China needs Russia to remain a credible military threat to Europe, writes Justin Bronk

US Intelligence reports suggesting China plans to supply Russia with weapons and ammunition to fight in Ukraine have caused intense concern in Kyiv and other Western capitals. 

While Beijing has denied the claims, such a move would represent a dramatic escalation in the conflict and risk a major confrontation between the emerging superpower and its bitter rival, America.  

JUSTIN BRONK, a research fellow at London’s Royal United Services Institute, said the issue of how far President Xi could 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 Russia’s invasion, it is ‘highly likely’ they will begin supplying the country with weapons at some point in the long term, perhaps by taking advantage of a ceasefire. 

He also examines what form this support could take and what it could mean for Ukraine’s fight for freedom. 

Russian president Vladimir Putin recently declared his readiness to fight a long war against Ukraine and its Western supporters in his annual state of the nation speech. 

If Ukraine is not able to make decisive gains on the battlefield by the Autumn this year, then the war may indeed bog down into a attritional test of endurance. 

In the short term, the outlook for Russia is poor. 

The Russian Army is currently short of trained soldiers and is facing a major shortage of artillery ammunition. 

It expended vast quantities of both in Ukraine over the past year, but Russian leaders only began to seriously plan for a long conflict in recent months. 

Meanwhile, the US, UK and other European partners continue to supply Ukraine with significant amounts of artillery, armoured vehicles, weapons, and ammunition to keep its forces fighting. 

However, Western stocks will start running dangerously low as the year goes on, due to the UK and other European powers having failed to invest in large scale weapons production capacity or stockpiles during two decades of discretionary counter-insurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In essence, if the war cannot be won by Ukraine this year on the battlefield, then it will be decided by which of Russia or the West can better sustain the cost and production burdens of maintaining the necessary supply of weapons, vehicles, and ammunition.

Vladimir Putin poses for a photo with China’s President Xi when the two leaders met last year 

Neither Russia nor Ukraine is likely to run out of people or will 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 sustain. 

In the West, the question of capacity to sustain supplies to Ukraine and also rebuild our own military capabilities to ensure longer term deterrence is one of political will to invest in factory capacity and skilled workers. 

For Russia, however, a key question is China’s willingness to support its war effort.

The Russian economy has contracted by a little over two per cent since the war began and Western sanctions were imposed; proving more resilient than most forecasts had predicted in cash terms. 

However, there has been a much more serious impact on Russia’s access to high-end micro-electronics, export-controlled military components and other key technology items that it relied on importing from the West. 

Now, it is heavily reliant on China not only to replace the lost demand for oil and gas exports from Europe, but even more so to provide an alternative source of electronics, weapon components and other key technologies required for sustaining and increasing weapons production. 

Thus, China’s attitude to Russia’s ongoing war is a critical variable that will influence Russia’s ability to rebuild and resupply its battered armed forces and sustain a long-term confrontation.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has maintained a consistently cautious and even critical stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

It has also remained deeply reluctant so far to be seen to be openly supporting Russia’s war effort; partly to avoid its own economy being hit by secondary sanctions. 

On the other hand, Chinese companies (especially in Hong Kong) have been critical to enabling Russia to smuggle Western micro-electronics and other high-tech components into the country to build missiles, UAVs and other weapons. 

Ukrainian servicemen fire with a French self-propelled 155 mm/52-calibre gun Caesar towards Russian positions

Chinese bulk-purchases of Russian gas and oil at cheap prices have also proven an important source of economic support for Moscow since February last year.

However, Beijing has held back from supplying ammunition or export its own weapons systems to Russian forces. 

China wants the war in Ukraine to be over, but it is also keen to avoid a Russian collapse since Moscow remains an important ally for China in its efforts to challenge US-led Western geopolitical leadership on the global stage.

However, as the war continues and Russia’s short-term position weakens, Russia is putting diplomatic pressure on China to increase its support to include more direct supplies of weaponry and other direct assistance measures.

The recent visit by a senior Chinese diplomat and announcement that Xi Jinping plans to visit Moscow in the coming months have certainly caused alarm in the US.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressly warned China against supplying weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine in mid-February, citing US Intelligence community reports that Beijing was considering such a move. 

If China were to begin supplying Russia with ammunition, vehicles and potentially training for new recruits, it would certainly significantly increase the rate at which Russia could solve its current shortages on the battlefield and reduce the window for potential Ukrainian reconquest of lost territory.

In the longer term, however, it is highly likely that China will supply weapons, training, components and other assistance to help Russia rebuild and modernise its battered armed forces. 

A local resident bicycle past damaged building today in Orihiv, Zaporizhzhya region

Chinese leaders remain deeply uncomfortable with Russia’s illegal and brazen invasion of a sovereign neighbour, and do not want to see the conflict escalate beyond its current political parameters.

However, once there is a ceasefire of some sort – whatever that looks like – China will likely feel freer to help its ally rearm. 

The Chinese Communist Party has made the ‘re-integration’ of Taiwan, which it insists 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. 

Therefore, China needs Russia to remain a credible military threat to Europe so that European and, ideally, American military forces are tied down there and are not free to be deployed to the Indo-Pacific in a crisis over Taiwan. 

Therefore, it is in their interests to support Russia’s armed forces in the long term, and they will likely expand their existing covert assistance programmes for electronic components to include full weapons systems and training to that end.