On May 24, while President Joe Biden was on official visit to Tokyo, a group of Russian and Chinese bombers flew a joint patrol over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea. The exercise did not proceed without drama. The war planes passed through Japan and South Korea’s air-defense identification zones, prompting both countries to scramble their fighter jets. 

More significant was the geopolitical subtext of the exercise. Five months after sending its troops into Ukraine, Russia has found itself more estranged from the West than anytime since the height of the Cold War. Sanctions have severed most of the financial, technological, and logistical links between Russia and the West. Simultaneously, the Biden administration has funneled significant military aid to Ukraine and vowed to bolster U.S. troop presence in Eastern Europe over the long run. 

Faced with these challenges, Russia has gone all in on drawing closer to China. 

Part of this convergence is taking place in the military realm. In addition to the bomber patrol on May 24, Russia and China conducted joint naval exercises near Japan in mid-June and early July. The Japanese Defense Ministry warned in its annual white paper that it expects Russia to step up its military activities with China in East Asia as relations with the West continue to sour. 

China is also a central part of Russia’s post-sanctions economic strategy. The Kremlin is seeking to redirect its energy flows from Europe to China. Chinese corporations are gradually replacing Western ones in various sectors of the Russian economy, ranging from cars to smartphones. Even Russian universities are starting to reform their curricula to feature a greater emphasis on China. 

Over the past two decades, Russia and China have significantly strengthened their cooperation across nearly all areas, partially as a reaction to growing tensions with the West. Trade between the two countries has soared 167 percent since 2010, the year China overtook Germany to become Russia’s largest trading partner. The Russian and Chinese militaries conduct regular joint exercises on land, air, and sea. Moscow and Beijing now regularly coordinate their diplomatic responses to international political crises, ranging from Syria to Venezuela. 

The closeness between the two governments was on full display during President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing in early February to attend the Winter Olympics. Following Putin’s meeting with President Xi Jinping, the two leaders issued a lengthy joint statement in which they lambasted NATO expansion in Eastern Europe and the AUKUS nuclear submarine partnership and warned the Biden administration against deploying intermediate range missile systems in either Europe or Asia. Even more notably, the statement touted the Russian-Chinese relationship as a “no limits” partnership. 

That bold declaration faced its first major test a few weeks later, when the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine. Since the conflict began five months ago, Beijing has sought to maintain a delicate public balancing act. Although China has avoided directly endorsing Russia’s actions, it has refused to condemn Moscow or join the West in imposing sanctions. Many Chinese diplomats have publicly blamed the West for sparking the conflict, arguing that NATO enlargement following the Cold War created a threat to Russia’s security. 

Zhang Xin, a research fellow at the Center for Russian Studies at Shanghai's East China Normal University, told me that although it’s unclear how much China’s leadership knew about the Russian military’s plans beforehand, many in Beijing have been surprised by how Moscow's operation in Ukraine has played out. He explained that the Chinese policy community had assumed that if Russia were to send troops into Ukraine, it would limit its offensive to the eastern Donbas region. The fact that the Russian military ended up marching all the way to the outskirts of Kiev was “shocking and unexpected” to many in China.

However, Zhang emphasized that whatever misgivings China has about Russia’s actions in Ukraine, it has absolutely no intentions of turning its back on Moscow. “The Chinese leadership still regards Russia as a critical partner,” he said. “Partially this attitude is driven by a concern that if Russia is crushed, then China could find itself alone against the West.”  

I heard a similar view from Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Beijing’s Renmin University. He told me that Chinese political elites were operating under the assumption that the geopolitical and economic contradictions between China and the U.S. would only deepen over the coming years. Although Wang admitted that Russia did not have the economic clout of the West, he argued that China had a lot to gain from having Moscow in its corner. 

“I think China’s official position is pretty clear: GDP does not mean everything,” he said. “Russia is still a great power. Not only does it possess vast natural resources and territory, but also it has a strong spirit and culture, governmental capacity, and military.” 

Wang suggested that the Ukraine crisis had created an additional stimulus for Russia and China to expand their joint development projects in space and other frontier technologies. He contended that although Russia had a strong scientific base, it had not been able to fully realize its full potential due to a lack of resources. That’s a problem Chinese financing could help address, he said. 

Efforts to strengthen economic cooperation over the past several months haven’t always gone smoothly, however. Despite Beijing’s public support for Moscow, several major Chinese corporations have responded to Western sanctions by distancing themselves from Russia. 

The most notable among these companies is Chinese tech giant Huawei, which itself has been sanctioned by the U.S. since 2019. Following the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, Huawei halted its smartphone and telecommunications equipment shipments to Russia, began closing down its stores in the country, and canceled its annual conference in Moscow. Although Russian media has reported that Huawei has begun to gradually reverse course in recent weeks, the company has yet to make any public statement about its long-term plans in Russia. 

Evgeny Markin knows firsthand the challenges Russia has run into while trying to reorient its economy from the West to China. In his capacity as executive director of the Russia-China Business Council, he has spent the past several months organizing tours for Chinese investors across Russia. Markin told me that although most of the business people that he spoke to personally expressed sympathy for the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine, many were anxious that increasing their cooperation with Russia could potentially land them on a U.S. or European sanctions list. 

“Chinese investors tell me that they of course support us, but Russia is 2 percent of their business while the West is 98 percent,” he said. “Politics is one thing, but business is another.” 

At the same time, Markin said that Russia had begun to partially address this problem by shifting its cooperation from large Chinese companies with significant international business portfolios to smaller regional firms that have less to lose from secondary sanctions. “It is not necessary to go to some big Chinese state-owned company in order to build a cement factory,” he said. “There are many medium-sized, private companies that are happy to come over and build a factory capable of producing one million tons of cement a year.”

Despite all the difficulties, Russia and China have maintained strong economic momentum so far this year. During the first six months of 2022, trade between the two countries increased by 27.2 percent, reaching a total value of $80.7 billion, according to data from China’s General Customs Administration. Much of that increase has come from a surge in Russian oil, natural gas, and coal exports to China. Between March and June, China bought more than $25 billion worth of Russian fossil fuels, nearly double the amount it purchased during the same period last year. As a result of this recent boom, China has emerged as Russia’s single largest energy customer, while Russia has overtaken Saudi Arabia to become China’s top oil supplier. 

Both sides have received benefits from closer energy ties. For Russia, increased energy sales to China have provided it with a much needed source of revenue and helped to partially offset the impact of Western sanctions. Meanwhile, China has been able to cash in on heavily discounted Russian oil, gas, and coal at a time when much of the rest of the world is struggling with high energy prices. 

Looking ahead to the future, Russia is expected to significantly increase its natural gas deliveries to China over the next several years. The Power of Siberia pipeline, which currently serves as the main route for Russian gas to China, is scheduled to reach full capacity only in 2025. During Putin’s visit to Beijing in early February, the two countries signed a deal to build another pipeline that would supply gas from the Russian Far Eastern island of Sakhalin to northeastern China. Finally, Russia and China are reportedly close to signing a final contract for a second Power of Siberia pipeline, which would more than double Russian gas exports to China. 

Zhang of East China Normal University said that Beijing’s interest in Russian energy was not limited just to economic factors. He explained that Chinese strategic planners have long been anxious about the country's heavy reliance on seaborne energy imports from the Middle East, which would likely become the target of a naval blockade in the event of a U.S.-China war. “We don’t have that risk with energy supplies from Russia since it is a neighboring country that shares a land border with China,” Zhang said. “So, energy cooperation with Russia is strongly linked to security considerations.” 

Beyond the energy trade, China has slowly begun filling newly-created gaps in the Russian market. One example is the automobile industry, a sector of the Russian economy that has been especially hard hit by Western sanctions. In the three decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union, European, Japanese, and American car brands have dominated the Russian market. Although the Kremlin has sought to promote domestic automobile production in recent years, Russian car manufacturers have continued to heavily rely on imports of certain high-technology components. Consequently, Western sanctions over Ukraine not only limited Russia’s access to foreign brands, but they also ended up hampering its domestic industry. 

This situation has created an opening for China’s ascendant automobile sector. Since the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, Chinese brands have more than doubled their share of the Russian passenger car market, going from 10 percent of total sales in January to 21 percent in June, according to data from the Autostat analytical center. This surge has been encouraged by Russian officials, including Putin himself, who revealed in June that there were ongoing talks about increasing the presence of Chinese cars on the Russian market. Russian media outlets have also reported that Russian officials have approached Chinese investors about forming joint automobile production ventures. 

Another area where Chinese companies are steadily increasing their presence is electronics. A recent study by M.Video-Eldorado Group, Russia’s leading consumer electronics retailer, found that Chinese brands accounted for 65 percent of Russian smartphone purchases during the second quarter of 2022, a 15 percent increase from the previous quarter. Russia’s Kommersant newspaper has reported that Chinese laptops, tablets, and electronic household appliances have also experienced a significant growth in sales over the past several months. 

Eldar Murtazin, the lead analyst at the Mobile Research Group, told me that the mass exodus of big Western and South Korean brands from Russia has effectively eliminated any serious competition for their Chinese competitors. “This is a time of opportunity for Chinese companies in Russia,” he said. “Under different circumstances, they wouldn’t have been able to grow so quickly, especially in the absence of a big marketing push.” 

Murtazin predicted that Chinese brands could conquer up to 90 percent of the Russian smartphone market if giants like Samsung and Apple do not resume their operations in Russia before the end of the year. “A lot of Western electronic devices are produced in China, so what we’ve seen is Chinese brands stepping up and selling basically the exact same goods to Russia for a much cheaper price,” he explained. 

The bigger question for Russia is whether China can provide it with advanced electronic components such as semiconductors. Before the start of the Ukraine conflict, Russia heavily relied on the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to meet most of its demand for high-end chips. Yet on February 27, just three days after the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine, TSMC announced that it was putting all cooperation with Russia on halt. Further complicating matters, the Biden administration introduced export control restrictions that prohibited sharing U.S. advanced technologies and designs with Russia. 

Many Russian companies have turned to China as an alternative source for chips. There are two complicating factors, however. The Chinese chip making industry has made great strides in recent years, but it still lags technologically behind its Taiwanese counterpart. Additionally, Chinese semiconductor manufacturers continue to rely heavily on U.S. equipment, putting them at risk of secondary sanctions if they choose to cooperate with Russia. 

Nevertheless, there are some preliminary signs that Russia and China have slowly begun expanding their cooperation in this area. In late June, Russian computer equipment manufacturer Kraftway announced that it had signed a contract with Chinese chipmaker YMTC to jointly produce memory controllers, a type of microchip used to support a computer’s data storage capabilities. 

Russia’s pivot to China is going beyond just commercial or military ties. Slowly but surely, a fundamental shift in worldview is starting to take place among ordinary Russians and members of the elite, one in which China, not the West, is regarded as the key to Russia’s future. 

At a time when Western countries have seen their popularity among Russians plummet, China has seen its soar. In a series of surveys conducted from April to June, the Levada Center, Russia’s leading polling agency, found that 83 percent of Russians had a favorable view of China and described it as their country’s second closest ally after Belarus. Xi was ranked along with Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko as the most popular foreign leader among Russians (82 percent approval rating). Perhaps most notably of all, 81 percent of Russians said that China enjoys the world’s respect, more than any other country. 

“Russians regard the conflict in Ukraine as one between Russia and the West, and China is viewed as being on Russia’s side, even though they are not supporting us directly,” said Denis Volkov, director of the Levada Center. He explained that although many Russians described China’s rapid ascendancy as a potential threat prior to 2014, these concerns have since then been gradually pushed aside due to growing tensions with the West. “There are some lingering fears in the background, but given the current situation, there isn’t much time to dwell on it,” he said. 

Volkov added that China had the potential to further increase its soft power in Russia over the coming years as remaining links with the West broke down. He noted that sanctions had disproportionately impacted younger, middle-class Russians, the demographic most sympathetic to the West. “If people who want to interact with the West no longer can no longer travel or study there, then that can cause negative views of the West to increase in the long term,” he said. 

No such restrictions exist in the case of China. On the contrary, the Russian educational system is increasingly shifting its resources to provide its graduates with opportunities to pursue China-related careers. 

One of the people leading the charge on that effort is Kirill Babaev, director of the Center for China and Contemporary Asia at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Over the past several months, Babaev and his colleagues have worked to establish new educational programs focused on Chinese language, politics, and economy at universities across Russia. So far, they have succeeded in setting up Chinese programs at two major Russian universities and are scheduled to launch another ten at the start of the next academic year in September. 

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Babev told me that the Ukraine conflict and the ensuing Western sanctions had created an urgent demand for China specialists who could advise the Russian government and big business. Most of Russia’s educational institutions had remained oriented towards the West. Babaev said that in just the past several months, he has seen the first signs of a major shift taking place. 

“For 300 years, Russia was part of the European world and looked to the West, but now we are in the process of a pivot to the East that will require us to change everything that we’ve built up over these past few hundred years—our educational system, our academic research system, our cultural institutions,” he said. “This is a big task and it will not be done in one year, five years, or even ten years, but this rebalancing is clearly necessary since Europe is trying to lower a new Iron Curtain over us.” 

In his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, the late Zbigniew Brzezinski warned that the most dangerous scenario facing the U.S. would be “a grand coalition of China and Russia united not by ideology but by complementary grievances.” A quarter of a century later, Brzezinski’s prophecy is slowly becoming a reality. From military exercises to energy deals, Moscow and Beijing have been drawing closer for years. It increasingly seems that the Ukraine crisis will go down in history as a Rubicon moment, one in which Russia took a decisive step away from the West and toward China.