Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, allegations of Chinese collusion with Russia’s war aims have proliferated. They have ranged from assertions that Beijing wasn’t cooperating with Western sanctions against Moscow to claims that China was selling “dual use” goods and technologies, thereby aiding Russia’s war effort and its economic development, including projects in the Arctic. Pundits said the invasion marked a new chapter in the relationship, and relations have no doubt warmed considerably since early 2022. However, this growing maturation of the relationship had been in the offing for some time.
Upon coming to power in 2000, President Putin made quick headway in improving relations with China, first by joining in the establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in June 2001 and, within a month, signing a 20-year Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation with China. In 2005, Russia also settled important border claims with Beijing over islands in the Amur River Basin.
At the same time, the Russian president sought to balance China, with an opening to the United States. Putin appears to have been concerned about China’s economic dynamism, its designs on Russia’s Central Asian backyard, as well as potential Chinese encroachment in Russia’s sparsely populated Siberian and Far Eastern regions.
However, as increasing frustration grew within Russian policymaking circles because of NATO’s continued eastward expansion and radar and missile installations in Poland and Romania, Putin began tilting ever more toward Beijing, especially after the 2013-2014 Maidan uprising replaced the Russian-leaning Yanukovych government in Kyiv. Thereafter, as the two Minsk agreements offered no respite in hostilities between the Ukrainian government and Russian-backed forces in Donbas, the arc toward Beijing and away from the West grew ever stronger.
The two countries regularly support one another in international fora. Trade between the two countries has exploded, increasing over 300% in total volume, from less than $70 billion in 2015 to more than $240 billion in 2023. And, while arms exports to China have decreased by 39% between 2014-2018 and 2019-2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute – partly due to concerns over China’s theft of intellectual property and partly due to China’s maturing domestic defense industry – Beijing and Moscow have significantly increased the number of joint military drills. A research article by the Center for Strategic and International Security, “How Deep Are China-Russia Military Ties?”, says the two countries have participated in more than 100 military exercises since their first joint exercise in 2003; additionally, more than half of the 102 joint exercises held to date have taken place since 2017.
With the Ukraine war, however, the relationship between the two Great Powers has become closer than ever. An excellent example of this is their relationship in Russia’s Arctic realm.
Indeed, China has had a longstanding interest in the Arctic region, going back at least 30 years. Initially, it appeared China’s interest was mainly scientific, with Beijing creating the Polar Research Institute of China in 1989. After China purchased its first polar class icebreaker, the renamed Xuelong (Snow Dragon), in 1994, Beijing launched eight Arctic scientific expeditions over the next 23 years. Since 1994, hundreds of Arctic-related articles have been published in Chinese journals, in a variety of disciplinary fields. According to “China’s Strategy in the Arctic: Threatening or Opportunistic?”, most of these early articles were related to Arctic climate and its impact upon China proper. By 2007, however, there has been a significant increase in the number of Chinese journal articles discussing Arctic sovereignty and related policy issues, as well as China’s role in the Arctic region.
With great fanfare in January 2018, Beijing released its “Arctic Policy,” declaring itself a “near-Arctic state,” and, hence, one that had significant interests in and ties to the Arctic region. The document underscores that China’s growing interest results from the environmental and climactic changes gripping the Arctic region, and their impact upon China, its own climate, agriculture, marine industry, and economy. China’s Arctic Policy also discusses the history of China’s engagement with Arctic issues, be it Beijing’s joining the Spitsbergen Treaty in 1925 or China’s three-decade experience of scientific exploration in the region. The document asserts China’s claim to the “important mission of jointly promoting peace and security in the Arctic” and sets out to support Beijing’s aim to participate in Arctic governance (despite not being a littoral Arctic state). It also pledges to increase China’s investment in scientific research, to commit to assist in environmental protection, and to participate in the development of alternative shipping routes, fossil fuels and other natural resources, as well as tourism. All of China’s activities in the region are to be based upon the principles of “respect, cooperation, win-win result, and sustainability.”
The document also mentions China’s participation as an observer state since 2013 in the Arctic Council, the main inter-governmental organization that discusses a variety of issues important to the region. (It is important to note that the Arctic Council does not discuss issues related to sovereignty in the Arctic or other traditional security-related questions.) China had desired an earlier admission to the regional body, but certain littoral member states – including Russia – were somewhat wary about admitting a rising China. Yet, Western commitments to expand NATO eastward in 2008, as well as the developing internecine problems in Ukraine thereafter, lessened Moscow’s opposition to China’s entry, especially after President Xi Jinping rose to power in 2012. Indeed, Putin has met Xi more than 40 times; the Chinese leader has met Putin more than twice as many times as any other world leader.
Thus, China’s Arctic Policy served as a clarion call to the eight Arctic states (Russia, Canada, United States, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark, and Norway), a statement of intent that foreshadowed a much more robust engagement in the Arctic. No longer are continuing scientific expeditions or overtures to develop mining and port facilities in Greenland and Iceland the main focus of China’s interests in the realm. Beijing has numerous ongoing projects in the Arctic now, most in the Russian Arctic Zone. In terms of fossil fuel investments, China’s largest venture is a 30% investment in the Yamal LNG (liquefied natural gas) plant in Russia’s Far North on the Yamal peninsula at Sabetta, in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region. (Russia’s Novatek has a controlling interest in the project, with the remaining shares held by Total Energies of France.) Beijing has followed this up with a 20% stake in Russia’s Arktika-2 LNG project.
China is also supremely interested in the development of alternative shipping routes linking its ports to European and other destinations. Strategic considerations motivate this move, mainly because existing routes westward via the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca are vulnerable to the U.S. Navy. Russia’s Northern Sea Route (NSR) – what China calls the “Polar Silk Road” – allows Chinese-flagged ships a more secure alternative route, particularly since climate change has opened the route for longer as each year passes. Hence, in August 2013, China’s state-owned COSCO shipping conglomerate (China Ocean Shipping Company) registered its first transit of a cargo vessel, the Yongsheng, through the NSR.
The northern route is not just more secure, but quicker and therefore significantly cheaper. For example, the NSR is about 40% shorter than the roughly 21,000-kilometer trip from China to Europe via the Suez Canal. The northern route also avoids the security problems associated with shipping through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. And, although shipping via the NSR has been normally open for only part of the year (May-November), this year the Russian government and the NSR operator, Rosatom, have pledged to ensure shipping along the route on a year-round basis going forward.
The Russian-Chinese relationship in the Arctic has been developing very rapidly recently, in some part due to Western sanctions against Russia that have been tightened during the war in Ukraine. In May of 2025, the fourth meeting of the Russian-Chinese Working Group on Arctic Cooperation took place, with the two powers releasing a statement declaring that “maintaining the Arctic as a peaceful arena for cooperation” was of great significance to both powers. Also announced was the development of a joint Russia-China Commission of the Northern Sea Route, a body whose purpose is to create conditions for a dramatic increase in shipping. The short-term goal is to increase tonnage to 50 million tons of cargo reaching China by 2030, an increase of more than 60% from the current figures.
Also under consideration is Chinese participation in an NSR-affiliated logistics center, as well as ports along Russia’s Arctic coastline, beginning with the expansion of the Arkhangelsk port and constructing an additional port in the Nenets Autonomous Region. As a result, in the first six months of 2024 regular cargo transit between Arkhangelsk and ports in China surpassed 10.2 million tons, a significant increase over the prior year.
Due to Western sanctions upon foreign-flagged ships operating on behalf of Russian companies, Moscow and Beijing may also partner in a rapid expansion of the Russian merchant fleet, critical for the fullest development of the Northern Sea Route. According to the NSR’s managing operator, Rosatom, Russia’s shipyards by themselves do not have the capacity to build the numerous gas and bulk carriers, tankers, and container ships – 160 in all – needed for the NSR by 2030.
China and Russia are not only partners in transit; the latest joint project between the two will develop the Kolmozerskoye lithium deposit in Murmansk Oblast. Once production begins in 2030, the deposit will extract and process over two million tons of lithium annually. A variety of other mining and construction projects are in planning or development stages.
Whether or not China’s partnership with Russia in developing its Arctic zone will serve to elevate Russia’s NSR into a major global trade route is an open question. What is more certain, however, is that the Ukraine war – and the West’s response – has created conditions for a much closer relationship than heretofore thought possible.
