Flashpoints | Security | Oceania

A Coordinated Trans-Eurasian Threat: The Deepening China-Russia Strategic Partnership

Sino-Russian cooperation and antagonism to the Western-led order is hardly new, but their partnership has reached new depths. 

The Sino-Russian no-limits partnership is the driver of an anti-Western axis that seeks to weaken and reshape the global order that has underpinned Australia’s post-1945 prosperity and sovereignty. Naysayers may claim it isn’t an alliance, but it certainly is a deepening partnership that challenges decision makers seeking to safeguard Australian interests in a contested world.

Economic coercion, defense cooperation, and joint propaganda by China and Russia are directly shaping Canberra’s strategic thinking, including in the upcoming National Defense Strategy (NDS). This should lead to increased funding through the NDS, and not just for the four years of the budget’s forward estimates.

Sino-Russian cooperation and antagonism to the Western-led order is hardly new. For authoritarian regimes, the threat of liberal democratic ideas is just as threatening as military power. Indeed, it was the former, not the latter, that drove Russian President Vladimir Putin’s disastrous decision to invade Ukraine in 2022 and has driven Beijing’s support of Moscow’s aggression since.

But, as set out in a new report by ASPI today, the depth of the Sino-Russian partnership is new. While the West concentrated on delinking economic prosperity from national security considerations after winning the Cold War – harnessing a supposed peace dividend – Moscow and Beijing set about putting aside their differences. Western strategic success against the Soviet Union and the dazzling military success of the First Iraq War were enough to convince the authoritarians in Beijing and Moscow that they needed to work together to preserve their systems. Their declaration of a “no-limits partnership” in 2022 only acknowledged what had been three decades in the making.

The West must now recognize it is facing a coordinated transcontinental Eurasian threat not seen in at least half a century. The partnership has even graver implications as the United States limits its traditional role in upholding the global order.

Beijing and Moscow are working together on advancing geoeconomic fragmentation, building alternative economic blocs and financial systems and increasingly complicating trade and economic security considerations. Further, their increasingly complex joint military exercises, together with diplomatic coordination and strategic signaling, serve Beijing’s interest in altering the regional balance and signaling Western decline. Russian defense technology (not always provided voluntarily), operational experience, and military cooperation have accelerated China’s military modernization, the key challenge for Australian defense planners over the coming decade.

In return, China has become a key political and economic supporter of Russia, helping it mitigate effects........

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