Brothers in arms, yet again? Twenty-first century Sino-Russian strategic collaboration in the realm of defence and security

Abstract

2014–2015 were years of turmoil for strategic relations, with Sino-Russian relations emerging as a particularly interesting set of ties to observe. This article asks whether recurrent Sino-Russian exhortations of friendship are mirrored by their strategic alignment in the defence and security realm, half a century after the end of the Sino-Soviet pact during the communist era. We examine the arms trade between the two countries and with regional partners, but also the recent pattern of bilateral and multilateral military exercises, as a combined test of the security and defence relationship. We are able to show that the image of friendship that both Moscow and Beijing like to promote, while apparent at the UN Security Council and within the BRICS group, remains constrained by rivalry in high-tech segments of the arms industry and by lingering concerns about the prospects of peer interference in their shared regional vicinity.

Keywords:

• China
• Russia
• strategic collaboration
• arms trade
• military exercises
• SCO

Notes

1. On limitations of earlier bilateral collaboration in the defence and military technology sectors, see Wilson (2004, pp. 93–113).

2. Meanwhile, Tokyo amended Article 9 of its constitution to enable its military to fight overseas.

3. David Shambaugh describes the 2001 treaty as the ‘capstone’ of bilateral Sino-Russian agreements in the 1990s, Shambaugh (2013, p. 80).

4. See articles 4, 7, 11–12 and 16 of the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation between the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation (2001).

5. Other analysts have estimated the number of troops to 155,000, making it the largest post-Soviet military exercise so far held (Norberg 2015).