The Partnership That Isn't

The Partnership That Isn’t

In May 2024, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin signed a document running nearly 8,500 words across ten sections. It promised cooperation on trade, energy, finance, technology, Arctic logistics, and multilateral governance. The phrase “no limits” had been retired, but the ambition remained. Western analysts called it an alliance in all but name.

They were wrong. What looks like strategic convergence is actually strategic convenience—a relationship held together not by shared vision but by shared enemies. And therein lies opportunity.

The question Western policymakers whisper but rarely voice openly is simple: can the tensions between Russia and China be amplified to reduce friction with the West? The answer is yes, but not through the crude methods of Cold War playbooks. The vulnerabilities exist. The leverage points are real. But exploiting them requires understanding what actually binds Moscow and Beijing together—and what quietly tears them apart.

What the Partnership Papers Over

Start with what both sides would prefer you not notice. Russia and China share a 4,200-kilometre border. They fought over it in 1969, when Soviet and Chinese troops exchanged fire on Zhenbao Island. The territorial disputes were formally resolved in 2008, but nationalist sentiment in both countries keeps the wound from fully healing. Chinese social media periodically erupts with claims to Vladivostok. Russian nationalists mutter about the “yellow peril” in the Far East.

These are not abstract anxieties. The Russian Far East holds 36 percent of Russia’s territory but only 4 percent of its population. Across the Amur River, China’s northeastern provinces contain 110 million people. The demographic mathematics create a gravitational pull that no treaty can neutralize.

Then there is the matter of status. Russia was once the senior partner in communist brotherhood. China was the student, receiving Soviet advisors and Soviet blueprints for industrialization. Today, China’s economy is ten times larger. Its military modernization programme has surpassed Russia’s in nearly every domain except nuclear weapons. Moscow knows this. The knowledge burns.

The economic relationship reveals the asymmetry in stark terms. Russia sells China oil, gas, and raw materials. China sells Russia manufactured goods, electronics, and increasingly the components Russia can no longer obtain from Western suppliers. This is not partnership. This is dependency dressed in diplomatic language.

Consider the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline negotiations. For a decade, Moscow has sought to build a second major gas pipeline to China, desperate to replace European customers lost to sanctions and sabotage. Beijing has refused to agree on price. The stalemate continues. What looks like commercial negotiation is actually something older: a tributary system’s symbolic submission rituals. Price becomes the last element through which Russia can avoid performing deference to the civilizational centre.

The Chinese know exactly what they are doing. They are patient. They can wait.

Where the Fractures Run Deepest

Central Asia represents the clearest arena of Sino-Russian competition. Both powers claim the region as their sphere of influence. Russia through the Collective Security Treaty Organization and historical dominance. China through the Belt and Road Initiative and economic penetration.

The numbers tell the story. Chinese trade with the five Central Asian states now exceeds Russian trade by a factor of three. Chinese investment in regional infrastructure dwarfs anything Moscow can offer. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan have discovered that resource wealth enables rejection of the custody battle metaphor entirely. They can afford to be orphans by choice.

Moscow watches this with mounting alarm. The Kremlin’s strategic culture operates on generational imperial memory cycles. Central Asia was Soviet. Before that, it was Russian. The idea that it might become Chinese—economically if not politically—represents an existential threat to Russian identity.

The Arctic presents another friction point. Both countries claim interest in northern sea routes and resource extraction. But Russia views the Northern Sea Route as sovereign territory. China views it as international waters deserving “common heritage” treatment. These positions cannot be reconciled.

Technology transfer adds another layer of grievance. Russia suspended military technology cooperation with China from 2006 to 2008, furious about reverse engineering of Russian weapons systems. The Su-27 fighter became the J-11. The S-300 missile system became the HQ-9. Moscow learned that sharing technology with Beijing meant creating a competitor.

The lesson was not forgotten. Today, despite the rhetoric of partnership, Russia remains cautious about what it shares. China remains frustrated about what it cannot obtain. Neither trusts the other with their most sensitive capabilities.

The Ideological Divergence

Beyond interests lies something harder to measure but equally important: worldview.

Russia’s strategic culture carries Orthodox theological DNA. The apophatic tradition holds that divine truth exists beyond rational knowledge, accessible only through negation and mystery. This epistemology enables Russia’s approach to information warfare—operating through irony, plausible deniability, and fog rather than the coherent alternative narratives that Western analysts expect.

China’s approach could not be more different. The Communist Party demands ideological clarity. Its censorship apparatus operates through centralized command-and-control, dynamically managing rules and behavioural triggers tied to device IDs, session states, and remote IP patterns. Where Russia creates confusion, China creates control.

These are not merely tactical differences. They reflect fundamentally incompatible theories of power. Russia believes that chaos serves the weak against the strong. China believes that order serves the strong against the weak. Both are correct, from their respective positions. But the beliefs cannot coexist indefinitely.

The domestic legitimacy strategies diverge as well. Putin’s Russia runs on resentment—against the West, against the 1990s, against the humiliations of lost empire. Xi’s China runs on restoration—the narrative of national rejuvenation, the century of humiliation finally ending, the return to historical greatness.

Resentment and restoration make uncomfortable bedfellows. Russia needs the world to remain broken. China needs the world to recognize its ascent. At some point, these needs collide.

What the West Can Actually Do

The NATO Washington Summit Declaration of July 2024 identified China as a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war against Ukraine. The framing was deliberate. It placed Beijing on notice while leaving room for diplomatic manoeuvre.

But Western policy options face severe constraints. The UN Charter prohibits interference in sovereign states’ bilateral relationships. International law offers no framework for deliberately amplifying tensions between third parties. Even if such actions were legal, they would likely prove counterproductive.

Here is why: the Russia-China relationship is primarily transactional. Both countries prioritize sovereignty over external pressure. Heavy-handed Western attempts to drive wedges would likely push them closer together, validating the narrative of hostile encirclement that both governments promote domestically.

The historical record supports this caution. The Nixon administration’s opening to China succeeded not because Washington manufactured tensions between Moscow and Beijing. The Sino-Soviet split had already occurred, driven by internal dynamics that no external actor could have created. Washington merely exploited an existing rupture.

The same principle applies today. Western policy should focus on creating conditions where existing tensions manifest naturally, rather than attempting to manufacture new ones.

Three approaches merit consideration.

First, strategic patience on energy. Russia desperately needs Chinese markets for its hydrocarbons. China knows this and negotiates accordingly. Western sanctions that restrict Russian energy exports to Europe increase Moscow’s dependence on Beijing, which increases Chinese leverage, which increases Russian resentment. The dynamic compounds without Western intervention.

The trade-off is significant. Tighter sanctions on Russian energy mean higher global prices and economic pain in Western economies. But the strategic effect—deepening the asymmetry that Moscow finds so galling—may justify the cost.

Second, targeted technology competition. Export controls on advanced semiconductors have already forced Russia into humiliating dependence on Chinese supply chains. Expanding these controls to cover additional categories would deepen the dependency. But the approach requires precision. Controls too broad would push Chinese firms toward indigenous development, reducing Western leverage over time.

The evidence suggests effective export controls paradoxically compress innovation timelines in target countries. When purchasing is blocked, all resources flow immediately to indigenous development. China is already racing to achieve semiconductor self-sufficiency. Western policy must balance short-term denial against long-term capability development.

Third, cultivating Central Asian alternatives. The five Central Asian states do not want to choose between Russia and China. They want options. Western engagement—investment, trade agreements, security partnerships—provides those options. Every dollar of Western investment in Kazakhstan is a dollar that does not come from Beijing, reducing Chinese leverage. Every security cooperation agreement with Uzbekistan complicates Russian assumptions about regional dominance.

The trade-off here involves resources and attention. Central Asia has never been a Western priority. Making it one requires sustained commitment that democratic governments, operating on quarterly electoral rhythms, struggle to maintain.

The Limits of Manipulation

Any honest assessment must acknowledge what cannot be done.

The Xi-Putin personal relationship functions as irreplaceable diplomatic infrastructure. Both leaders have invested enormous political capital in the partnership. Neither can afford to be seen as the one who broke it. Leadership transitions in either country might eventually create opportunities for realignment, but betting on such transitions is not a strategy.

The structural opposition to Western-led international order will persist regardless of bilateral tensions. Russia and China may disagree about many things, but they agree that American hegemony must end. This shared conviction provides a floor beneath which the relationship cannot fall.

Attempts at active manipulation carry serious escalation risks. Covert operations to amplify tensions could be detected, attributed, and used to justify responses. The Nuremberg precedent criminalized not just waging war but planning and preparation of aggressive war—a legal framework that technically encompasses modern destabilization campaigns. Western governments must consider whether the potential gains justify the legal and ethical exposure.

The most likely outcome is neither dramatic rupture nor genuine alliance. Russia and China will continue their partnership of convenience, cooperating where interests align and competing where they diverge. The relationship will remain transactional, brittle, and susceptible to stress—but not to collapse.

What Actually Will Happen

The default trajectory leads to gradual Russian subordination. Moscow lacks the economic weight, technological capability, and demographic base to maintain equality with Beijing. Every year that passes deepens the asymmetry. Every sanction that restricts Russian access to Western markets increases dependence on China. Every weapons system lost in Ukraine must be replaced with Chinese components.

Russia will become to China what Belarus has become to Russia: nominally sovereign, practically dependent, strategically useful but ultimately disposable.

This outcome serves Western interests imperfectly. A weakened Russia dependent on China is less dangerous than a strong Russia allied with China. But it also means Chinese influence extending to the borders of NATO, with all the complications that implies.

The wiser course involves not amplification but patience. The tensions are real. The fractures are deep. Time and circumstance will do the work that manipulation cannot.

Western policy should focus on three objectives: maintaining sanctions pressure that deepens Russian dependency on China; investing in alternatives that give Central Asian states options beyond the Russia-China dyad; and keeping channels open for the eventual Russian recalculation that subordination to Beijing may prove more costly than accommodation with the West.

That recalculation may take a decade. It may take a generation. But the structural forces driving it are more powerful than any covert operation could be.

Russia cannot escape its geography. China cannot escape its ambitions. And the partnership that looks so formidable today rests on foundations that neither country fully trusts.

FAQ: Key Questions Answered

Q: Are Russia and China actually allies? A: No. They have a “comprehensive strategic partnership” that falls short of a formal alliance. There are no mutual defence commitments. China has carefully avoided providing Russia with weapons for use in Ukraine, despite providing economic support. The relationship is transactional rather than ideological.

Q: What is the biggest source of tension between Russia and China? A: Economic asymmetry. China’s economy is ten times larger than Russia’s, and the gap is widening. Russia increasingly depends on China for manufactured goods, electronics, and components it cannot obtain elsewhere. This dependency grates against Russian self-image as a great power.

Q: Could the West successfully drive a wedge between Russia and China? A: Probably not through direct action. Heavy-handed attempts would likely push them closer together. The more effective approach is creating conditions where existing tensions manifest naturally—through sanctions that deepen Russian dependency, and through engagement with Central Asian states that provides alternatives to both powers.

Q: What would cause a genuine Russia-China split? A: Leadership change in either country, a direct conflict of interest in Central Asia, or Chinese actions that humiliate Russia publicly. The relationship depends heavily on the personal investment of Xi and Putin. A successor in either capital might calculate differently.

The Quiet Arithmetic

The partnership between Russia and China resembles a marriage of convenience between parties who remember why they once divorced. The ceremony was elaborate. The vows were expansive. But neither spouse has forgotten the border clashes, the technology theft, the status competitions, or the fundamental incompatibility of their ambitions.

Western strategists searching for leverage should look not to manipulation but to patience. The forces pulling Moscow and Beijing apart are structural, enduring, and ultimately more powerful than the forces pushing them together. Sanctions deepen dependency. Dependency breeds resentment. Resentment accumulates until it finds expression.

The question is not whether tensions can be amplified. They will amplify themselves. The question is whether the West will be positioned to benefit when they do.