Partners on Parade: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend the military parade marking the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War in Moscow on 9 May 2025. | Image courtesy: Kremlin.ru
The mid-November meeting in Moscow between Chinese Premier Li Qiang and his Russian counterpart, Mikhail Mishustin, is the latest step in a growing political and economic bilateral partnership driven by Western opposition to Russia’s war in Ukraine. This is not to say that there are no tensions or attempts at one-upmanship in the Russia-China relationship, but the two sides also understand the value of the relationship both in and of itself and as leverage with other powers. Even as it drives a hard bargain, China also puts in considerable effort to keep the Russians close and to expand the relationship.
Economic Imbalance
Russia has actively courted China. It is worth recalling that within months of his annexation of Crimea in 2014 and in anticipation of Western sanctions, Russian President Vladimir Putin had concluded a 30-year gas deal worth $400 billion with China. The Russia-China economic relationship is, however, structurally unbalanced. While Russia currently enjoys a slight surplus in total bilateral trade estimated at nearly $250 billion in 2024, it is reliant on exports of price-sensitive hydrocarbon and natural resources, while China exports relatively price-inelastic manufactured goods. Russia is also increasingly constrained to use Chinese financial services and apps, as well as the Chinese yuan for its trade, including with India, on occasion.
As part of the call to deepen the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries, there was a strong economic agenda at the Li-Mishustin meeting, with a focus on investments, energy and agriculture. Some tensions were also evident. When China says it “welcomes more high-quality Russian agricultural and food products” into the Chinese market, the implication is that Russian products are not meeting Chinese standards or expectations. The Russians, for their part, said that they would “provide more convenience for Chinese enterprises investing and operating in Russia”, suggesting in turn that conditions were being perceived in China as far from optimum for their enterprises. Given that the big Chinese players are increasingly chary of Russian investments, given Western sanctions and their more significant interests in Western markets, why would Russia make things difficult for Chinese enterprises?
At the conclusion of the 2014 gas deal – which had been in the works for over a decade – Putin remarked, “Our Chinese friends are difficult, hard negotiators.” In other words, one could read keeping conditions difficult – non-tariff barriers for the Chinese – as among the few levers the Russians have in the economic relationship as a way of making peace with their dependence on China. Indeed, the Chinese are also likely deploying pressure of their own on Russian agricultural products.
Big Brother Problems
The Moscow meeting made the customary references to the “strategic guidance” of Russian President Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping to “further strengthen communication and coordination, continuously deepen mutually beneficial cooperation, and create more benefits for the peoples of both countries.” These expressions are laden with significance as they indicate both the political benefits of cooperation against a hostile West, but also the inherent tensions in the Russia-China relationship.
These tensions are the result of a question that has long plagued the relationship – as to who is the more senior partner? Even though in 1949, the Chinese people were supposed to have “stood up” according to Mao, the Chinese leader remained conscious of, if not deferential to, the Soviet Union’s stature as a global power and its role as one of China’s few diplomatic allies and development partners. However, when Stalin passed from the scene, and he was criticised by his successors, Mao began objecting to the notion that China was a junior partner and began thinking of himself as the leading light of the world’s communist ideologues.
The Sino-Soviet split was both severe and violent, and, in many ways, its consequences continue to be felt within China. China’s internet is frequently awash with revanchism aimed against Russia, supported in no small measure by the Communist Party of China’s own narratives that focus on fears of territorial disintegration and national humiliation.
External Tensions
On the foreign and security policies front, even as China built bridges with the US after 1971 but now sees the US as its biggest political and military challenger, Beijing has always been conscious of Russia’s weight. There is, of course, the reality of its long border with Russia. But there is also the ideological utility of having a fellow authoritarian power, and hence, the Chinese shock at the fall of the Soviet Union, their obsessive studies of its causes for the fall and their desire today to re-engage with and strengthen Putin’s Russia against the West.
Thus, from an overall perspective, the irritants in the Sino-Russian bilateral relationship will remain minor for now, not least because the Chinese will want to keep it that way. The smooth functioning of the relationship is something that both Moscow and Beijing understand is critical to their immediate foreign policy and security interests, but the Chinese also see this as vital over the long term.
As evident from Putin’s remark, however, the Chinese have consistently shown that, despite their win-win rhetoric, they are loath to give the impression that they are an easy mark. Whether it is a big country or a small one they are dealing with, the Chinese are particular that no one assumes they can take them for a ride or for granted, no matter how interested they themselves are in a positive outcome. In some instances, as in the Sino-Russian gas deal of 2014, China can afford to exert pressure on Russia, given the impending Western sanctions against Russia.
Russia’s lack of choices is why it should not have come as any surprise that Putin would seek a “no limits partnership” with China on the eve of his more ambitious attack on the rest of Ukraine itself in February 2022. And given their worldview, it should not be surprising either that the Chinese would agree to such a partnership.
Given the scale of the Russian attempt, it is possible that the Chinese were not expecting a quick Russian victory in Ukraine, but they probably also did not expect such a long-drawn-out stalemate either. This is a stalemate that has potentially introduced some degree of rethinking about China’s own planning and doctrines for a Taiwan contingency. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) retains a great deal of its strong Soviet legacies in terms of structure and thinking, even as it has rapidly and actively modernised over the past few decades, learning, adopting and adapting from the West. Russia’s failures on the battlefield can in many ways be expected to have implications for the PLA, too, on the battlefield and possibly, beyond.
Xi Jinping, as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), places regime security as his top priority and preventing a collapse like that of the Soviet Union. The PLA’s abilities as the CPC’s army, therefore, are critical with consequences not just for the legitimacy of the Party but also for its survival.
Alternative Approaches
What is more, the Russian failure to ensure total victory has, ironically, opened possibilities for Putin to overcome dependencies on China, given that he appears to have found a sympathetic listener and actor in US President Donald Trump, pushing for a ceasefire that privileges Russian interests over Ukrainian ones. While it might be premature to argue that Putin’s agreeing to an American-brokered ceasefire reduces Beijing’s cachet in Moscow, it will certainly take significant knocks.
China has, therefore, already started expanding its strategy towards Russia. It is seeking a deepening of the energy relationship, for instance. At the end of November, during the 7th China-Russia Energy Business Forum in Beijing, CPC Politburo Standing Committee member Ding Xuexiang talked about increasing cooperation to further cross-border flows, including in renewable energy. China also sought to promote its latest foreign policy project, the Global Governance Initiative, calling for “a more fair, just, balanced and inclusive global energy governance system,” as a way of ensuring greater stability in the world energy market.
Beijing is, however, relying not only on economics or international geopolitical winds to keep Russia close. The meeting between Li and Mishustin also talked about “injecting more warmth” into bilateral relations, calling for the expansion of people-to-people exchanges and strengthening cooperation in culture, education, and films.
India’s Options
From India’s perspective, Chinese actions matter. It is a truism in India that the relationship with Russia is unique and special, that it is immune to any kind of outside pressure. The basis for this belief system is not just practical – arms supplies, oil and gas, the Russian veto at the UN Security Council – but also sentimental. Generations of Indian elites have grown up thumbing through the fine, glossy pages of the classics of Russian literature, heavy Soviet Marxist tomes, and colourfully-illustrated folktales from the territory of the then Soviet Union (including Ukrainian folktales) – often distributed freely. Meanwhile, Indians are proud of the hold of Bollywood stars – from Raj Kapoor to Mithun Chakraborty to Shah Rukh Khan – on the Russian imagination. It is difficult for Indians to conceive that they might end up being abandoned by the Russians for other suitors or that others could have greater claims on the Russian imagination.
And yet that is what India will need to prepare for as it draws down its imports of Russian oil under American pressure, is unwilling to contend with China, and is unable to offer Russia little more than sentiment.
Originally Published as ‘Russia, China and the Uneasy Terms of Authoritarian Coexistence’, India’s World, Vol. 2, Issue 1, (11 January), January 2026. pp.17-19.