China Needs Russia in the Fight

CEPA | Chels Michta

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi privately informed European Union officials that Beijing cannot afford a Russian defeat in Ukraine, underscoring how Moscow’s military survival directly prevents the United States from shifting its primary strategic focus toward the Indo-Pacific. Since 2022, China has purchased $372bn in Russian fossil fuels and exported $10.3bn in dual-use technologies to sustain Moscow's wartime economy.

This economic lifeline is reciprocal. Russia compensates for Beijing's industrial leverage by offering sensitive military technologies, including hypersonic systems, nuclear attack submarine propulsion, and joint development on missile defence surpassing the S-500. Both militaries have conducted 119 combined exercises, deepening operational ties alongside Russian naval and missile assistance to North Korea and Iran. Furthermore, China holds pricing leverage in Power of Siberia 2 pipeline negotiations, yet requires Russian military distraction in Europe to maintain its Indo-Pacific trajectory. This structural dual-dependency permanently frustrates Western efforts to sever the bilateral alignment.

Comment

Russian propulsion and noise-reduction transfers dramatically compress the design timeline for the People's Liberation Army Navy's Type 096 ballistic missile submarine. Access to proven Soviet-heritage reactor designs and sound-damping technologies allows Beijing to bypass decades of iterative hydroacoustic research. This technological exchange addresses China's primary maritime vulnerability—the acoustic signature of its undersea deterrent—far faster than domestic research facilities could achieve independently.

Consequently, this accelerated quietening narrows the United States Navy's detection advantage across the First Island Chain sooner than Allied antisubmarine warfare deployments anticipated. Such a shift forces United States Indo-Pacific Command to reallocate acoustic surveillance assets and attack submarines to forward corridors, directly compounding the force-generation pressures created by ongoing commitments in the European theatre.

Strategic Question for Discussion

If Russian silent-propulsion transfers enable China to achieve operational stealth on its Type 096 ballistic missile submarine ahead of schedule, which carries more weight for Allied deterrence—expanding acoustic sensor networks in the First Island Chain or increasing attack submarine procurement?

The available evidence points toward physical sensor network density offering the more immediate countermeasure, as industrial lead times for attack submarine hulls cannot match the compressed acoustic timeline. However, my assessment is that sensor networks alone cannot bridge the gap without sufficient forward-deployed attack submarines to track quietened targets through key chokepoints.

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