Executive summary

• This is the third in a series of reports on China-Russia relations since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It explores the content, extent and limits of China’s political support for Russia by comparing Russian and Chinese narratives about Russia’s war against Ukraine and related topics.
• China’s support for Russia has been comprehensive and enduring, but not without limits. Overall, China appears to support Russian narratives if they advance China’s long-term strategic interests. Most of these, such as ideas of a “power-hungry” United States, Western “weaponization” of sanctions and criticism of NATO and “bloc-based” confrontation, are tied to the countries’ common struggle against perceived US hegemonic power and the socalled US-led liberal world order.
• The clearest red line in China’s support for Russia is its distancing from Moscow’s threats of use of nuclear weapons. Chinese leaders have spoken out against such threats, although without explicitly pointing the finger at Russia. In addition, unlike Russia, China officially recognizes the sovereignty and legitimacy of the Ukrainian government, although President of China Xi Jinping refused to speak with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for the first 14 months of the war.
• While both countries portray Europeans as naive followers of the United States, Chinese criticism of Europe has been more subtle. While Russia regards European countries as a political threat, China has been more sympathetic towards Europe, portraying it as a victim of US greed and encouraging it to develop a more autonomous foreign policy.
• China’s selective and inconsistent use of criticism highlights its pro-Russia stance. China claims to stand behind the UN Charter and the principle that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states must be respected, on the one hand, while emphasizing that the “legitimate security concerns” of all states must be considered, on the other. The latter is a veiled way of saying that Russia’s protests over NATO expansion should have been taken more seriously. While China has repeatedly accused the United States of provoking the invasion by ignoring Russia’s concerns, it has never condemned or even criticized Russia for invading a sovereign state in what was a clear violation of the UN Charter.
• The war may have cemented some similarities in the official worldviews of China and Russia. Beijing’s pronouncements on “indivisible security” and the idea that the “legitimate security concerns of all countries must be respected” are well aligned with Moscow’s perspective. The inclusion of these concepts in China’s new framework for international security – the Global Security Initiative – has elevated their status, although Chinese endorsement of them goes back to the early 2000s. In fact, the core tenets that underpin China’s rhetorical support for Russia are rooted in concepts that China developed in the 1990s.
• China’s support for Russia is likely to remain robust insofar as Beijing continues to view Moscow as an indispensable partner in the struggle against US global hegemony, at least in the short to medium term. The pair’s similar views on international security also speak in favour of closer coordination. At the same time, we expect that China will continue to balance its support for Russia against the need to maintain stable relations with the West.

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