China steps up military drills with Russia

ALLIANCE:
After years of suspicion and conflict, China and Russia have started to work together, and in a conflict or crisis in Asia, they could help each other, an expert has said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping () has resisted crossing Washington’s red lines on arming the Russian war machine in Ukraine, but that hasn’t stopped China from closing in on Moscow’s military a another way: direct engagement.

Yesterday, a Chinese naval flotilla left to join Russian naval and air forces in the Sea of ​​Japan in an exercise aimed at safeguarding the security of strategic waterways, the Chinese Defense Ministry said.

Last year, China and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s armed forces conducted six joint military exercises together, most of them dating back two decades.

That accounted for two-thirds of all Chinese exercises with foreign militaries last year, according to data compiled by the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs at National Defense Universities (NDU) in the United States.

Five of the drills took place after Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, the data shows. Four of them were bilateral, while two were with US adversaries, including Iran and Syria.

Xi has every reason to preserve and strengthen China’s strategic alignment with Russia, said Alexander Korolev, senior lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of New South Wales in Australia. This is the most effective way to counterbalance American power.

As China steps up pressure on Taiwan, the United States has expanded its military presence in Asia. It recently signed a defense pact with the Philippines and opened another base in Guam. China’s concerns over US military encirclement come as Russia protests NATO forces closing in on its borders.

In this context, Xi refused to condemn Putin’s war. Instead, China has provided economic and diplomatic shelter for Moscow by buying its products cheaply and through political engagement. So far, the Chinese leaders’ only overseas trip this year has been to Moscow.

At the same time, China has frozen high-level military dialogue with the United States over sanctions it imposed on Chinese National Defense Minister Li Shangfu () for a Russian arms purchase in 2018.

The United States and China have not held joint exercises since 2020, and those involved disaster response. The risky interactions between their armies have raised fears that an accident could lead to a confrontation.

China and Russia have a tumultuous defense history that is marred by suspicion and includes a months-long conflict along their long border in the 1960s. The recent improvement in confidence came in 2015, after the United States United and Europe imposed sanctions on Russia for seizing Crimea the previous year.

These moves, along with US criticism of Beijing’s military expansionism in the South China Sea, have prompted both sides to seek other defense partners. That has caused some U.S. policymakers to express concern between China and Russia and their de facto alliance, according to a February report to the U.S. Congress.

Russia and China have conducted at least 36 exercises together following Putin’s annexation of Crimea, according to the NDU and a tally by Bloomberg News. That compares to just 10 exercises in the decade to 2014.

Putin’s announcement in 2019 that Russia would help China build a system to warn of ballistic missile launches was unprecedented, Korolev said, and signaled a new degree of defense cooperation.

Such systems require ground radars as well as space satellites.

Putin and Xi have managed to ease, if not eliminate, the existing psychological and political obstacles to closer cooperation, he added.

Exercises between Russia and China are generally smaller than those between the United States and its allies. The United States and the Philippines recently held their largest exercises with more than 17,000 troops.

Nevertheless, China’s exercises with Russia are often loaded with political significance.

The two nations’ annual drills around Japan, for example, aggravate a democracy with which the two countries have a territorial dispute. In 2019, the air forces of both nations staged their first long-range bomber aerial patrols in the Indo-Pacific region. Japan dispatched planes in response, while South Korea said the drills had entered its air defense identification zone. Both countries are key security partners for the United States.

These exercises will become more frequent, more politically charged and will have similar political signal value, said Andrew Taffer, a research fellow at the NDU Center for the Study of China Military Affairs. This suggests the possibility that they are working together in ways that the United States and its allies find distasteful, even offensive.

While Russia and China have not conducted joint exercises around Taiwan, last month two Russian warships cruised along Taiwan’s east coast in a rare transit, before passing Okinawa, which is home to a large American base. The ships were en route to a stopover in Shanghai.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army said yesterday’s exercise aimed to enhance strategic coordination between the armies, as well as their abilities to maintain regional peace and stability and respond to various security challenges.

Yet Putin’s war in Ukraine has exposed Moscow’s limitations as a potential military partner. That’s unlikely to deter long-term ties because Xi doesn’t have a good surrogate, said Elizabeth Wishnick, a political science professor at Montclair State University.

Should there be a crisis or conflict in Asia, there is a chance that China and Russia will help each other, she said.

Meanwhile, the United States, South Korea and Japan held a joint naval missile defense exercise yesterday to counter evolving nuclear and missile threats from North Korea, the South Korean Navy said. , after North Korea launched an ICBM on Wednesday.

The trilateral exercise was conducted in international waters between South Korea and Japan, bringing together destroyers equipped with Aegis radar systems from the three countries, the navy said.

Additional Reuters reports