In late December, Finland seized a Russian-linked vessel on suspicion of cutting undersea cables in the Baltic Sea. While this may represent a novel tactic by Russia in its ongoing war with Ukraine, it is one with which Moscow’s “no-limits” partner, China, is intimately familiar. In fact, the incident underscores a noteworthy trend of heightened technological cooperation in both hardware and strategy between the two powers for mutual gain.
Allies of Mutual Convenience
Security cooperation between the two authoritarian governments is not new. It harkens back to the days of the Soviet Union when the People’s Republic of China was a poor and largely agrarian society. In the 1950s, Moscow sent the equivalent of $1.5-2 billion in military aid to Beijing during the Korean War. The Soviets later transferred nuclear technology and materials to China, secretly assisting their nuclear weapons development.
Modern-day Russia has been the top weapons supplier to China, providing 77 percent of China’s arms imports since 1990, valued at $38.5 billion. China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) owes much of its initial acquisition of fighter jets, surface-to-air missiles, submarines, and other equipment to Russia.
Over the last decade, however, China’s technological prowess has outpaced Russia’s. Fueled by economic growth, China has invested heavily in research and development, averaging 2.29 percent of its annual GDP since 2013. As the world’s manufacturing hub, China has leveraged its industrial capacity to produce cutting-edge technologies as small as semiconductors and gargantuan as aircraft carriers. China now boasts some of the world’s most valuable tech companies in Alibaba, Huawei, Baidu, and Tencent, with many of them building up defense capabilities for the PLA as part of Beijing’s Military-Civil Fusion strategy.
The country’s science and technology education system has, accordingly, matured over time, nurturing the talent that leads Chinese advancements in AI, quantum computing, biotechnology, and other emerging technologies. China is now well-positioned to share commercial and military technological know-how with its friends: on New Year’s Day, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his government to cooperate with China on artificial intelligence.
Conversely, although Russia’s economy has sustained itself better than anticipated post-sanctions, the first nation to reach space—once America’s greatest tech rival—remains reliant on energy exports to sustain its economy. In contrast to China’s rapid economic growth and technological advancement, Russia has spent an average of 1.04 percent of GDP on R&D since 2013, lacks the same advanced manufacturing infrastructure and ecosystem of multinational tech corporations, and has been experiencing brain drain of its youngest, brightest, and wealthiest. As a result, Russia and its military stand to benefit significantly from China’s technological advancements.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, China has provided implicit support to its northern neighbor. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has never outright condemned the war, and Chinese vendors have been quick to supply advanced hardware to the Russian military. For example, China provided nearly 90 percent of the semiconductors Russia acquired in the first half of 2023, which augmented Russian missile and other weapons systems.
While Ukrainians needed to employ creative methods to acquire Chinese-made drones for the battlefield, Russia received at least $14.5 million in direct drone shipments from Chinese companies last year (compared to $200,000 from China to Ukraine). China has also produced nearly two-thirds of the foreign-made components in Russian weapons, including over $300 million worth of dual-use products.
Yet, as Russia’s severance of undersea cables in the Baltics illustrates, defense tech cooperation has evolved to include the exchange of military strategies in addition to the delivery of hardware. Last November, Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 dragged its anchor across two fiber-optic cables in the Baltic Sea, impacting Finland, Germany, Sweden, and Lithuania.
In February 2023, Chinese ships severed two cables around Taiwan’s outlying Matsu islands, cutting off residents’ internet access. At the time, Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom said broken cables had been reported over 20 times in the previous five years.
While cable cutting is not a new phenomenon, Beijing appears to be the leading proponent of its use today. As such, Russia’s adoption of the tactic in Europe significantly deepens its partnership with China.
Notably, Russia is absorbing China’s technological expertise, encompassing not only the transfer of cutting-edge hardware but also the exchange of sophisticated grey-zone military strategies. In return, China is using its partnership with Russia to strengthen its global influence and challenge U.S. dominance.
As global economies and societies become increasingly dependent on technology, the realm of possibility for grey-zone disruptions—and the available attack surfaces for such threats—have grown substantially. Recognizing this, China advanced its cyber capabilities and demonstrated a readiness to deploy them, as seen in the recent Salt Typhoon hacks and breach of U.S. Treasury Department documents.
Beijing’s targeting of new technological infrastructure, from the undersea fiber-optic cables to personal cell phones and Internet of Things devices, represents the modernization of operations short of war. Cooperation between the two sides provides opportunities for Russia to co-opt Chinese strategies — and for Beijing to wield influence.
While Russia may appear to benefit more from this close tech partnership in the short term, there is no question that China will reap what it has sown in due time. Beijing’s long-term vision is to establish itself as a dominant global power, reshaping international institutions and norms to better reflect its interests.
A technologically advanced and geopolitically aligned Russia strengthens this vision, creating a world order in which China, Russia, and other emerging powers can collectively challenge the political and technological dominance of the United States and its allies. Russian deployment of Chinese technology and tactics can also serve as test cases, allowing China to learn from Russia’s own hybrid warfare approaches and adapt such tactics to suit its future needs.
About the Author: Channing Lee
Channing Lee is an associate director for foreign policy at the Special Competitive Studies Project and is also the 2024 Young Professionals in Foreign Policy rising expert in national security. The views and opinions expressed belong to the author.
