China-Russia alignment: a threat to Europe's security - Part I

• The war in Ukraine has altered the balance of interests between China and Russia. They have drawn closer together and further away from the West without reconciling their different world views.
• The new China-Russia alignment is characterized by a strong, flexible political bond but lacks a shared ideology or legal framework. It reflects mutual instrumentalization and is highly contingent on external factors.
• This alignment has evolved from a mere challenge into a complex security threat to Europe and its transatlantic partners.
• Although the United States and Europe see threats from Russia and China as separate and carrying different degrees of urgency, it is imperative to understand the nature and the extent of the threat they pose together.
• Russia’s war on Ukraine is a direct threat to European security. Beijing’s assistance to Russia turns China into a security threat to be contained rather than only a “partner, competitor and systemic rival”.
• China is providing Russia with an economic lifeline, helping Moscow to circumvent Western sanctions and expand its military-industrial complex with unrestricted exports of critical dual-use goods.
• China is supporting Russia also with hybrid operations and increased military cooperation, reducing Russia’s diplomatic isolation and promoting Russia’s narrative in the Global South.
• Attempts to drive a wedge between the two “limitless partners” are likely to be counterproductive. Instead, the key is to change Beijing’s calculus for supporting Moscow.
• The policy recommendations for transatlantic partners provided here revolve around three pillars: 1. Revising Europe’s view of China to acknowledge the security threat it represents. 2. Recognising China’s potential role to play in ending the war in Ukraine, yet without weakening European security. 3. Clarifying red lines and imposing costs on China for its support for Russia’s war effort.

In May, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin chose Beijing for the first foreign visit after his re-inauguration. The meeting was Putin’s forty-third with China’s President Xi Jinping, who told his “best friend” that China would continue to provide an economic lifeline, political support and equipment needed for Russia to win in Ukraine. Russia and China continue to deepen their partnership, mounting a common challenge to the West¹. They can advance their strategic objectives better together, undermining perceived Western domination of the global order and impacting Europe’s future security.

Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has de facto upended the post-Cold War security architecture in Europe and is a direct, existential threat to European security. Beijing plays an important role for Russia’s war efforts, regardless of China’s status as Europe’s largest trading partner or its desire to hedge on Europe to win its geostrategic competition with the United States.

Beijing has been propping up Russia’s war efforts by proliferating its war narrative, increasing bilateral trade, providing significant non-lethal support and reducing Moscow’s international isolation. China’s support has encouraged much of the Global South to refuse to condemn or sanction Russia. Beijing’s effective support for Moscow has undermined the impact of the West’s sanctions policy. So far, China has done this at virtually no cost but there are indications that this may be changing.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a clear warning in Beijing on 24 April that the United States and its European allies were no longer willing to tolerate China’s sales of critical components and dual-use goods that “Moscow is using to ramp up its defence industrial base”.² Similarly, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated on 6 May, after meeting President Xi in Paris alongside France’s President Emmanuel Macron: “More effort is needed to curtail delivery of dual-use goods to Russia that find their way to the battlefield. And given the existential nature of the threats stemming from this war for both Ukraine and Europe, this does affect EU-China relations”.³ Europe and the United States have begun taking a stronger stance, though so far it does not seem enough to deter Beijing from supporting Russia.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has elevated the Russo-Chinese alignment from a mere challenge to be managed into a security threat that must be contained by the transatlantic partners together. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine has solidified consensus in the EU that Russia is Europe’s major and most urgent security threat, whereas views differ in Washington as illustrated by the delay in the approval of the security assistance package for Ukraine in the US Congress. There, China is seen as the most important long-term threat while Russia’s challenge to its security is less direct.

However, the EU still officially regards China as “a partner for cooperation, an economic competitor, and a systemic rival”, a description adopted in the Commission’s 2019 strategic outlook⁴ and confirmed again by the European Council in June 2023.⁵ This categorization needs to be completed with a fourth category, one that labels China also as a security threat to Europe.

Europe needs to present Beijing with a starker choice: either it continues helping Russia and faces consequences, or it begins curbing support for Russia’s war efforts and continues to enjoy close trade links with its key economic partners.

The transatlantic partners need to better understand the nature of Russo-Chinese alignment to find a common approach to this security challenge. 

Opinions vary on the strength and potential impact of the evolving Russo-Chinese alignment. Our assessment of potential areas of convergence and divergence between them found more areas of divergence. Logically, this creates an expectation that the alignment is fragile and likely to rupture. Policymakers may feel encouraged to think about driving a wedge between China and Russia to lessen the risks their alignment poses, but this may be counterproductive. Indeed, the reality is different. Not all common interests and risks in China-Russia relations carry the same weight; they vary with political circumstances. The war in Ukraine has switched the balance in favour of an ever-closer alignment; its strategic basis is the evolving geopolitical context that presents Moscow and Beijing with opportunities as well as risks.

Both are illiberal regimes in the rules-based global order, which they regard as serving Western interests. Both wish this order to change and accommodate different models of governance. The pair have global ambitions and are united in their desire to push back against perceived Western dominance, as openly expressed in the February 2022 China-Russia joint statement of “limitless partnership”.⁶ Their converging external threat perception has boosted the value of cooperation over risk management or competition.

Moscow’s rift with the West caused by the Russian aggression in Ukraine and the growing US-China confrontation have ramped up perceptions in Moscow and Beijing that the United States and its likeminded partners pose a threat to their national security defined, inter alia, as regime stability.

Equally, Beijing and Moscow are keen to exploit a window of opportunity, based on their common perception of the West’s decline, the erosion of its moral and political hegemony, cracks in transatlantic unity, and the success of China’s development model.

Their lack of a shared positive agenda, and their different visions of what a multipolar world should look like, are often cited as reasons why the alignment may be short-lived7. China has benefitted from being a systemic player, while Russia seeks to destroy the system and the rules that underpin it. But mounting a campaign of disruption does not require a positive agenda or a coherent plan for the international order. It would therefore be unwise to dismiss the Russo-Chinese alignment as a temporary ‘marriage of convenience’. They are united in presenting a common challenge to the West to create a new global order and strong drivers underpin this process.

2.1 Russia has no alternative but to turn to China

President Putin needs allies in order to achieve his ambitious goals and deal with their global consequences. Russia cannot do so alone. For Moscow, there is therefore no alternative to partnership with China, making the alignment a top foreign policy priority⁸.

The 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine led to the near-total disruption of Russia’s relations with the West, forcing its “pivot to the East”. Moscow argues the West has indirectly become a party to the conflict by backing Ukraine militarily and poses an existential threat. It has therefore globalized its war narrative, expanding its war aims from the “de-Nazification” and “de-militarization” of Ukraine to the de-Westernization of the global order.

Russia’s strategic objectives go beyond subjugating Ukraine and establishing an uncontested sphere of influence. They also include diminishing the West, curtailing US hegemony, and fragmenting the international system into “civilizational” centres of power. President Putin claims this new multipolar world will be more just and democratic, more accommodating of cultural and ideological differences, and more respectful of sovereignty defined as freedom from intervention in internal affairs.⁹

More fundamentally and urgently, Russia’s war effort requires an uninterrupted input of critical components, so it is paramount that China continues to supply dual-use goods, such as semiconductors and machine tools, that are on the high-priority export control list. Russia also needs the cash flow from selling its hydrocarbon resources. Despite the complicating lack of infrastructure, China has become one of the largest importers of Russian crude oil. Russia’s March 2024 exports to China, including supplies via pipelines and sea-borne shipments, had reportedly jumped by 12.5 percent on year-earlier due to Russia’s sanctioned vessels offloading cargo in Chinese ports.¹⁰

Russia has also stepped up its challenge to the West in the Global South and multilateral diplomacy. It has been purposefully undermining legacy multilateral institutions such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), and others, branding them as serving Western interests. In tandem with China, Moscow is redoubling efforts to promote multilateral institutions that exclude Western countries, namely BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) of central and southern Asian countries.

Expanding these organizations to include more countries in the Global South has also helped Russia intensify its global engagement. Moscow has deployed the Ukraine war to turn the Global South into both an instrument and a theatre of geopolitical competition, capitalizing on long-held grievances about colonialism and power imbalances. China compensates for Russia’s lack of an offer to the Global South. For now, the two countries complement each other, rather than compete, in their mutually reinforcing efforts to fragment the global order.