Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin shake hands before a joint news conference in Moscow, Russia, in March 2023. Increased cooperation between Russia and China is a major national security concern for the United States. (Presidential Office of Russia)

The Limits and Risks of Sino-Russian Military-Technological Cooperation

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The United States probably cannot break Russia off from China in the military technology sector. But it can recognize that there are tensions between the two, and do its best to grow them.

Technological cooperation between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation has evolved into one of the most consequential strategic alignments shaping international security. Cooperation across ISR (Intelligence Surveillance & Reconnaissance), BMD (Ballistic Missile Defense), and the space domain challenges existing US advantages and demands a shift in US policy.

Once characterized by opportunistic transfers and transactional exchanges, the Sino-Russian partnership since 2014 has matured into a structured, dual-use ecosystem spanning space operations, intelligence and reconnaissance networks, missile warning and air defense systems, and the industrial technologies that enable them. Technological cooperation between the two nations has oscillated between dependence, mistrust, and limited convergence since the Cold War, shaped initially by Soviet assistance to China’s missile and space programs and later by post-Cold War arms and technology transfers. Following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the imposition of Western sanctions, this cooperation shifted from episodic, transactional exchanges to more institutionalized, asymmetric collaboration in dual-use domains, with China emerging as the dominant economic and manufacturing partner.

China and Russia pursue this cooperation for different but complementary reasons. Beijing seeks to accelerate its rise as a space and military power, reduce dependency on Western space architectures, and exploit Russian expertise in propulsion, radar, and missile-defense engineering. Moscow is constrained by sanctions and industrial decline and has come to rely on Chinese capital, manufacturing capacity, and electronics to sustain its defense base and extend its strategic relevance. Both parties share the fear of US dominance and the perception that the global order is shifting toward bloc competition. Recent developments such as the BeiDou-GLONASS integration, joint missile-defense exercises, and the planned International Lunar Research Station illustrate a shift from bilateral exchanges to system-level cooperation.

For the United States, this partnership complicates crisis stability and long-term planning. Integrated surveillance, early-warning, and counterspace capabilities reduce US freedom of action and increase escalation risks by linking two separate threat environments. These dynamics demand a clear understanding of how the cooperation functions, where it is most likely to deepen, and where it encounters structural limits.

Although Sino-Russian military cooperation remains limited at the level of formal operations, its growing integration across space infrastructure, early warning and missile defense, operational enablers, and defense-industrial technologies poses durable risks to Western security even in the absence of a formal alliance.

Sino-Russian Cooperation in Space

After 2014, structural problems in Russia’s space sector reduced Moscow’s ability to sustain ambitious space programs independently. China’s investment in launch systems, satellite manufacturing, and space infrastructure also increased its ability to provide resources and program leadership. As a result, cooperation expanded, but under increasingly asymmetric conditions in which China assumed a leading role and Russia participated selectively in Chinese-led initiatives. This shift marked the transition from episodic collaboration to dependency-driven participation, with implications for how space cooperation shapes military and political leverage.

An important area of space-based cooperation between Russia and China is in satellite-based navigation. Interoperability efforts between the Chinese and Russian BeiDou and GLONASS satellite-based navigation systems focus on signal compatibility and performance monitoring, thereby increasing the coverage and resilience of both. For both China and Russia, this interoperability also reduces dependence on US GPS, enhances military resilience in contested environments, and increases the attractiveness of their systems to third countries seeking alternatives to US-led space infrastructure. At the strategic level, the ILRS’s significance lies in how it structures long-term lunar and space engagement as a counterweight to the West and in the pooling of resources and competencies between Russia and China.    

According to RAND, Sino-Russian military cooperation is likely to deepen at the level of operational enablers, such as intelligence, counter-space, and cyber support, rather than evolve into a NATO-style integrated warfighting coalition—particularly in crises where both perceive US intervention as threatening core interests. The two nations are likely already cooperating in enabler domains such as ISR, cyber, logistics, and space capabilities. Even in the absence of formal integration or joint command structures, cooperation at the enabler level already carries significant operational consequences. Likewise, CSIS and allied reporting indicates that China is supporting Russia by providing satellite imagery for long-range fires.  China and Russia together possess a vast space-based ISR architecture capable of tracking transmitters such as radios, mobile phones, and military radars, and of detecting and locating surface ships worldwide. The ISR architecture, combined with China’s planned low-earth-orbit SATCOM constellation (GuoWang), enables near-real-time global find-fix capability against adversary radio systems and surface vessels. This, combined with Chinese leadership in AI and computing, means that such cooperation could rival or surpass what NATO can achieve in finding and fixing enemy forces. This ISR-enabled architecture would extend the reach of cruise and anti-ship missiles across multiple theaters, posing a more serious threat in a conflict scenario, without requiring formal alliance integration.

Missile Defense, Early Warning, and Enablers

For most of the past two decades, China has lacked indigenous ground-based early-warning radars for intercontinental ballistic missiles—a vital necessity for a robust air defense network. After failing to develop these systems domestically, Beijing partnered with Moscow in 2019 to jointly develop them. That partnership is reported to have produced operational systems by the mid-2020s. An operational Chinese space-based early-warning system has not been confirmed, but Russia could share early-warning data with China.

Sino-Russian cooperation in early warning and missile defense is feasible because both states share a common threat perception, enabling the exchange of tracking data as well as technical and operational insights. The Russian demand for investment aligns with China’s production capacity, which benefits both sides. China has an advantage over Russia in machine learning and space launch capability, both significant sectors for the continued development of space-based early-warning. Beyond strategic early-warning, China’s air and missile defense requirements, particularly in the South China Sea, create incentives for joint development of lower-tier systems, which Russia can leverage for export-oriented cooperation and third-country adoption.

By the mid-2010s, sanctions had progressively eroded Russia’s access to Western capital and technology, increasing its reliance on non-Western partners to sustain key industrial sectors. Despite Russia’s sales of the Su-35 fighter jet and S-400 anti-air missile system to China, arms sales have not become the dominant mode of cooperation in the post-2014 period.

Since 2022, Western export controls and sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have constrained Russia’s access to advanced electronics and dual-use components. As a result, Russia has increasingly relied on Chinese suppliers for selected categories of electronics and industrial inputs. This reliance is not comprehensive, and does not imply that China provides complete weapons systems. Still, it does represent a shift in which China supplies enabling technologies critical to sustaining Russian defense production. A notable exception appears to be smaller drone systems, where whole systems have been delivered to Russia.

The Limits to the Russia-China Relationship

Despite generally stable and cooperative relations, Sino-Russian technological and military cooperation faces persistent structural limits and contradictions. One enduring constraint is Russia’s continued concern about China’s intellectual property theft from Russian firms—rooted in repeated past instances of China reverse-engineering Russian technology that, in some cases, led to the curtailment or cancellation of cooperation once Chinese companies had perfected an indigenous alternative. Cooperative development is further constrained by techno-nationalism, the preference for domestically produced systems, in both Moscow and Beijing. Additional sources of friction stem from residual misalignments in national interest. While border disputes have been resolved, nuclear forces de-targeted, and the United States top of mind in both capitals as the primary adversary, tensions persist in areas such as Chinese migration into the Russian Far East, where demographic, economic, and cultural concerns continue to shape Russian strategic perceptions.

A central structural contradiction in the Sino-Russian defense cooperation lies in the tension between arms sales and domestic production. Russia derives greater economic and political benefits from producing weapons domestically and exporting the finished systems to China, thereby maximizing profits, limiting exposure to IP theft, and preserving control over sensitive technology. By retaining production within Russia, Moscow maintains leverage by controlling the flow of components and spare parts. By contrast, China naturally finds production within its borders more advantageous for Beijing. This trend has created direct competition in third-party export markets, where Chinese systems increasingly rival Russian offerings at lower prices. By granting production licenses or enabling technology transfer to China, Russia risks a dual loss—both foregoing direct sales to China and empowering Chinese firms to learn from and eventually undercut Russian exports abroad, potentially shifting long-term political and economic leverage in Beijing’s favor.

Beyond industrial competition, cooperation generates a broader strategic tension. Improved relations allow Russia to allocate fewer military resources to its Far Eastern border, yielding short-term security benefits. Over the longer term, this relaxation may be offset by the expansion of Chinese economic and political influence in regions traditionally viewed by Moscow as spheres of interest, particularly Central Asia and the Caucasus. China remains dissatisfied with the scale and nature of Russian arms transfers to India. As Sino-Indian relations have deteriorated, Moscow’s continued willingness to arm Beijing’s principal regional competitor and border adversary is perceived in China as undermining its security interests, reinforcing the limits of trust and alignment within the partnership.

Implications and Policy Responses for the West

The joint development of BeiDou-GLONASS stations across the Middle East and North Africa continues to pose challenges to US military capabilities in some of the world’s most contested regions. With the current partnership, there has been a convergence of Chinese and Russian space and ISR networks. While the timeline charts decades of development ahead, the MOU functions primarily as a symbolic signal of long-term alignment. As Sino-Russian satellite systems increasingly compete with US alternatives, the partnership reduces dependence on US GPS among countries in the MENA region.

Sino-Russian technological cooperation gives them a competitive advantage, enabling both commercial alternatives to US-based systems and more effective contestation of US technological advantages in military domains. For US planners, this dynamic complicates crisis management by increasing the risk of multi-theater pressure.  Because this technological cooperation is unlikely to fracture on its own, US policy should focus on shaping its consequences rather than hoping for its collapse. US policy should therefore seek to widen the latent fractures between China and Russia by shifting from disruptive sanctions to targeted friction, competing in space and ISR through alliance-based scale, and reinforcing deterrence through the Golden Dome architecture.

One thing the United States should do right away is scale up its cooperation with like-minded allies and partners. By prioritizing defense-industrial co-production with India in air defense, ISR platforms, and space launch components, it is possible to reduce New Delhi’s dependence on Russian systems without forcing an abrupt decoupling, and to expand US-India space cooperation beyond civil exploration to include satellite resilience, space situational awareness (SSA), and launch reliability. To shift from disruptive sanctions to targeted friction, the US should replace broad sanctions on Chinese firms with targeted export controls and enforcement actions focused on critical dual-use chokepoints, including radiation-hardened electronics, propulsion components, and space-grade semiconductors. Emphasis should be placed on transaction-level friction, such as logistics, insurance, financing, and certification.

Similarly, while the United States should not offer concessions to Russia in Eastern Europe, it should engage with Russia on security concerns there under clear guardrails to manage escalation and exploit asymmetry. Where feasible, the US should pursue limited, reciprocal confidence-building measures, such as notifications of large-scale exercises, missile tests, and space launches, to reduce the risk of miscalculation without legitimizing Russian territorial claims. Selective engagement on arms control verification, missile defense transparency, and space security norms can serve as a wedge strategy, signaling that Russia retains diplomatic alternatives beyond exclusive dependence on China.

In parallel, the United States should pursue a layered homeland and regional defense posture built around the proposed Golden Dome architecture and expanded theater missile defenses in and around the South China Sea. Strengthening deterrence against Chinese and Russian missile threats while reassuring Indo‑Pacific partners is key. Air and missile defense cooperation is particularly consequential because it shapes crisis stability by influencing perceptions of vulnerability and response time. This posture will not only harden the US and allied defense perimeter, but also signal that attempts at coercion or strategic intimidation will fail, thereby reinforcing incentives for both Moscow and Beijing to pursue more restrained strategic behavior.

Sino-Russian technological cooperation is neither accidental nor easily reversed. However, it is also neither seamless nor cost-free. US policy should therefore focus on constraining its strategic returns, exploiting asymmetries, and preserving escalation control rather than pursuing an unattainable rupture between the two countries. Altogether, these dynamics suggest that Sino-Russian cooperation is likely to remain durable in the near term, even as asymmetries and frictions persist beneath the surface.

About the Author: Michael Magill

Michael Magill is a graduate student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where he focuses on great power competition, military technology, and international security. He previously worked on national security–related trade policy and has served as a US Army officer.

An earlier version of this article was prepared as a policy brief for the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and benefited from collaboration with classmates in that course. The author gratefully acknowledges the guidance and instruction of Professor Andrew Kuchins.

© The National Interest