China’s Russia Dilemma

Will China arm Russia?

“China sending Russia aid in the style of Soviet propaganda” (DALL-E 2)

Over the last two weeks the US government has alleged that China is “strongly considering” providing arms to Russia, one year into the war in Ukraine. Simultaneously, China last week put out a (highly vague) peace plan for the conflict, which was immediately dismissed by Washington. A number of people have asked me about both, so I figure I may as well briefly comment on how things stand, in my view.

First, to be clear about the situation, China has not yet actually sent Russia any arms or ammunition. This is a fact CIA Director Bill Burns acknowledged on Sunday, when he said in an interview that the US government was “confident” Beijing had been considering “the provision of lethal equipment,” but admitted that so far they’ve turned up no evidence of “actual shipments of lethal equipment.”

But the Biden administration is clearly very worried about the possibility, since they keep leaking intel to that effect to the press and issuing loud warnings to Beijing not to do it, calling the provision of arms a “red line” that would have “serious consequences” if crossed. “We will not hesitate to target Chinese companies or officials that violate our sanctions or otherwise engage in Russia’s war effort,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday. Burns declared it “would be a very risky and unwise bet” for China.” This preemptive uproar appears to mostly be in response to reported intelligence that at least one Chinese company has been in negotiations to potentially produce military drones for the Russians.

China swears they have no such intention, however, and there are actually some reasons to believe them (for now). The fact is that China appears to be highly conflicted about how to approach the war, as they are trapped in a situation in which they have multiple, fundamentally conflicting interests at play.

There is no need to be naïve about this: China’s ultimate goal is to smash American/Western hegemonic power and initiate a Chinese Century – but how best to accomplish this? On the one hand, China’s likeminded friend Russia is now engaged in a military challenge to the American-led Western liberal global order, and if it can win decisively in Ukraine the credibility of that order will be badly, maybe even fatally, damaged. China would love to see that happen. On the other hand, the whole basis of Chinese national power is derived from the continued growth of its economic strength; and China’s economy is currently a mess, badly weakened by years of draconian zero-Covid stupidity, an ongoing real estate crisis, huge levels of debt, and communist political mismanagement. Meanwhile international companies are beginning to shift supply chains out of China as they read the room and see Cold War 2.0 dawning. Getting back on track economically is therefore the top priority of Chinese leadership for the foreseeable future, and keeping China’s largest trade partners from decoupling themselves economically is especially critical for Beijing. Which is why China is currently engaged in a big diplomatic “charm offensive,” deploying its top diplomats to fan out across the world and try to convince everyone to get back to doing business with it again as normal.

In addition to whatever sanctions the US might impose on China, arming Russia would completely destroy this diplomatic effort in Europe and deeply alienate much of the continent, which is China’s most important trade partner. In comparison, Chinese trade with Russia, an economy roughly the size of Italy, is miniscule. When US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeymeo recently threatened that the Chinese now “have a choice between doing business with the countries of our coalition, which represent 50% of the global economy, and doing business with Russia,” he was pretty accurate in pointing out China’s strategic predicament.

Nonetheless, the White House is panicking for a reason. Chinese material military support would absolutely be a game changer for Russia, and would likely swing the conflict decisively in its favor. As many have noted, this has become a war of attrition, with both sides running low on ammunition and equipment, as well as manpower. Russia has the advantage when it comes to manpower, but thanks to NATO’s backing Ukraine has a firm advantage in war materiel. I’ve noticed that some people don’t seem to appreciate the scope of this, perhaps imagining that Russia still has the manufacturing power of the USSR during the Cold War. It does not.

Take a look at the below chart, displaying the world’s top 20 arms manufacturing companies by total defense sales in 2018 (the most recent year for which I could find decent data, though not much has changed since except all these firms’ sales growing pretty much across the board). It should give you a pretty good picture of the material balance of this globalized conflict in one image:

World’s top 20 largest arms-manufacturing companies by defense-specific sales (2018)

It’s true that, since it measures by sales revenue, America’s apparent weight in this chart is inflated by shiny big-ticket items like the F-35 fighter jet, rather than the amount of, say, actually useful artillery shells produced. But, even so, it should be obvious that Russia alone has little chance of competing with the combined military-industrial base of the United States and Europe if they are fully committed to arming its opponent over the long term. It needs China. China is far and away the world’s industrial superpower, and it turns out that industrial manufacturing capacity will be central to deciding this war (just like so many wars before the dawn of the “post-industrial” era, who would have thought?).

So what is China likely to do? Well, first of all, I think this is why the Chinese “peace plan” has made a sudden appearance. In my view it is at least somewhat genuine in sentiment, in the sense that Beijing really would prefer this untimely war to just end and go away as a problem. It simply doesn’t have the diplomatic skills or credibility to convince anyone of that, let alone put together a real peace process, however. But Beijing will make some effort anyway, as it continues to make a final push to improve relations with Europe and try to peel the countries of the continent away from Washington at least a little bit. 

So I don’t expect China to sell Russia arms in the near term. It is currently too invested in its charm offensive strategy and is likely to give staying above the fray one last go, at least until there are signs the Chinese economy is on firmer footing. China also knows the US spy agencies are watching very carefully and that it is unlikely to get away with sending any significant amount of arms covertly, so isn’t too likely to bother trying to do that. Washington and Brussels would pounce on evidence of even the smallest of arms transfers and scream to high heaven. However, for China this means that if it does decide to arm the Russians it has an incentive to move straight past half-measures and just go all the way to arming them to the teeth.

And that day seems like it is probably getting closer now. Washington and its allies have not been shy about stating that the only outcome in Ukraine they would consider acceptable is complete Russian defeat. Simultaneously, Washington has telegraphed through its escalating efforts to smother China’s whole technology industry that it is now completely set on waging Cold War 2.0, is no longer bothering to hide it, and therefore that China will inevitably be singled out as its main target as soon as Russia can be pacified. The US-China summit that Washington cancelled following “balloon-gate” may have been the last chance to delay that outcome. So while China is still trying to salvage its economic relations with Europe, it may conclude that at this point it’s no longer worth even bothering to try to save the US-China relationship from open rivalry.

Meanwhile there is no way China can ever allow a real Russian defeat in Ukraine (meaning Russian loss of its seized territory in Ukraine and a consequent destabilization of Putin’s government) – it would be an existential catastrophe for China’s strategic position. China needs Putin’s Russia; it is Beijing’s only sizable ideologically-aligned counterweight to the West, as well as a crucial resource base. As long as Russia is able to make some gains on the battlefield, or at least avoid losing, China can afford to maintain its official neutrality and refrain from sending arms. But if Russia begins losing ground again China may see no option but to intervene. Notably, this means the more the West’s strategy of arming Ukraine succeeds, the more likely Chinese intervention becomes.

If China makes that decision, it would be a truly significant, and dangerous, moment in history, essentially escalating the Ukraine conflict into something like a cold world war between the US and China, with Ukraine and Russia serving as the two superpowers’ proxies. And who knows where things might go from there.

Many wonder why decision-makers in Washington are so obsessed with the fate of Ukraine, in comparison to all the dire problems the American people face. Well, fundamentally it’s because the outcome of this war has real potential to reset the whole balance of global power, and all the major geopolitical players understand that full well (as you may too, since I’ve written at length on the reasons why). And they care a lot more about that than anything else. That’s why so many in the West have already gone all in on the war – and why someday soon China may as well.

Related: The Hungarian Conservative has just published an interview I did with them (conducted a little while ago) on a closely related set of topics, including Europe, the war, and China’s role in it. You can read that in full here.

Also worth your time: This podcast interview by the ChinaTalk Substack.