How Ukraine Sanctions are Strengthening Russia’s Relationship with China

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President Vladimir Putin gave a big smile and congratulated Chinese leader Xi Jinping when they met in the Kremlin. Putin said that he was really impressed with China’s success and even said “We feel a bit jealous!”

China is more than just an ally of Russia when it comes to going against the U.S. Its successful economy makes it a big buyer of Russian oil and gas items, giving Putin lots of money which supports his country even though many other countries are mad at him because he invaded Ukraine.

Putin is happy that China is supporting Russia, but it’s also causing a strained relationship between them. China and Japan have different ideas that sometimes don’t agree with each other. Japan’s Prime Minister has promised to help Ukraine while President Xi offered his support to Russia.

Li Xin, an expert from Shanghai University of Political Science and Law said that Russia is worried about getting too reliant on China – but it doesn’t have many other options. The relationship between the two countries has been strong since the 1990s. So, even when they had disputes and problems before- like in 1961 – they found a way to push against other countries together, mainly the US.

The USA and China are very important to each other. Recently, the USA put some sanctions on Russia and stopped Chinese people from using American technology, because of security concerns. This made China’s leader Xi Jinping angry and he said that America was trying to stop China from growing stronger economically.

Li Mingjiang, a professor from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, believes that both Russia and China are worried that the U.S. and its allies are trying to “hold them back”. But even though Russia and China don’t always get along with each other, they both still want to “fight back” against America if needed.

Before last year, China’s president Xi and Russia’s president Putin stated that their friendship had “no limits.” However, China made it clear that they are not allies and have not provided military assistance to Russia in the Ukraine conflict. President Biden of the US and other leaders from Western countries advised against this action as there may be consequences if they go through with it.

Back in the old days, China used to look up to Russia as “Big Brother”. But as time went on, and China started using market-style reforms from the 1980s onwards – their economy began to quickly grow much bigger than Russia’s.

Russia has a lot of oil, but their post-Soviet companies couldn’t compete with all the amazing new factories that were coming out of China like cars and tech products. To make matters worse, while at the same time China’s economy was half the size of Russia’s, there were actually four times as many people making money each year!

By 2020, China’s economy was way bigger than Russia’s. According to the International Monetary Fund, Chinese people can get $10,525 of money per person while Russia only had $10,115. Russia’s total economic size was just as big as Texas which is around $1.7 trillion dollars.

Additionally, Russia is not the leader anymore in arms technology; this used to be their biggest service that they exported, non-oil.

In the early 2000s, China spent billions of dollars to buy fighter jets and other weapons from Russia. However, in 2004, Russia stopped selling these things to China because they accused China of copying their missile and other technology. Sales didn’t start again until 2014.

China was able to buy more Russian energy throughout last year as they imported $76.4 billion worth of mostly oil and gas from Russia – that’s almost a 50% increase! According to the Global Times newspaper, in January and February this year, China was even buying more energy from Russia than Saudi Arabia. This is because if China buys Russian energy, it will not result in them having sanctions placed on them by the United States, Europe or Japan.

China really values its friendship with Russia and is aware of Russia’s concerns. This is why they are careful not to do anything that might make the Russians feel suspicious or upset. Russia worries that President Xi’s plan to increase trade, such as building new ports, railways and other infrastructure, may hurt their powerful position amongst the former Soviet republics in Central Asia.

Russia, USA, Japan and India are all concerned that China is using the Belt and Road Initiative to try to have more power in their countries. To make them happy, China promised Russia that they would be responsible for security issues in Central Asia while China will work on trade.

Beijing has invested a billion dollars to help keep an oil project in Siberia functioning. That project was losing money because of Western sanctions against Moscow after the city of Crimea from Ukraine was taken over. Beijing wants Putin’s government to remain their diplomatic partner, but caution that any action that would trigger sanctions against Chinese banks would only hurt them.

China is facing potential losses if it clashes with the Western governments. Last year, the US bought 15% of China’s exports even though a conflict between Beijing and Washington about technology had begun. Additionally, the European Union bought nearly 13%. On the other hand, 1.3% was all that Russia purchased—even less than Thailand!

Li Xin said that China considers Russia less important than the West when it comes to technology and economics. However, due to the US putting pressure on China, the political importance of Russia for China is increasing. Researchers Yu Bing and Chen Wanqing helped with this report and they corrected their mistake of calling a university by a wrong name in this story.