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........

© The National Interest