“Not allies, but better than allies”- that is how the Chinese describe their
relationship with Russia. A statement meant to show mutual support and cooperation speaks far
more about the divides between the two nations. The truth is Russia and China
have as much in common as they have in opposition, and it could spark war.
There are multiple points of contention in the China - Russia relationship. Both are autocratic
dictatorships, only China has at least given up the pretense of democracy. Both nations are seen
as unfriendly to the current western-led world order, and both nations suffer internationally
for it. It would seem as if the two nations should be best friends, especially when their
chief rivals are the United States of America and its extensive network of friends and allies.
Yet differences that threaten war run deep,
and if the two went at it it might not end the way you think.
Historically speaking China has been the junior partner. After the triumph of communism in China
post World War 2, the Soviet Union was quick to become a sponsor of the nation. However,
ideological rifts soon led to outright border clashes, and just two decades later the BFFs
were on the splits- with China cozying up to the United States of all places. The US-China
relationship would soon turn adversarial however, and China re-gravitated back towards the Soviet
Union. By the time this happened though, the Soviets were on the verge of collapse, and the
balance of power between the two nations changed dramatically after the end of the Soviet Union.
While the Soviets had been the far superior power during the Cold War,
China's rapid modernization in the 1990s, Russia’s loss of much of their former Soviet territory,
and industrial and intellectual capacity, led to a more even balance of power between the
two countries. But Russia was always on the declining side of the scale,
as its economic development focused on re-activating former Soviet capabilities
while China was building brand new ones. Russia was annoyed at the fact that the former client
state was now very much an equal partner, and as the balance of power continued to become
more askew with China's economy growing to over 3.5 times the size of Russia's.
A new ideological divide has sprung between the two nations, with the Russians resenting that it
is now the junior partner, and China reveling in their current superiority over the Russian nation.
But there are very real material reasons for a decisive souring of relations between the two
states. Russia has long resented the fact that the Russian Far East region is increasingly becoming
in the words of Russian politicians, “Chinese”. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there has
been a major depopulation of the Russian Far East, made even worse by the fact that the new Russian
state has failed to significantly increase infrastructure investments in the region.
Illegal Chinese and Korean immigrants meanwhile have flocked to the region,
along with a great number of very legal Chinese immigrants alongside a lot of Chinese investment.
The situation for Russia looks increasingly dire as Chinese firms pour money into the area,
with the nation admitting that it has no other recourse but to accept Chinese money.
There is now a very real fear in the minds of Russian politicians that the Russian Far East
will soon be lost to southern asian powers like China. Not necessarily militarily,
but economically, as foreign control over the region's developed energy supplies is growing
year by year via investments. Culturally, the region is also starting to swing towards China
as more and more immigration and investment comes from the nation. With such a weak government,
military, and economic presence in the region, it's not outside the scope of imagination that
in a few decades, the Russian Far East may push for independence and absorption by China.
China certainly has reason to manipulate events and ensure this happens, as the Russian Far East
remains very resource rich. For energy-hungry China, who's economy has only recently begun
to slow down, securing energy supplies is of critical economic importance. But
it's a necessity for an altogether different reason as well. China currently has a massive
achille's heel that ensures it will not be able to militarily challenge the United States- and
that's the fact that it imports most of its oil via sea trade routes that the US Navy
can easily disrupt. Secure landlocked energy resources that the US cannot interrupt frees
up the Chinese Communist Party to more directly challenge the US, even militarily if need be.
To this end, China has been fiercely competing
with Russia for control over the energy resources of central Asia,
exerting massive influence and swinging smaller nations away from Russia. However,
there is one final point of contention that is deeply souring the Sino-Russian relationship.
For decades China was a dependable and loyal client for the sale of Soviet and
then Russian weapons. With no modern defense industry to speak of, China bought most of
its equipment from Russia. However, as China modernized so too did its defense industry,
decreasing its reliance on foreign suppliers. But Chinese modernization has come at the
expense of Russian trade secrets, with Chinese agents being caught red-handed
multiple times stealing or attempting to steal classified Russian technology.
China has also violated the tenets of some of its licensing agreements with Russia,
especially regarding its fighter aircraft. Multiple Soviet and then Russian fighter designs
were approved for licensed manufacture in China, on the condition that China still purchase Russian
engines and electronics for those aircraft- the two areas that China remains weak in. However,
Chinese engineers began to reverse-engineer Russian components and build their own copies of
Russian engines and avionics. This greatly angered Russia, however the nation was so cash-strapped
that it had no other option but to continue allowing licensing of its fighter designs.
China's maturing defense sector however means that it has little need to continue
licensing Russian designs. This is most evident by the development of the J-20,
which is inferior to US 5th generation aircraft but superior to Russia's own
Su-57. To add insult to injury, Russia believes that China stole much of the
technology that went into the J-20, driving an even deeper divide between the two nations.
With egos, control over energy infrastructure and supplies, and increasing Russian desperation
for recognition on the world stage, who would win if the two nations went to war?
Since the end of the Cold War, Russia's military power has kept it firmly in the number two spot
globally. However, estimates of Russian basic competency, availability of equipment,
and effectiveness of their weapon systems have proven to be severely overblown. Russia,
it turns out, is utterly incapable of facing off against a modern military force,
and is best suited for minor conflicts against much weaker powers like Syrian rebels. Up against
even a very small amount of NATO hardware, Russia has failed horribly in Ukraine,
and the times it did go directly up against NATO weapons its losses were catastrophic.
Safe to say, Russia is no longer the world's second best military. This leaves China as
the world's second military power after the US- but the revelations
about Russia's military has put China’s own military power into serious doubt.
China has historically struggled to clearly define its military doctrine. Despite being
the far superior power, China was still militarily defeated by the much smaller,
and war-exhausted Vietnam in 1979. China claimed victory yet failed to achieve its
strategic objectives of preventing Vietnam from overthrowing Pol Pot from Cambodia,
leaving no question to who really won the conflict.
A lot of Chinese military doctrine was based on Soviet doctrine, and this only began to change
in 1991. As the United States absolutely trashed much more numerous Iraqi forces,
themselves deeply entrenched in Soviet doctrine, Beijing went into a state of panic. In the
first direct confrontation between US and Soviet doctrine, the US was not just proven the winner,
but Soviet military doctrine was proven to be vastly inferior. US doctrines of
AirLand battle and deep strikes using smaller number of more technologically sophisticated
forces to sever lines of communication and disrupt enemy operations was so effective
that in Moscow it was said that the only way to stop a US offensive was with nuclear weapons.
Russia failed to learn this historical lesson, but China was an eager student. However,
modernizing war fighting doctrine is not something easy for a nation deeply entrenched in the old
Soviet order, and dealing with massive amounts of corruption. Today, China has attempted to
emulate US combined arms operations within its own military, but while it’s likely the superior
emulator of US tactics, there's serious questions of just how good it really is.
For starters, China's corruption problem may be as deep and systemic as Russia's has proven to be,
severely eroding China's warfighting capabilities. It wasn't until Xi Jinping's anti-corruption
purges in the late 2010s that China took any meaningful steps towards correcting a rampant
and out-of-control culture of corruption across its armed services. But as many observers have
pointed out, these anti-corruption purges may have been just as much political tools to eliminate
rivals as they were tools to make actual progress on changing Chinese military culture, leaving the
efficacy of the purges and real Chinese competency in serious doubt. The problem may still be as
systemic as Russia's. For generations the Chinese military operated on a tradition of 'gifting',
where junior officers gave gifts to their superiors in exchange for promotions. This places
little value on actual experience and capability, putting incompetent officers in command.
Another serious question to Chinese capabilities is the fact that China is yet to prove that it
can actually carry out modern combat operations of high intensity. For years China refused to
send its troops on UN peacekeeping missions for fear of being embarrassed by their performance.
Even more telling however is the fact that China only recently modernized its military with a joint
operations command structure similar to America's, allowing for its various military services to more
easily operate together in combat and allowing for real combined arms warfare. As encouraging
as these news may be though, China also has a very long precedent of insufficient or very low
quality training for its troops, with many of them being used for physical labor by their commanders
in local infrastructure projects and training exercises being neither frequent nor realistic.
To top it all off, it's important to remember that China has also never fought a modern conflict.
So what would happen if the two powers went to war?
If a war broke out between the two today, China would undoubtedly have the upper hand. Mongolia
would become an unwitting avenue of attack for Chinese forces pushing into the very
soft underbelly of the Russian central and far east districts. Historically Russia has kept
significant forces in the region to deter such an attack, but as the war in Ukraine drags on,
men and equipment are being increasingly relocated to Ukraine. China meanwhile
has no such commitments nor borders with potentially hostile nations save for India-
but the Chinese-Indian border is too mountainous for any serious land invasion to occur there.
Chinese forces would be able to concentrate in the region, and with Mongolia largely doing
whatever China tells it to do, they'd have clear travel routes to the Russian border. The Russian
air force would be integral in defending from a Chinese attack in the region, and here Russia
does have a significant advantage. While China's fighter fleet is more numerous at 1200 aircraft
vs Russia's 772, China's still has a significant number of very old aircraft in its inventory which
would not fare well against Russia's one clear and decisive advantage: ground-based air defenses.
Having prepared for decades to fight against the superior US Air Force, Russia decided to
not compete with the US in the sky, but rather deny the sky to it by investing
in air defense systems. Russian S-300 and S-400, and now the new S-500 are some of
the best air defense systems in the world- even if they have trouble shooting slower
HIMARS rockets down. With air defense batteries already in the central and far east regions,
Chinese air power would be seriously threatened if it tried to operate near the front lines,
allowing Russia's air force to operate much more freely and directly threaten
Chinese ground forces in a way China couldn't reciprocate. To add to China's difficulties,
it would have to rapidly build up expeditionary air fields in Mongolia closer to the front lines
due to its limited number of tanker aircraft and fighter aircraft capable of mid-air refueling.
In terms of technology, the two militaries are likely at a healthy level of parity,
but Russia is at a disadvantage due to the ongoing war in Ukraine and the effect of international
sanctions. Predicting a victor and how such a war would play out becomes nearly impossible,
given that the extent of Russia corruption and incompetence on the battlefield so far
makes it questionable if it would even be able to confront a near-peer to the US such as China. But
while Russian deficiencies are in full display in Ukraine, China's own deficiencies are as well
hidden today as Russia's were in February 23rd of 2022. One day before the invasion of Ukraine,
Russia was believed to be a formidable and capable military power who would
steamroll a much smaller nation armed almost exclusively with legacy Soviet-era equipment.
China likewise is today believed to be a modern and capable power who is
considered to be a near-peer adversary to the US- but there are many indicators that
China's own incompetency is as well hidden as Russia's was. The United
States meanwhile has proven in various modern conflicts that its forces are
extremely capable even against significant threats- China has had no such opportunity.
In all likelihood, a war between China and Russia today would devolve into a drag-down fight as both
nations struggle to use modern doctrine alongside their high tech weapons. The only conclusion we
are comfortable making however is that in case of war, the Chinese would likely neutralize
Kamchatka and rout the Russian navy. While China is still incapable of providing support for major
naval operations far from home, Kamchatka is near enough to China and Russian defenses are
light enough that the Chinese PLAN would likely emerge victorious. Once Kamchatka is secured,
Chinese forces could begin a serious push for the Russian far east, and while its unlikely
they would be able to threaten much of central Russia, the far east region would very likely
fall to Chinese control and be annexed. With great amount of energy resources there,
even at a staggeringly high military cost China would come out the winner.
Here we get to the crux of the problem, as Russia would inevitably use nuclear
weapons once its territorial integrity was threatened. Without its own nuclear retaliation,
Chinese forces would be annihilated, meaning that in order for there to be
any victor in a serious Sino-Russian war, nuclear weapons would have to be used.
Now go watch China's World War 3 Plan, or click this other video instead.