Taiwan and the Limits of the Russia-China Friendship

Russian-Chinese “friendship without limits” rests on a solid foundation. Two factors—shared authoritarian domestic politics and adversarial relations with the United States—are most important.

In October 2023, the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States published its final report.1 It concluded that “the risk of military conflict with [China and Russia] has grown” and that “the United States and its Allies must be ready to deter and defeat both adversaries simultaneously.” A two-theater war—in Europe and the Asia-Pacific—involving China and Russia simultaneously is arguably the worst-case scenario the United States could face in an era of so-called great-power competition.

But what about other, more ambiguous scenarios? The most commonly raised one is a potential confrontation with China over Taiwan. Since the start of Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine, Beijing has provided extensive assistance to Moscow that appears to have strengthened their already robust partnership and made Russia heavily dependent on China.

This paper explores the ways Russia might assist China in the event of a war with the United States over Taiwan. Because of the obvious political sensitivity that this issue poses for both Beijing and Moscow, a direct answer to this question cannot be found in official Russian or Chinese sources. But clues can be derived by examining Russia’s interests that would be at stake in a crisis surrounding Taiwan, its calculations of risks and opportunities, and the capabilities it could deploy in such a situation.

The paper begins with a broad overview of the relationship between China and Russia since the end of the Sino-Soviet split in the late 1980s, its drivers, and the benefits that each derives from it. It then explores the likely impact of a military confrontation between China and the United States over Taiwan on that relationship, highlighting important asymmetries between the positions of Beijing and Moscow that would affect Russian calculations of risks and benefits in such an event. Next the paper examines Russian and Chinese expert narratives as a gauge of each side’s expectations of the other in that contingency. It then turns to what assistance Russia could realistically offer China in the event of a war with the United States over Taiwan. Finally, the paper considers Russia’s probable course of action should this conflict materialize.

The Chinese-Russian Relationship—It’s Strategic

It has long been the norm among Western officials and analysts to describe the relationship between China and Russia as lacking strategic depth and being transactional, and as likely to eventually crack due to the imbalance in their power and capabilities and to Moscow never being willing to accept the role of junior partner.2 Moreover, the argument goes, both have a lot more at stake in their respective relationship with the United States than with each other and will not risk jeopardizing their ties to it. Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, this argument continues to appear in Western statements, occasionally reviving hopes that the West will be able to drive a wedge between China and Russia, and thus avoid the prospect of having to compete against both simultaneously. However, this ignores the record of their relationship over more than three decades and the structural factors underlying it, which have grown more robust since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The Structural Factors

The Russian-Chinese “friendship without limits”3—the label that Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping used to describe the relationship at their February 2022 meeting in Beijing—now more than three decades old, rests on a solid foundation made up of four structural pillars that are positioned to keep supporting it well into the future. The combination of the first two factors—shared authoritarian domestic politics and adversarial relations with the United States that frame their foreign policies—is most important.

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