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China reverses roles in arms trade with Russia
Beijing becomes partner and potential supplier to former source of military equipmentKathrin Hille
March 30 2022
For nearly 30 years, Russia has been enabling China’s rise as a military power. Russian weapons producers have supplied the People’s Liberation Army with everything from missiles to helicopters and advanced fighter jets to the tune of an average US$1.5bn a year.
Now, the tide is turning. As reported by the FT this month, Russia has requested military assistance from China to maintain its invasion of Ukraine. According to intelligence the US shared with allies, Russia requested supplies including surface-to-air missiles, drones, intelligence-related equipment and armoured and logistics vehicles.
Arms trade experts said that if these requests were made after the start of the war, the shopping list points to a military in dire need basic support. “Trucks are something that Russia produces a lot of. If they have to ask for that, that would tell you what bad condition their armed forces are in,” said Siemon Wezeman, an arms trade specialist at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).
Both governments have denied that Moscow made a request for Chinese assistance with military equipment for its Ukraine war. Such Chinese assistance would mark a role reversal in its long-running defence trade relationship with Russia, and one that analysts said would highlight a broader change already under way in the power dynamics between them. Sipri’s arms transfers database, which tracks deals from 1950 to 2021, records scores of Russian weapons exports to China, with none going the other way.
But China is clearly outgrowing its traditional reliance on Russian for supplies of advanced arms.
China over the past two decades increasingly manufactured under licence defence products it historically bought from Russia. Such licensing deals helped China develop the ability to build its own frigates, aircraft carriers and advanced fighters — and even their hugely complex engines — instead of relying on Russia suppliers. More recently, China has also shipped some arms components to Russia.
If China meets the recent Russian equipment requests it would be the first time China supplied arms to Russia as military assistance, but not the first it has done so as “part of normal military-technical co-operation”, said Alexander Korolev, an expert on the China-Russia security relationship at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Vassily Kashin, a leading expert on the Chinese military-industrial complex at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Russian media that China had exported a batch of Haval off-road vehicles for driving command personnel as well as drone components and naval engines.
Korolev said Moscow was buying the naval engines for Russian coastguard ships and for its Buyan Class missile corvettes from Henan Diesel Engine Industry Co to replace MTU brand engines made by Power Systems, a German business division of Rolls-Royce.
According to Waimaobang, a Chinese external trade database, marine power plant producer Henan Diesel Engine Industry Co has completed more than 300 transactions with Russian customers. An online announcement by a Chinese company trading in diesel engines suggests such shipments started as early as 2017.
“Russia [has also been] interested in procuring production technology of space-grade, radiation-resistant electronic components from the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation for Russian weapons,” Korolev said.
Other Russian analysts have pointed out that China is better placed than Russia to produce some weapons because its armed forces buy larger numbers of sophisticated items such as naval ships and it has a stronger manufacturing sector.
Still, defence experts believe it is unlikely that the Russian government will allow the country to grow dependent on Chinese arms supplies. “Russia has been very focused on being self-reliant for weapons and there is an almost cultural resistance about treating China as an equal,” Wezeman said.
“They would have to overcome their pride.” In the past, Russia sourced some components for its weapons systems in Europe. But Moscow tried to eliminate any reliance on foreign suppliers from its military-industrial complex after it was targeted by western sanctions in 2014 over its annexation of Crimea and fomenting of a proxy separatist war in eastern Ukraine. During the same period, co-operation with China on military and dual-use systems has increased.
“There are joint projects in satellite navigation going back to 2015,” said Korolev. China’s Beidou and Russia’s Glonass satellite systems are expected to use the same signal and the two countries plan to co-operate in developing applications.
The joint satellite communication system is believed to be able to compete with the US-backed Iridium network, Korolev said. Russian president Vladimir Putin in 2019 also revealed that the countries were co-operating on the development of advanced weapons systems, including missile defence.
Moreover, Moscow has expressed interest in the Yilong, a Chinese military-use reconnaissance drone also known as the Pterodactyl.
But, pointing to the Russian military’s shortcomings in reconnaissance during their Ukraine campaign, analysts said commercial drones were the most likely item China could usefully supply quickly.
“Small, super-short range drones of the kind you can buy in toy shops could already help them because they can just look around the corner and those are used by the Americans and Europeans by the hundreds,” Wezeman said. He said that it was probable that “sooner or later” a drone produced in China but operated by the Russian military would be discovered in Ukraine.
“You cannot hide that because eventually one will come down. What you can hide in this case is Chinese government involvement because these are commercial products that don’t need an export licence,” he said.
China reverses roles in arms trade with Russia
Beijing becomes partner and potential supplier to former source of military equipment
