The House of Representatives’ Select Committee on China sent a letter to US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan this week asking the White House to provide Congress with any information on whether Moscow is sharing data with Beijing on how to effectively check US-made weapons systems.
“We should anticipate and indeed operate under the assumption that Russia is passing information about the vulnerabilities or counters to American and allied weapons systems to the PRC,” the committee said in its letter.
Lawmakers pointed to recent media and think tank reports on the “alarming levels of Russian adaptation” in rendering some American weapons systems essentially useless on the Ukrainian battlefield.
Congress’s concerns are understandable, given the West’s efforts to put military pressure on Beijing using the same weapons types in China's backyard, Alexander Mikhailov, the head of the Bureau of Military-Political Analysis, a Russia-based security affairs think tank, has told Sputnik.
“It’s no secret that America and its allies plan to exert military pressure on China and prevent it from expanding its influence throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Therefore, China now has a significant opportunity to study the combat capabilities, tactical and technical characteristics of US-made equipment, and those NATO standards that the alliance is constantly talking about being guided by in its military support for Ukraine,” Mikhailov explained.
In Ukraine, China has the chance to safely study from afar almost every facet of NATO’s non-nuclear or aviation-related equipment and tactics, and Moscow doesn’t even need to explicitly hand any information over, notwithstanding US lawmakers’ fears, Mikhailov says.
It’s enough for China’s military to “follow the news by the Russian Defense Ministry, watch the video materials released, watch the work of our military correspondents,” the observer noted.
“China is undoubtedly watching the fighting in Ukraine very closely. For China, this is a conflict on which it can model its own possible actions to repel the aggression of the collective West. We know very well that the US, through the instruments of its NATO allies, is expanding this group of allies and forming a new military-political bloc – AUKUS, in the Asia-Pacific region,” Mikhailov added.
This Asia-based bloc is at its core meant specifically to confront and counter China, pressure the country and try to undermine it regionally and internally – including through meddling via the Taiwan issue, according to the observer.
“In general, the US does not have any secret ammunition or weapons type. That is, practically all the non-nuclear weapons that the US has in its arsenal, probably with the exception (for now) of short and medium-range offensive missiles, and of course, combat aircraft, are being deployed in Ukraine,” Mikhailov said.
In addition, he noted, the Chinese military is undoubtedly monitoring the operations of the Pentagon’s satellites, including those used for communications and control of drones and missiles, air and missile defenses, and more.
“That is, China is closely monitoring all of these developments and, naturally, is adopting all the methods that Russia uses,” Mikhailov said.
Presidents Putin and Xi agreed to strengthen military cooperation between Russia and China during the Russian leader’s trip to Beijing in May. The two countries have already enjoyed decades of defense cooperation, including:
technology and weapons transfers by Russia to China (particularly in the 1990s and 2000s after the Soviet collapse), which enabled Beijing to rapidly build up its domestic defense technological base instead of having to create some technologies from scratch,
cooperation at international and multilateral venues, including through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which the two countries jointly established in 2001, and which now covers nearly all of Eurasia, 40 percent of the world’s population and about 33 percent of the world’s PPP GDP.
training and exercises, most recently seen through the joint patrols and live-fire drills by the Russian and Chinese navies in the South China Sea.
And that’s not to mention the energy, industrial, and logistics partnerships between the two countries, according to Mikhailov.
Sky’s Not the Limit
As far as the future of security-related cooperation is concerned, Mikhailov believes there’s definitely room for further improvement, particularly in outer space.
“We are developing a lunar program jointly with the Chinese. Joint collective work in the creation of Chinese and Russian orbital groups is being carried out. There’s the cooperation in the nuclear sphere, of course, the construction of nuclear power plants that continues, joint developments in this area – all this will continue,” the observer said.
The two countries jointly proposed a Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) Treaty in 2008, designed to prevent the militarization of space. The US has rejected the proposal, dubbing it a "diplomatic ploy" somehow designed to give Russia and China a "military edge" over Washington. Moscow and Beijing have returned to the proposal repeatedly, most recently in February 2024, as a jumping off point for further negotiations.