China’s tight bond with Russia is facing renewed condemnation from Washington and its allies after NATO issued its strongest accusation yet that Chinese technology is sustaining Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Leaders from the NATO alliance, meeting in Washington, declared that Beijing “cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history” without facing repercussions.
Despite a widening web of Western bans and restrictions, Chinese semiconductors, machine tools and other parts have become vital to Russia’s arms industries, helping Moscow to keep up its grinding war, say American and European officials, intelligence agencies and security experts.
But China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia have repeatedly said that their countries’ strong relationship is a bulwark against American dominance. Mr. Xi is unlikely to easily bow to NATO’s demands.
What did NATO say about China?
NATO’s declaration on Wednesday, its most full-throated so far about China, implied that its 32 member governments would step up actions against China unless Beijing limits exports of dual-use components and technology to Russia.
“It’s a very rare move for NATO to openly accuse China, saying Beijing is massively supporting Russia’s defense industrial base,” said Liou Shiau-shyang, an expert on China and Russia at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a government-funded research group in Taiwan. “Clearly, the United States has won over some skeptics who did not see China as a key player in the Russia-Ukraine war.”
NATO has in recent years become more vocal about China’s growing power, especially its trade ties and technology exports to Russia after Mr. Putin launched his full invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.
The NATO leaders called Beijing “a decisive enabler” of Russia’s war. They also broadly took aim at Chinese actions such as with cyberespionage and disinformation, calling them “systemic challenges to Euro-Atlantic security.”
How close are China and Russia?
Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin see in each other like-minded leaders with shared fundamental interests of countering pressure and encirclement by the United States and its allies. Mr. Xi has met Mr. Putin more than 40 times since Mr. Xi took office in 2012, most recently a little over a week ago.
In early 2022, weeks before Mr. Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, the two leaders said that their countries’ partnership “has no limits.” Beijing has refused to condemn the invasion, or even call it an invasion.
But China has shown there are some limits to its support for Russia, as Beijing seeks to shore up growth and maintain access to American banks. Chinese companies have generally avoided exporting whole weapons systems to Russia that could draw bans and punishment from Western governments.
Instead, Chinese manufacturers and traders have become inventive at skirting detection, especially at selling “dual-use” technology, which can be employed either for civilian or military needs.
What has China been supplying and getting in return?
A growing pile of evidence from foreign intelligence agencies, investigators and journalists indicates that Chinese companies have rapidly expanded technology exports that end up in Russian drones, military aircraft, missiles and other weapons used on the battlefields of Ukraine.
Sometimes, Chinese companies sell components, such as light sensors or microchips that end up in Russian weapons. Sometimes, they sell underlying manufacturing technology, such as machine tools, that helps keep Russian weapons manufacturers running.
The outcome, say analysts, is that Chinese know-how has become vital to sustaining Russia’s war effort, even if Beijing isn’t selling assembled weapons. The Biden administration has imposed sanctions on dozens of Chinese companies, as well as traders in Hong Kong and elsewhere who sell the parts on.
“Sometimes, Chinese companies supplying Russia use chains of intermediary companies that can include more than a dozen firms,” said an assessment of sanctions on Russia from the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence released in April. “In other cases, descriptions of items in shipments are intentionally vague and the volume of goods exported are unreported.”
The murkiness of the trade makes it difficult to estimate its scale — and Russia also still illicitly buys parts from Western firms. One study from the Kyiv School of Economics Institute and Yermak-McFaul International Working Group on Russian Sanctions said 59 percent of Russia’s imports of “critical components” that can go into war-fighting equipment originated in China.
Why are NATO countries criticizing China now?
NATO’s warning appears to reflect rising worry that Russia’s resurgent military — helped by Chinese know-how — has Ukraine on the back foot. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, told a news conference last month that China’s backdoor support helped Mr. Putin keep his grinding war going.
About 70 percent of Russia’s imports of machine tools, and 90 percent of its microelectronics, came from China, Mr. Blinken noted. “That has enabled Russia to keep that defense industrial base going, to keep the war machine going, to keep the war going,” he said.
China’s technology components have become increasingly important for Russian forces as they learn new ways to jam and stymie Ukrainian forces’ drones and communications, said Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.
“At the same time, I think that China is also very interested in getting hold of the Russian innovations and how Russians are doing it,” Mr. Gabuev said.
How is China likely to respond to NATO’s warning?
China has repeatedly rejected accusations from Washington and other Western governments that its trade with Russia amounts to backing Mr. Putin’s war in Ukraine.
“It’s brimming with prejudice, smears and provocation,” Lin Jian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said Thursday. He also warned of damage to Chinese relations with Europe, suggesting that policymakers in Beijing may be especially worried that the NATO warning could augur more pressure from European member states of NATO.
Natalie Sabanadze, a senior research fellow at Chatham House in London and co-author of a recent study of Chinese-Russian ties, said she expected European Union countries to “start sanctioning Chinese companies slowly, while carefully weighing consequences and a potential backlash.”
NATO’s warning, she said, “tells China that there will be costs.”
Chinese companies may try to ward off those risks by pulling back, at least for now, from some of their technology trade with Russia, said Mr. Liou, the expert in Taiwan. But in the longer term, he and other experts said, China was unlikely to turn its back on Mr. Putin.
After all, while NATO urged China to choke off critical technology exports to Russia, NATO also described China as a systemic threat to Western powers, which may only reinforce Mr. Xi’s commitment to Mr. Putin as his partner.
“If I were Xi Jinping, I would certainly not be tempted by the statement to throw Putin under the bus,” said Sergey Radchenko, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who studies Chinese-Russian relations. “Xi Jinping totally sees Russia as an important strategic player.”
Olivia Wang in Hong Kong and Amy Chang Chien in Taipei contributed reporting.
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