- Russia's economy has become more reliant on China since Moscow's forces invaded Ukraine.
- But an analyst said Russia retains key leverage in its relationship with China and won't be Beijing's vassal.
Russia's economy has become more dependent on China since Moscow's forces invaded Ukraine, but that doesn't mean Vladimir Putin will become subservient to Beijing, according to an analyst.
Russia is now China's top oil supplier, while Chinese companies provide Russian firms with technology that's no longer available from the West. Such trends have led to predictions of the "yuanization" of Russia's economy.
But Mikhail Korostikov wrote for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that there's little sign of Moscow ceding control to Beijing.
"The relationship between Russia and China is by no means perfect, but the shared interests of both countries' leaderships and the strategic logic of the confrontation with the West create a solid foundation for reasonably equal cooperation," he said. "Within that interaction, China does have a certain opportunity to turn Russia into its vassal — but, crucially, it has no compelling reasons to do so."
Arguments of a Russian vassal dependency miss the mark, as trade between the two countries is comparable to China's trade with other countries, he noted.
For instance, while China's share of Russian trade has boomed to an estimated 22% since the Ukraine war, its share of Australian trade is even larger, at the 26%. In fact, China is the top trading partner of about 120 countries, and many are more dependent on Beijing than Russia is, Korostikov added.
"Nearly a year and a half into the full-scale invasion, the relationship between Russia and China is largely following the same rules as before," Korostikov pointed out.
Meanwhile, he doesn't see a motive for Beijing to make Moscow a vassal. Already, the two countries enjoy market openness, and the few areas that China could pressure Russia on would result in a strong pushback from Kremlin leadership.
To be sure, Korostikov acknowledged that the Ukraine war has strengthened China's hand in its relations with Russia. But the Kremlin has gained its own leverage too.
"It has also provided Moscow with several important advantages, most notably information on withstanding sanctions and on fighting a war against Western weaponry, which China cannot obtain from anywhere but Moscow," he explained.
Because China sees a confrontation with the West as inevitable, collaborating with Russia can give Beijing needed perspective on how sanctions affect the economy, how to circumvent them, how the financial system will behave, and which protections are effective, he said.
Moreover, as China holds a large amount of Russian weaponry, the Kremlin's war in Ukraine can provide Beijing with lessons on how to best fight Western weapons used by Kyiv's forces. And that information may be Putin's most valuable resource in his relationship with China.
"The experience that the Russian army is currently gaining in Ukraine is even more interesting for Beijing," Korostikov said.
Not all that intelligence would be relevant in the event China attacks Taiwan, he noted. But just a fraction of it "would have to be obtained by China at the cost of soldiers' blood if it decided to find it out itself," Korostikov wrote. "Instead, the established military cooperation between the two countries gives China access to this information without significant costs."