Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russian president Vladimir Putin has played up Russia’s growing trade and diplomatic connections to China. China and Russia have expanded trade and defense ties over the past decade. At a meeting in February 2022, before Russia invaded Ukraine, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin said their partnership has “no limits”.
U.S. leaders have in recent years characterized China and Russia as the country’s great-power rivals.
“I don’t think China-Russia is a natural alliance,” Yale Law School’s Susan A. Thornton says. “The deterioration of relations with the United States facilitates the driving together of China and Russia.”
China is a led by the Chinese Communist Party, and Russia has a multiparty system dominated by Putin’s United Russia party. China and Russia help each other at the UN Security Council, of which they are both veto-wielding permanent members, but it is important to say that they have different interests in central Asia because Russia is focused on security and political stability of soviet republics and China is focused on economic development.
They have different foreign policy goals and they have different strategies but they support each other when they need. Through the Ukraine War China has not provided help to Ukraine and has blamed the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for provoking Russia.
