China's "no limits" partnership with Russia is a key aspect of Beijing's long-term strategic goals, according to a new congressionally mandated report from the Department of Defense.
The Pentagon on Thursday released its annual China Military Power Report, which details Beijing's national, economic, and military strategy and provides insights into the People’s Liberation Army’s current capabilities as well as its modernization efforts.
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“The PRC views its ‘no limits’ partnership with Russia as integral to advancing the PRC’s development and emergence as a great power,” the department’s accompanying fact sheet said.
In February 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin released a joint statement announcing a no-limits strategic relationship between the two countries. Weeks after the meeting, Russian forces invaded Ukraine, and the war rages on more than a year and a half later despite failing to achieve any of its original objectives.
"We do see the [People's Republic of China] kind of looking at Russia as an important strategic partner from their perspective to kind of balance against, again, you know, what Xi Jinping described earlier this year as the containment, suppression, and encirclement from the U.S. and its allies and partners," a senior defense official told reporters.
The report’s executive summary also noted that the PRC “almost certainly is learning lessons from” Russia’s war in Ukraine that are “most applicable to the PRC’s goal of strengthening its whole-of-government approach to countering a perceived U.S.-led containment strategy.”
“Western sanctions against Russia almost certainly have amplified the PRC’s push for defense and technological self-sufficiency and financial resilience,” it added.
Biden administration officials said in February 2023 that it had intelligence indicating Beijing was considering providing lethal aid to Moscow for the war, though the preemptive and explicit warning ultimately thwarted the possible deal.
The report's release comes the same week Putin traveled to Beijing, where he met with Xi and attended the Belt and Road Forum.
“Dear friend, I am very glad to see you again,” Putin said in a readout. “Under the difficult present-day conditions, it is particularly relevant to maintain close foreign policy coordination, something we are doing now.”
Earlier this week, the department declassified a series of images and videos showing recent unsafe maneuvers conducted by Chinese pilots near U.S. military aircraft in the region. In some instances, the Chinese aircraft got within 30 feet of the U.S. aircraft.
“Since the fall of 2021, we have seen more than 180 such incidents,” Ely Ratner, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, said on Tuesday. "More in the past two years than in the decade before that. That's nearly 200 cases where [People's Liberation Army] operators have performed reckless maneuvers, or discharged chaff or shot off flares or approached too rapidly or too close to U.S. aircraft."
Adm. John Aquilino, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told reporters he's "most concerned about the potential for accidents," which "could lead to miscalculation."
There have been similar incidents in the maritime domain, the department leaders said.
The department believes China has “more than 500 operational nuclear warheads as of May of this year” and thinks China’s buildup will exceed 1,000 by 2030.
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"We see the PRC continuing to quite rapidly modernize and diversify and expand its nuclear forces," the official said. "What they're doing now, if you compare it to what they were doing about a decade ago, it really far exceeds that in terms of scale and complexity. They're expanding and investing in their land, sea, and air-based nuclear delivery platforms, as well as the infrastructure that's required to support this."
The PLA also “increased provocative and destabilizing actions in and around the Taiwan Strait," per the fact sheet, "including ballistic missile overflights of Taiwan, increased flights into Taiwan’s self-declared air defense identification zone, and large-scale simulated joint blockade and simulated joint firepower strike operations.”