Hong Kong, July 31 : With President Donald Trump bogging the USA down in a perhaps unwinnable war against Iran, he has strengthened China's hand. Furthermore, Beijing continues to reinforce its influence on the world stage and to subtly support Russia in its own war with Ukraine and the West.
Depleted American missile and weapon stocks have been known about for a long time - exacerbated by the Iran War - and this plays directly into Chairman Xi Jinping's hands. It is highly likely this factor is contributing to Chinese and Russian calculations, as they plan their next moves against Taiwan and Ukraine, respectively.
As Dr. Malcolm Davis, Senior Analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, noted, "[It's] about as predictable as night follows day - this situation is now leading to a very dangerous crisis for US military capability emerging - not in a decade, not in a year or two, but now."
Of course, China has been a lot less overt in its support for Russia than North Korea has. Beijing has not dispatched cannon fodder soldiers or sold missiles, but it has nonetheless been actively supporting Vladimir Putin's protracted war in Ukraine. Kaja Kallas, the European Union's foreign policy chief, described China as a "decisive enabler of Russia's war".
Beijing's proclaimed neutrality about the Russian-Ukraine war is anything but. It has been a fiction from the beginning, when China swiftly rehashed Moscow's talking points and even conducted compulsory courses telling teachers and lecturers exactly how to present the official narrative around Putin's war. China has not wavered from that telling of the story since.
China is very selective in its criticism. When the USA attacked Iran, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was quick to say, "No matter the justification, the indiscriminate use of force is unacceptable, and any attack on innocent civilians and non-military targets must be condemned."
Yet in more than four years of Putin's war against Ukraine, the only warning China has given Moscow is not to use nuclear weapons. This fact alone illustrates China's hypocrisy.
Yet, as Russian-born Garry Kasparov, a former chess grandmaster, remarked, "China aids Russia directly and indirectly without suffering consequences." Despite being the key facilitator of Russia's war, it has not suffered any real penalty.
Yes, some Chinese companies have been sanctioned by the USA, UK or EU, but there has been no real political cost. What form does Chinese support for Russia take, then? The division of labour sees Moscow provide combat lessons to the People's Liberation Army (PLA), while in exchange China flows electronics, semiconductors and machinery into Russia to aid its military-industrial complex. China is eager to absorb Russia's warfare lessons, for they relate directly to its military designs on Taiwan.
There are plentiful records of Chinese support for Russia. For example, as far back as 2023, there were numerous reports detailing how Chinese state-owned defence companies were providing items like navigation equipment, drones, jamming technology and jet-fighter parts to Russia. Other dual-use items flowed through countries like Turkey and the UAE.
China's share of Russian dual-use imports grew from 30% to 66% from 2021-23. By 2025, EU sanctions envoy David O'Sullivan estimated China was supplying 80% of components used in Russian weapons production. These transfers are facilitated by shipping through third countries, renaming export items and making shadowy transactions through intermediaries or covert payment systems. By April 2026, Bloomberg was reporting that 90+% of Russian imports of sanctioned technology suitable for producing weapons came through China.
On 20 April 2026, in response to a US call at the United Nations (UN) for China to stop providing dual-use goods and components to Russia, Sun Lei, China's Deputy Representative to the UN, said the USA and not China "has long supplied weapons to the battlefield and attempted to prolong the conflict".
In other words, he blames the USA for supporting Ukraine, thereby implying China prefers Russia to simply steamroll Ukraine. Furthermore, Chinese banks and technology corporations are expanding their presence in occupied Ukrainian territories. They are monopolising the manufacturing sector and integrating Chinese equipment into critical infrastructure there.
In January 2026, The Telegraph reported China had provided Russia with US$10.3 billion in technology and advanced equipment to support Moscow's war machine. This included specialised manufacturing machines and tools to build warheads for Russia's Oreshnik hypersonic missiles. Guo Jiakun, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, fired back that China does not add fuel to the fire or take advantage of the war.
In December 2025, China abstained from a UN General Assembly vote demanding Russia return all Ukrainian children it forcibly deported. Explaining China's abstention, a counsellor feebly argued the protection of children during armed conflict is a "humanitarian issue" and that China does not approve of its politicisation.
Last November, G7 foreign ministers issued a joint statement condemning China's "provision of weapons and dual-use components" to Russia and accused Beijing of being a "decisive enabler" of Russia's war in Ukraine. Its Foreign Ministry responded that it has never supplied lethal arms to either party, strictly controls the export of dual-use articles, and would not accept the G7 "shifting blame" for the conflict.
What else has China been nefariously doing? In October 2025, Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service announced it had "recorded evidence" that China was providing Russia with satellite intelligence data for missile strikes. In mid-2025, Ukraine arrested two Chinese nationals for spying on Ukraine's Neptune anti-ship missile program.
When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated at a UN Security Council meeting that "without China, Putin's Russia is nothing," China said it has always been "objective and impartial" on the Ukraine crisis. Earlier, when Ukraine sanctioned Chinese companies it alleged were supporting Russia's war efforts, Beijing criticised Kyiv and ordered it to "correct its mistake immediately".
In recent revelations, based on Russian documentation it had seen, Reuters reported that a delegation of Russian soldiers travelled to China to participate in joint training with the PLA.
Citing European intelligence agencies, Reuters stated around 200 Russian personnel trained there in November 2025, some of whom were later fed into the war machine in Ukraine.
One such course lasted three weeks and involved chemical, biological and radiological protection training at a facility in Beijing in November 2025. Colonel General Rustam Muradov, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Russia's land forces, led the Russian delegation, and this cross-training was approved by the Russian defense minister. This underscores the high-level strategic cooperation between China and Russia.
The PLA, which has not experienced full-blown combat since its stymied invasion of Vietnam in 1979, has much to learn from Russia's combat experience. However, Beijing claimed no such training, as asserted by Reuters, ever took place. Its Foreign Ministry argued, "The relevant allegations are entirely unfounded," and reasserted China's neutrality.
Separately, based on leaked documents, a joint investigation by The Insider, Der Spiegel and Le Monde alleged that China proposed providing artificial intelligence technologies and industrial capacity to help Russia mass-produce drone swarms. In return, Russia was to supply combat data from the Ukraine battlefield.
Another measure was a plan to undermine Starlink, which the Ukraine Armed Forces uses widely, through a combination of cyberattacks, electronic warfare, diplomatic pressure and perhaps even the development of low-cost weapons that can target orbiting satellites.
The three publications' joint investigation further noted that Sino-Russian cooperation involved discussions about advanced air and missile defence technologies. They may be working on an integrated air and missile defence system, one capable of intercepting hypersonic missiles, and which could be operational by 2030.
Such expanding military partnership extends well beyond the dual-use goods already widely reported and which China has been supplying to Russia to aid its war machine. Russian soldiers have also trained on Chinese drones, and PLA officers have reportedly visited the Russian frontlines in Ukraine as observers.
These publications also exposed the secretive Russian-Chinese Forum for Military Technology, which has gathered annually in locations such as Yekaterinburg, Guangzhou and St Petersburg. Its purpose is to encourage technology sharing, and it is apparently designed to break American military superiority.
Bilateral cooperation has not always been honest, however. In June 2026, there were reports that Chinese hacking groups linked to the government have repeatedly targeted Russian government agencies and defence corporations to gain information about the weapons and tactics Russia is using in Ukraine.
Nonetheless, the picture that emerges is of a Russian military being stealthily backed by China, and with Beijing eagerly vacuuming up lessons from the modern Ukrainian battlefield.
That theatre is one where China can also test its modern equipment and emerging technologies.
Yet such Sino-Russian cooperation should not come as a surprise. After all, Xi and Putin have a relationship possessing "no limits", and they have met more than 40 times in an official capacity. Economically, the relationship is rather one-way, though. China is Russia's largest trading partner, but Russia accounts for just 4% of Chinese international trade.
There is scripted alignment between Moscow and Beijing, and Russian appreciation is shown through explicit support for China's claims over Taiwan, for example. This is part of the "rent" that Moscow pays to Beijing for its materiel support.
What is interesting are the pious denials from China that it is taking sides over the Ukraine war, when it so very obviously has. Moscow and Beijing's shared disdain of the West and the USA are a uniting force that has brought them together.
Discussing this, Tong Zhao, a Senior Fellow with the Nuclear Policy Program and Carnegie China, noted, "Many analysts underestimate how authoritarian systems breed deep self-righteousness. Their elites may occasionally acknowledge own double standards in private, but more often genuinely believe they are morally responsible and legally righteous - even more so than the West."
Zhao added, "Authoritarian states care about international public opinion a lot. They want to reduce external opposition that could impose severe costs - and their leaders want to feel righteous in history, just like anyone else. That's why they increasingly invest in shaping global narratives. Not because they recognise themselves as villains muddying the waters, but because they believe their 'just' views were unfairly suppressed."
Furthermore, he said, "On Taiwan, China already does not view a military takeover as violating international law, since it defines Taiwan as an internal matter. Still, watching the international community accept recent US actions will almost certainly convince Beijing that a military move against Taiwan would be far easier for the world to swallow."
China continues to work furiously to shape its narrative in the West. Even though ordinary Chinese citizens are denied any opportunity to use social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram or X, the government makes heavy use of them to advance its story.
The US Department of Justice recently revealed the Chinese government spent around US$100 million on formal influence pushes inside the USA last year. This included US$66.8 million funnelled to CGTN America, China's flagship English-language media, from February to November 2025.
Furthermore, dozens of American lobbyists have signed contracts with Chinese-owned companies. Tencent has spent more than US$10 million on lobbying since last year, in an effort to shape American policy.
Of course, this is just officially recorded spending. China works hard in numerous other ways to make its influence felt, including campus groups and via the United Front Work Department, an organ of the Chinese Communist Party. In a recent diatribe, Trump accused China of spending US$16 billion on intelligence and influence operations annually in the USA alone.
Evelyn Yeh, Visiting Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, remarked, "The most significant threat of Russia-China alignment is the deliberate dismantling of the international order in their favour. Beijing is watching the war in Ukraine to assess Western resolve and calibrate its regional ambition. Europeans must act not because they are asked to, but because allowing this 'strategic exchange' to go unchallenged fuels the war machine on Europe's borders and invites future aggression against Taiwan."
This is the problem. China is helping fund and fuel Russia's war against Ukraine - and it is basically getting away with it scot-free.