Reports from US intelligence suggesting China plans to supply Russia with weapons and ammunition to fight in Ukraine have sparked widespread concern in Kiev and other Western capitals.
While Beijing has denied the claims, such a move would dramatically escalate the conflict and jeopardize a major confrontation between the emerging superpower and its bitter rival America.
JUSTIN BRONK, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said the question of how far President Xi would be willing to go to support his friend, Vladimir Putin, was a “key question.”
Below, he says that while China’s leaders remain “uncomfortable” about invading Russia, it is “highly likely” that they will arms the country at some point in the long run, perhaps using a ceasefire. fire.
He also explores what form this support could take and what it could mean for Ukraine’s struggle for freedom.
An image showing some of the weapons, equipment and services that China could potentially supply to Russia. As of today, it has not started supplying weapons
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently declared his willingness to wage a long war against Ukraine and its Western supporters in his annual state speech.
If Ukraine cannot make decisive gains on the battlefield by the fall of this year, the war may indeed become bogged down in an exhausting test of endurance.
In the short term, the prospects for Russia are bleak.
The Russian army is currently short of trained soldiers and facing a major shortage of artillery ammunition.
It has spent huge amounts of both in Ukraine over the past year, but it was only in recent months that Russia’s leaders began to seriously plan for a long conflict.
Meanwhile, the US, UK and other European partners continue to supply Ukraine with significant amounts of artillery, armored vehicles, weapons and ammunition to keep its forces engaged.
However, Western stockpiles will begin to fall dangerously low during the year as the UK and other European powers have failed to invest in large-scale arms production capacity or stockpiles during two decades of discretionary counter-insurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Essentially, if the war cannot be won by Ukraine on the battlefield this year, it will be decided by which of Russia or the West can better afford the cost and production burden of maintaining the necessary supply of arms, vehicles and ammunition. wear.
Vladimir Putin poses for a photo with Chinese President Xi when the two leaders met last year
Neither Russia nor Ukraine are likely to run out of people or want to fight on current trends, but without sustained supplies of equipment and ammunition to not only fight, but also train new units with, there is a limit to how much combat power each can generate. and persevere.
In the West, the issue of the ability to support Ukraine’s supplies and also rebuild our own military capabilities to ensure longer-term deterrence is a matter of political will to invest in factory capacity and skilled workers.
For Russia, however, an important question is China’s willingness to support its war effort.
The Russian economy has shrunk by just over two percent since the start of the war and Western sanctions; turn out to be more resilient than most cash forecasts predicted.
However, Russia’s access to high-end microelectronics, export-controlled military components and other key technological items it has depended on to import from the West has had a much more serious effect.
Now it relies heavily on China not only to replace lost demand for oil and gas exports from Europe, but even more so to provide an alternative source of electronics, weapons components and other key technologies needed to sustain weapons production. maintain and increase.
China’s attitude to Russia’s ongoing war is thus a critical variable that will affect Russia’s ability to rebuild and resupply its battered forces and engage in a protracted confrontation.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has always taken a cautious and even critical stance towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
It has also so far remained very unwilling to openly support Russia’s war effort; partly to avoid hitting its own economy with secondary sanctions.
On the other hand, Chinese companies (especially in Hong Kong) have been crucial in enabling Russia to smuggle Western microelectronics and other high-tech components into the country to build missiles, UAVs and other weapons.
Ukrainian soldiers fire a French self-propelled 155mm/52-caliber gun Caesar at Russian positions
Chinese bulk purchases of Russian gas and oil at low prices have also proved to be a major source of economic support for Moscow since February last year.
However, Beijing has refrained from supplying ammunition or exporting its own weapon systems to Russian troops.
China wants the war in Ukraine to be over, but it also wants to avoid Russian collapse, as Moscow remains a key ally for China in its efforts to challenge the US-led Western geopolitical leadership on the world stage.
However, as the war continues and Russia’s position weakens in the near term, Russia is exerting diplomatic pressure on China to increase its support with increased direct shipments of arms and other direct aid measures.
The recent visit of a senior Chinese diplomat and the announcement that Xi Jinping plans to visit Moscow in the coming months has certainly raised alarm in the US.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in mid-February explicitly warned China against supplying arms to Russia for use in Ukraine, citing reports from the US intelligence community that Beijing was considering such a move.
If China were to begin supplying Russia with ammunition, vehicles and possibly training for new recruits, it would certainly greatly increase the speed at which Russia could resolve its current battlefield shortages and reduce the likelihood that Ukraine could regain lost territory.
In the longer term, however, it is very likely that China will provide arms, training, spare parts and other aid to help Russia rebuild and modernize its battered forces.
A local resident cycled past a damaged building in Orihiv, in the Zaporizhia region today
Chinese leaders are deeply uncomfortable with Russia’s illegal and brutal invasion of a sovereign neighboring country and do not want the conflict to escalate beyond current political parameters.
However, once there is some kind of ceasefire – whatever that looks like – China will probably feel freer to help its ally rearm.
The Chinese Communist Party has made the “reintegration” of Taiwan, which it believes is part of China rather than an independent, sovereign, democratic state, a core part of its ideological mission and a test point for its leadership of the country.
That is why China needs Russia to remain a credible military threat to Europe, so that European and, ideally, US forces are trapped there and not free to deploy in the Indo-Pacific in a crisis surrounding Taiwan.
Therefore, it is in their interest to support the Russian Armed Forces in the long run, and they are likely to expand their existing covert electronic component utility programs with full weapon systems and training for them.
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