as Kharkiv Locomotive), and Black Sea Shipyard, have reportedly been “making a beeline for numerous military firms affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army, as Beijing dangles attractive remuneration at a time when career prospects back home in Ukraine are bleak” (Chen, 2017, December 28; cf. also Forrester, 2017, May 17 and Grevatt, 2017, September 20).

Yet another example of where Ukraine transferred critically important knowledge and technology to China concerns the development of phased-array radar systems for naval vessels. Such radars form the cornerstone of modern networked combat systems, such as the American AEGIS, as they can provide illumination and guidance for multiple missiles while tracking a multitude of targets. After having previously received two Russian 30N6EI Tombstone phased-array Flap Lid antennae, which were installed on the Chinese Type 051C destroyer, China in 2004 finally obtained the prototype of a Ukrainian C-band active phased-array radar (APAR) from the Ukrainian Kvant Design Bureau, together with the design package (Bussert & Elleman, 2011, p. 43; Luo & Yang, 2008, August 15). This transfer seemingly enabled China’s Nanjing Research Institute of Electronic Technology to develop its indigenous Type 346 Dragon Eye APAR, which went on to become the cornerstone of the “Chinese AEGIS” area defense system and was first integrated into the Type 052C destroyer (Friedman, 2006, pp. 222–3; Wertheim, 2013, p. 115). Its derivates, the Type 346A and Type 346B APARs, are installed on the Type 052D and Type 055 destroyers, respectively. Given that these ships are tasked with conducting area defense for Chinese aircraft carrier battle groups, the grave impact of this particular technology transfer is apparent.

Last but not least, in 1997, Ukraine’s Zorya Mashproekt sold China its GT-25000 naval gas turbine and concluded a license production agreement with China. This alleviated the bottleneck that had resulted from the freezing of American gas turbine deliveries after the Tiananmen incident, which had disrupted China’s then-ongoing destroyer programs (Bussert & Elleman, 2011, p. 29).

China has long struggled with replacing jet engine imports from either Russia or Ukraine with indigenous models (cf. Majumdar, 2017, January 3; Schwartz, 2017, February 9). According to Ukrainian industry sources, China had difficulty in particular with replacing Ukrainian engines in its Hongdu Aviation L-15 jet trainer aircraft despite a vast effort in the context of its Minshan jet engine program. In light of this weakness, the Crimea annexation offered China the chance to profit on two fronts: by gaining more favorable export conditions from a sanctions-ridden Russia despite a history of mutual distrust, and by attracting top talent and investment opportunities in war-stricken Ukraine.

In the aftermath of Russia’s Crimea annexation and its ongoing war in Eastern Ukraine where many defense industries are located, Ukraine lost about one tenth of its entire defense-industrial infrastructure. Furthermore, since many exports had previously been tailored to and directed toward Russia, the breakdown in defense relations with Russia deprived Ukraine’s military-industrial complex of access to key components and to its most important export market.^{Footnote 13} Ukrainian industries have tried to compensate for this by strengthening cooperation with the EU and NATO, ratifying the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement in late 2014, and joining a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area with the European Union on January 1, 2016.^{Footnote 14} Ukrainian defense industries, furthermore, increased trade with other countries, and Ukraine concluded defense cooperation agreements, e.g., with Indonesia, Pakistan, Poland, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa, and in 2015 exported defense products worth USD 1 billion (Anderson, 2015, November 19). China, due to its huge market size and previous history of strategic deals with Ukraine, became an even more attractive export market. China, for its part, has seized the chance to take advantage of the new situation in Ukraine for advancing its military-industrial goals, with Ukraine torn between the need for investment and political support against Russia and the hope for closer integration into the West and eventual NATO membership.

In light of heavy American resistance against Ukrainian arms trade with China, not all possible areas of cooperation have actually materialized. In 2016, China seemed poised to profit from Ukraine’s breakup with Russia and the subsequent stalling of the Soviet-era Antonov An-225 strategic airlift cargo aircraft program. Built originally to transport the Buran space shuttle, the An-225 is world’s heaviest aircraft and can carry up to 250 t. Only one single plane was ever completed. In late August 2016, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AICC) and Antonov agreed to restart production, beginning with the completion of the second, unfinished airframe. Lin and Singer (2016, September 7) reported in 2016 that the second stage of the project would “involve the complete transfer of technology, including the 23-ton thrust Progress D-18T turbofan engines, to China, for licensed production of a modernized version in Sichuan Province.”

The ability to operate and produce this giant transport aircraft could massively enhance China’s global power projection capabilities, according to Lin and Singer (2016, September 7):

The plane is large enough to carry helicopters, tanks, artillery and ballistic missiles to anywhere in the world, or even other aircraft like smaller fighter jets. The An-225’s unparalleled payload could even make it a space launch platform, or the ultimate mothership for drone operations.

Nonetheless, by February 2021, this project had failed to materialize (Beresnevicius, 2021, February 3). In late February 2022, the An-225 was reported as destroyed by a Russian missile attack near Kyiv.

China’s interest in Ukrainian aero engine technologies was even more evident from another envisaged cooperation project. In the fall of 2017, it became clear that a Chinese company founded in 2014 named Beijing Skyrizon Aviation had purchased a 41% share in the Ukrainian aircraft engine manufacturer Motor Sich and indirectly controlled a 56% majority stake of the firm. According to a news report, Beijing Skyrizon:

[...] reached a deal in May with Motor Sich to invest US$250 million in the Ukraine plants of the manufacturer, which employs [sic] nearly 22,000 people. The pair also agreed to a plan to set up a plant in the Chinese city of Chongqing for the assembly and servicing of plane engines. The deal was announced by Ukraine’s First Deputy Prime Minister, Stepan Kubiv, when he was visiting Beijing for the belt and road international trade initiative summit in May (Liu, 2017, September 14).

However, despite this apparent political backing for the takeover, in September 2017 a Kyiv court froze the Chinese-held shares to protect “national security.” Motor Sich officials responsible for the deal came under investigation by Ukrainian security services, who accused them of “aiding the ‘withdrawal of assets of the enterprise from Ukraine’” with the aim of weakening Ukraine’s defense-industrial basis (Liu, 2017, September 14; Forrester, 2017, May 17). Finally, in March 2021, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy returned Motor Sich to state ownership, while the Chinese investor in turn prepared to sue for $3.5 billion in losses. The Motor Sich leadership only acknowledged having received a $100 million Chinese loan that they aimed to repay by 2026 (cf. “Motor Sich Case,” 2021, July 12). With a Chinese takeover of Motor Sich increasingly unlikely, it seemed that Ukraine was tilting more strongly toward the United States and NATO and would eventually become unavailable for official arms-industrial cooperation with China (Makichuk, 2021, September 10). The massive Russian invasion of Ukraine that began on February 24, 2022 and the lack of Chinese support for Ukraine—despite a history of significant Ukrainian mil-tech transfers to China—will likely accelerate that trend.  

Roughly since Putin’s return to the office of president and Xi Jinping’s takeover as state and party chief in 2012, Russian-Chinese defense-industrial cooperation again intensified, soon reaching a previously unseen level. Russia was the destination of Xi Jinping’s first state visit in 2013, and Xi became “the first foreign leader to visit the Russian military command centre in Moscow” (Sinkkonen, 2018, January 16, p. 3; see also Chapter “Imperialist Master, Comrade in Arms, Foe, Partner, and Now Ally? China’s Changing Views of Russia” by Jo Inge Bekkevold).

The fallout from the Crimea annexation of early 2014 soon provided additional incentives to both countries for closer military-industrial cooperation. Writes Schwartz (2017, February 9):

Shortly thereafter, Moscow and Beijing concluded two major new arms sales agreements, stepped up the level of their joint military exercises, intensified the pace of their military-to-military contacts, and even tightened coordination of their respective regional and global security policies.

The first reports of a new large-scale arms deal appeared in the Chinese state media during 2012 and 2013 and were officially confirmed in November 2015.^{Footnote 15} The new agreement provided for the sale of 24 Su-35 fighter planes, 4 Project 677 Lada-class submarines, and 6 battalions of the S-400 air defense system (Foster, 2012, December 21; Johnson, 2013, March 26). The deal had been under negotiation at least since 2008, but before 2014, resistance within the Russian arms industry had impeded its conclusion. Under the changed circumstances following the occupation of Crimea, the direct involvement of the Kremlin paved the way for its successful conclusion. China was thought to be especially interested in two components of the Su-35 jets: the Saturn 117S jet engine and the NIIP N035 Irbis-E radar, a passive electronically scanning array (PESA), since Chinese arms industries had difficulty producing an indigenous equivalent. Russia was reportedly even willing to provide source codes to China’s Shenyang Aircraft Corporation to enable the integration of Chinese weapons (Johnson, 2015, November 25).

The breakdown of the Russian-Ukrainian arms-industrial symbiosis thus offered China the chance to step in as a customer of both countries and in some cases even as a supplier of technologies. The already deepening military relationship between Russia and China received a boost through a June 2017 general plan for bilateral military cooperation for the years 2017–2020 (Sinkkonen, 2018, January 16, p. 2). The conclusion of unprecedented export and technology transfer agreements indicated renewed trust in bilateral military-technological cooperation that was also reflected in the conclusion of the new large-scale arms transfer contract mentioned above. The S-400 air-defense system, according to Schwartz (2017, February 9), given it “is by far Russia’s most advanced area air defense system,” was set to be “significantly outstripping other systems in [China’s] inventory.” The Su-35, while perhaps not a full-fledged fifth generation combat aircraft, still:

[...] employs many of the features found only on fifth generation fighters, including supercruise capability, precision air-to-air weapons, and advanced avionics. Designed for both short- and long-range air-to-air combat, it has much greater range and maneuverability than China’s other fourth generation aircraft, making it a significant upgrade for China’s overall air combat capabilities. (Schwartz, 2017, February 9)

In April 2019, it was reported that the transfer of the 24 Su-35 aircraft to China had been completed, with the delivery of all related subsystems including ground support equipment expected for the following year (Dominguez & Fediushko, 2019, April 16). The Su-35s were delivered with AL-41F engines that China could have intended to use for its own J-20 stealth fighter. An indication of such an intention might be the fact that China purchased six spare engines per fighter instead of the usual two (Schwartz, 2017, February 9).

The delivery of the S-400 air defense systems to China has, on the other hand, met with unexpected setbacks. The first two platforms were reportedly delivered to China in March or April 2018, but another shipment was damaged during sea transport in a storm and the missiles had to be replaced with newly manufactured ones (“Channel Storm Damaged,” 2019, February 19). Completion of the order was initially projected for 2020, but in February 2020, a high-profile espionage case may have derailed those plans. At the time, the renowned Russian arctic scientist Valery Mitko was detained under suspicion of high treason for “delivering top secret information to China about hydroacoustic research and the detection of submarines,” which the accused denied (cf. “Russia Accuses Top Arctic Scientist,” 2020, June 16 and “Russian Scientist Facing High Treason Charges,” 2021, June 18; see Chapter “Sino-Russian Scientific Cooperation in the Arctic: From Deep Sea to Deep Space” by Frank Jüris and Chapter “Russia-China Naval Partnership and Its Significance” by Alexandre Sheldon-Duplaix). Shortly thereafter, Russia decided to stall the delivery of further units of the S-400 system to China, ostensibly due to pandemic restrictions—while at the same time continuing deliveries of S-400s to India (Dasgupta, 2020, November 12). This might indicate new friction between Russia and China due to the espionage case or could be the result of a conflicted Russian stance toward China’s aggression against India during the Ladakh standoff given Russia’s long-standing defense-industrial relationship with India. Both the S-400 and Su-35 would bolster the PLA’s capabilities if deployed near the coastline for use in a conflict in the East or South China Seas or in a Taiwan contingency, but also in other conflict zones. Indian news sources reported in 2021 that two units of the S-400 were installed by China near the Indian border along the Line of Actual Control (“China Deploying S-400,” 2021, September 27).

As to the reported Chinese interest in the Project 677 Lada-class submarine, analysts were skeptical throughout whether a Chinese procurement would materialize given the fact that Russia curtailed its own Lada submarine program due to unsatisfactory performance. Russian officials instead suggested the more advanced Project Kalina-class to China. Nonetheless, by early 2016 China was reportedly still interested in the Project 677 Lada, likely to gain access to its advanced sonars, missiles, and quieting technologies, and planned to refit them with Chinese engines and electronic fire-control systems.^{Footnote 16} One can infer that China was not yet fully satisfied with the performance of its own diesel-electric Type 039A-class submarine design at the time.

By 2020, however, the Russian news outlet RIA Novosti reported that Russia and China were planning to jointly develop a “new generation non-nuclear submarine” (cf. Larson, 2020, August 28). If this joint project actually comes to fruition, it would represent a significant departure from the previous arms trading relationship in which Russia was the (sometimes reluctant) provider and China the (not always trustworthy) recipient of advanced weapons. Jointly developing a strategically important weapons system such as a conventionally powered submarine signifies a hitherto unthinkable level of trust, as submarine technology counts among the most heavily guarded military secrets in any country that operates such systems and is not necessarily shared even between close allies. How the joint submarine development plan might be impacted by the abovementioned Valery Mitko espionage case is unclear, but its public announcement by the Russian side notably happened after Mitko’s detainment had become public knowledge.

Table 1 lists major milestones in the defense-industrial and military relationship between China and Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. As can be seen, the cooperation became more substantial over time and has the potential to lead to, or at least support, a further military alignment of both countries.

Another development that signified the deepening of Chinese-Russian defense-industrial ties was newly concluded agreements for joint research and production. One such agreement was signed between Russian Helicopters and China’s Avicopter in June 2016 and concerns Russian assistance for the Chinese production of 200 to 300 helicopters capable of carrying a 15 t load within 5 years. According to Schwartz (2017, February 9), “Russia will supply the engines and certain other components, while China will be responsible for the overall helicopter design, development, and testing programs.” In the fall of 2019, reports indicated that the program was still on track, but awaiting a final Chinese decision to go forward (cf. Jennings, 2019, October 22; “Russia, China May Sign,” 2019, October 12). No such announcement has been made at the time of this writing, but that does not necessarily mean that the project is not moving forward given the reluctance of Chinese military planners to publicly discuss sensitive arms development programs.

Another potentially novel and interesting joint Russian-Chinese collaboration project concerns a rocket-launched drone design study. The agreement was concluded between China and the Russian Tecmash Research and Production group in order to develop an experimental “reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is launched from a munition casing launched by the 9K58 Smerch multiple rocket system (MRS)” and has the approval of the Russian Defense Ministry (Gibson & Dominguez, 2018, April 3).

One further area of possible cooperation is missile defense, a common strategic concern of China and Russia. Citing an unnamed researcher at the PLA Academy of Military Science, Schwartz (2017, February 9) points out that:

the decision to deploy the THAAD system in South Korea “did force China and Russia to expand their anti-missile cooperation and speed up the modernization of strategic penetration capability.” The two have even begun to discuss the possibility of creating a joint missile defense shield, which would be built and fielded under the auspices of the SCO.

As Table 1 shows, China and Russia have steadily intensified their cooperation in defense-related fields since 2008, but particularly from 2014 onward. By 2019, a new level of strategic trust seemed to have been reached, as indicated by Russian assistance for a Chinese ballistic missile early warning system. In a highly publicized speech and Q&A at the Valdai Discussion Club in early October 2019, Putin for the first time characterized the state of Russian-Chinese relations with the words: “This is an allied relationship in the full sense of a multifaceted strategic partnership” (Valdai Discussion Club Session, 2019, October 3).

One year later, at the 17th Valdai Annual Meeting 2020, in response to a question by the Chinese IR scholar Yan Xuetong on “whether it is possible to conceive of a military alliance between China and Russia,” Putin replied:

It is possible to imagine anything. We have always believed that our relations have reached such a level of cooperation and trust that it is not necessary, but it is certainly imaginable, in theory. We hold regular joint military exercises—at sea and on land in both China and the Russian Federation—and we share best practices in the build-up of the armed forces. We have achieved a high level of cooperation in the defence industry—I am not only talking about the exchange or the purchase and sale of military products, but the sharing of technologies, which is perhaps most important. There are also very sensitive issues here. I will not speak publicly about them now, but our Chinese friends are aware of them. Undoubtedly, cooperation between Russia and China is boosting the defence potential of the Chinese People’s Army, which is in the interests of Russia as well as China. Time will tell how it will progress from here. So far, we have not set that goal for ourselves. But, in principle, we are not going to rule it out, either. So, we will see.

(Valdai Discussion Club, 2020, October 22; emphasis added)

Exactly one year later, on October 21, 2021, the Russian president seemed to backpedal on the issue of a possible Sino-Russian alliance when responding to a question by Fyodor Lukyanov on NATO’s new strategic vision of viewing “Russia and China as one common threat rather than two threats” and whether that meant that Russia should “unite with China and consider someone else as a threat.” Putin replied rather more cautiously than the year before:

[D]istinct from NATO, from the NATO countries, we are not creating a closed military bloc. There is no Russia-China military bloc and we will not create one now. So, there is no reason to talk about this. (Valdai Discussion Club, 2021, October 22)

Regardless of top leaders’ rhetoric, significant potential synergies in the defense-industrial realm continue to exist.^{Footnote 17} For instance, China and Russia traditionally shared a common reliance on Ukrainian naval gas turbines for powering their large surface vessels. In 2014, these propulsion systems became unavailable to Russia, which disrupted several Russian shipbuilding programs. China, on the other hand, has been producing Ukrainian GT-25000 gas turbines under a license agreement after first getting access to them in the late 1990s (Bussert & Elleman, 2011, p. 29). In June 2017, it was reported that China’s Harbin Turbine Company concluded a “strategic partnership agreement” with Russia’s United Engine Corporation “for the supply, production, and development of small and medium-sized industrial gas turbine units that could potentially also be used to power naval ships” (Dominguez & Capeleto, 2017, June 19).

Finally, discussions regarding the possible export of Russian RD-180 rocket engines to China in exchange for electronic components have reportedly been ongoing. This engine is attractive to China’s space program for powering the new generation heavy-lift launch vehicles, but could also be used for ballistic missiles (Schwartz, 2017, February 9). In 2019, it became clear that Russia, far from being hesitant to let China have the RD-180, would in fact be keen to supply those engines to China (Liu, 2019, August 28). Further examples of intensified cooperation in the Chinese and Russian space programs merit closer scrutiny in terms of their significant dual-use aspects. Reports from 2018 suggest the possibility of China and Russia cooperating ever more closely in their respective global satellite navigation systems, the Russian GLONASS and the Chinese BeiDou (“Russia & China To Merge,” 2018, April 1). In September 2021, Russia’s state space agency Roscosmos announced it will place GLONASS ground stations across China and that China will reciprocate by placing BeiDou ground stations in Russia (“Russia Will Install GLONASS,” 2021, September 24). Enhancing the resilience and resolution of GNSS signals through cooperation between BeiDou and GLONASS has the potential to enable—among other applications—precision strikes.

The actual progress of such initiatives will be a good test case to see whether traditional Russian-Chinese strategic distrust can be outweighed by strategic and technological synergies. According to some indications, under the assumption that Russian defense industries may be unable to effectively compensate for the loss of access to Western technology since 2014, China and Russia could be about to switch their traditional roles, with China becoming more and more a supplier to Russia. Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister responsible for the defense industry, Dimitry Rogozin, stated in June 2015 that Russia had to replace about 640 key components from EU and NATO countries, mostly optical and radio-electronic components (Dunai, 2015, June 3). Consequently, the areas where China was and is most likely to become a Russian supplier include electronic components, e.g., for the Russian space program; marine diesels, where China’s Henan Diesel Engine Corporation already received an order for eight diesels for the Buyan-M missile corvette and patrol boats (that were originally built around German diesel engines); and the cyber dimension, where Russia has become increasingly reliant on Chinese support in the realm of Internet control (Schwartz, 2017, February 9).

The multilayered alignment between Chinese and Russian strategic interests after 2014 and the great-power rivalry between the United States and China has contributed to a climate of unprecedented willingness for more substantial arms-industrial cooperation between both countries. Ukraine initially had an incentive to deepen its relationship with China in the face of the Russian military threat and economic problems, which caused Ukraine to exploit opportunities to provide technology and knowledge to China (likely in exchange for political support) in order to make the best possible use of the remaining timeframe during which Ukrainian services and arms products might still be in demand there.

The intensifying Russian-Chinese military-technological cooperation has to be seen against the backdrop of a generally reinforced political and strategic coordination between the Xi and Putin administrations that encompasses not just declarations on the level of rhetoric,^{Footnote 18} but substantial exchanges in several strategically relevant spheres, including the oil and gas trade, geopolitical coordination in Central Asia, joint military exercises, control of the information sphere, and mutual political support in international organizations (see Chapter “Russia’s Strategic Outlook and Policies: What Role for China?” by Hannes Adomeit and Chapter “Cooperation Between Russia and China in Multilateral Organizations: A Tactical or a Strategic Alliance?” by Olaf Wientzek). Russia has become China’s largest oil supplier, and the two countries have shown political convergence on issues as diverse as the Syria conflict and North Korea and are united in their criticism of liberal values and US hegemonialism and in their opposition to US missile defense (cf. “Friends Forever,” 2016, June 26). Furthermore, both China and Russia are aiming to bridge the technological gap that for decades separated their respective military-industrial complexes from the Western arms industries and may even be able to surpass the technological standard of Western arms industries in a few select areas, such as AI and unmanned systems (Bitzinger & Popescu, 2017, p. 3; see also Chapter “Chinese and Russian Military Modernization and the Fourth Industrial Revolution” by Richard A. Bitzinger and Michael Raska). Their military-technological exchanges have the potential not only to deepen the political and strategic coordination between the two countries, but due to a commonality of hardware could result in deeper military cooperation. Joint exercises of increasing complexity point to such a possibility, and a particularly worrisome area is the field of potential cooperation in nuclear deterrence (see Chapter “China-Russia Cooperation in Nuclear Deterrence” by Brian G. Carlson).

In the export market, however, they could soon find themselves in difficult competition. On its own, China is able to form defense-industrial export relationships with customer countries and is selling increasingly complex weapons systems, which could threaten Russia’s arms export interests in Southeast Asia and Africa (Raska, 2017, September 11).^{Footnote 19} At the same time, Chinese dependency on Russian arms is inevitably dwindling. Time will tell whether recent reports that China is beginning to overcome its old dependency on Russian jet engines by powering its J-20 fighter plane with a fully indigenous propulsion are indeed accurate (cf. Lendon 2021, September 21).

How the full invasion of Ukraine that Russia began on February 24, 2022 will affect future Russian-Chinese military cooperation is still uncertain at the time of this writing. China will certainly continue striving to alleviate its remaining technological bottlenecks by enhanced acquisition of foreign technologies—especially against the backdrop of the intensifying great-power rivalry. The less than stellar performance of Russia’s military during the first weeks of the war has likely diminished the attractiveness of Russia as a mil-tech partner, while international condemnation and the unprecedented sanctions it faces as a result of its aggression against Ukraine are bound to significantly increase China’s leverage over Russia in this relationship.