July 11, 2016
Analysts detect increasingly common strategy as Moscow and Beijing intensify co-operation
Chinese troops march past a mural showing Moscow’s Red Square: Russia and China’s military leaders are co-operating increasingly closely © Getty
Russia and China staged a bold new series of military manoeuvres last month. Not a single ship left port, nor did any tank fire up its engine. Instead, a team from China’s People’s Liberation Army sat with their Russian counterparts in Moscow, running a five-day computer simulation of a joint response to a ballistic missile attack.
Held in the Central Research Institute of Air and Space Defence in the Russian capital, the drill “was not directed against any third country”, according to Russia’s defence ministry. But few were under any illusion that the “aggressor” in the simulation was anyone other than the US.
The exercise — which analysts note involved sharing information in an extremely sensitive sphere — was highly significant because it indicated “a new level of trust” between the two former adversaries, says Vasily Kashin, an expert on China’s military at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.
“The ability to share information in such a sensitive area as missile launch warning systems and ballistic missile defence indicates something beyond simple co-operation,” he says.
China and Russia fought a brief border war in 1969, but the end of the cold war and emergence of the US as the global military leader have seen them drawing closer as they seek to confront western military power.
Few believe they will ever be close allies, as they were in the days of Mao and Stalin, but the policy of active co-operation appears to be deepening on a number of fronts. On Saturday Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to travel to Beijing where he will meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to discuss economic ties.
Western sanctions on Russia over its role in the Ukraine crisis have fuelled efforts by Moscow to forge financial links to Beijing. The two governments have also signed a number of new business deals, mainly for hydrocarbons.
But their most significant area of co-operation is the armed forces, say analysts, with military leaders in both countries increasingly looking to each other for lessons on how to counter a superior western enemy.
Recent years have seen numerous weapons deals and joint exercises between the two, and experts say they have adopted remarkably similar strategies to reform and upgrade their militaries.
President Xi Jinping’s reform of the People’s Liberation Army, launched in November 2013, is aimed at transforming the world’s largest fighting force from a land army equipped for mass ground battles to a lighter, nimbler, more high-tech force capable of winning in the air and sea.
The strategy closely follows Russian reforms begun in 2009. Prompted by the Russia-Georgia conflict of August 2008, which Russia won easily but which exposed deficiencies in its army, Moscow kicked off an overhaul aimed at increasing professionalism and cutting the number of conscripts; streamlining command structures; and upgrading and modernising its arsenal.
“They are doing away with the mass mobilisation force,” said Dmitry Trenin, of the Carnegie Moscow Centre think-tank. “Instead they plan to fight a war with a [professional army].”
The lesson has not been lost on China. An article in the People’s Daily, the official Communist party mouthpiece, last October urged the PLA to use the Russian overhaul as a model for its own efforts.
“You see that key aspects of Chinese reforms have been influenced by what the Russians did in the aftermath of the Georgia war,” said Tai Ming Cheung, a specialist on China’s military at the University of California, San Diego. “Russia’s experiences of dealing with a stronger western opponent [in the cold war] — those are very important lessons for China.”
Beijing has long modernised its military by copying Russian weapons systems, but sanctions-hit Russia is now also sourcing parts and technology from China. In November, Russian officials said they would buy Chinese diesel engines for coastal patrol vessels, after being blocked from purchasing German equipment in 2014.
In April, Moscow’s Izvestia newspaper quoted a senior Russian official saying the two countries were in discussions on exchanging Chinese electronic components used in spacecraft construction for Russia’s liquid-fuel rocket engine technology.
First outlined in 2013 by President Xi, China’s military revamp has gathered pace. In February this year China replaced seven military regions with five military “theatres”, while last year Mr Xi announced the PLA would reduce troop numbers by 300,000. Troupes of dancers, drivers and other non-combat personnel are also being cut, and the army-dominated command system is being replaced with a joint command that will give the naval and air forces their own joint staff structure.
“China has always been very pragmatic and they will take whatever they think works,” said Gary Li, a military expert at consulting company Apco in Beijing.
The US has identified another common thread in Russian and Chinese strategy, says Mr Cheung: the use of “hybrid warfare”, a strategy that blends conventional and irregular warfare techniques. Russia deployed the strategy in its use of “little green men” — troops in unmarked uniforms — in its annexation of Crimea and, critics allege, to aid pro-Moscow rebels in eastern Ukraine, leaving opponents perplexed about how to respond and giving Russia time to consolidate gains.
China’s strategies have included island-building in the contested waters of the South China Sea and the “use of civilian and coast guard vessels and even oil rigs to accomplish strategic objectives”, says Mr Cheung.
“It’s about muddying the waters in order to push military objectives without crossing the threshold into a shooting war,” said Mr Cheung. “When US experts look at China’s island-building in the South China Sea compared with what Russians are doing in Ukraine, they see a lot of similarities.”
Beijing parades military might
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