image copyrightGetty Images
The 2026 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders' Summit will be held in Shenzhen soon. As the leaders of the United States, China and Russia are expected to appear at the same venue, the direction of China-Russia military cooperation and the possibility of a ceasefire in Ukraine are becoming the focus of attention.
The Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS), a Washington think tank, recently released a latest research report stating that between February 2022 and December 2024, more than half of high-priority semiconductor shipments to Russia were sent by Chinese senders. However, the report also emphasizes that Sino-Russian military and technical cooperation is not "unlimited" but is restricted by China's "technological nationalism": Beijing will only act when it serves its own interests and will stop once it faces the risk of external sanctions.
At the same time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly named Taiwanese parts in Russian missiles and drones. In response, Taipei expanded export controls at the end of October, adding 300 entities and individuals, including mainland China, to the list.
How will the development of this kind of "selective support" between China and Russia affect the direction of the Russia-Ukraine war? Can a ceasefire or even any solution be negotiated at APEC? How does the US factor affect Sino-Russian relations? The interviewed experts do not believe that China, the United States and Russia will jointly discuss the ceasefire in Ukraine at the APEC summit. Because neither Ukraine nor the United States will welcome China to play a mediating role, and China is unwilling to take risks.
Is there “no upper limit” to China-Russia military-industrial cooperation?
The report was written by Al Maggard, an analyst at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS), a Washington think tank, based on trade records, corporate data and individual cases. The report pointed out that since Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014 and faced Western sanctions, Sino-Russian cooperation has extended from finished arms sales to upstream, covering components, manufacturing equipment and joint research and development.
The report states that "Advanced Conventional Weapons" (ACW, which refers to weapon systems with high accuracy, long range or high lethality, and is the core of precision strikes and high-tech platforms for modern warfare) are the most important part of Russia's technology export to China. However, Beijing has always set export restrictions on some key technologies, such as high-precision machine tools and China's own advanced chips, to avoid exposing its industrial heritage.
In other words, the People's Liberation Army has relied on Russia's finished platforms for a long time. Now it uses technical documents, test data and joint research and development to verify and improve its own designs faster and reduce trial and error costs. Among them, submarine and drone technology are the core of cooperation. The report pointed out that the flow of unmanned aerial vehicle systems and airborne assault command and control technology into China will help improve the People's Liberation Army's combat capabilities in the Taiwan Strait situation; China can also observe the actual combat performance of its own systems from the Ukrainian battlefield and then make fine-tuning.
Overall, China is incorporating technical expertise from Moscow into its own localization plans to prepare for "potential conflicts."
End of Hot Reading
However, McCard emphasized that this is not a one-way story in which "China benefits and Russia suffers", but an asymmetric, self-limiting process with hidden risks. Moscow has long been worried about intellectual property theft and technology outflow, but the report pointed out that under increasingly stringent Western sanctions since 2014, the Russian elite and related institutions have generally accepted Chinese "financing" in exchange for continued technology transfer.
Natasha Kuhrt, a Russian expert at King's College London, reminded that Sino-Russian military cooperation has not yet entered an advanced stage: the two countries have no joint command structure, no common deployment or base sharing, and no common defense policy.
She explained to BBC Chinese that Russia has long sold weapons to China, including the S-400 air defense missiles whose theoretical range covers Taiwan. However, arms sales to China have declined significantly in recent years, mainly due to the improvement of China's local production capacity and the maturity of reverse engineering technology; at the same time, the Russian machinery manufacturing industry is now almost completely dependent on Chinese imports.
Beijing hopes: Russia will not lose and become more dependent on China
Felix Brender, a Hou Family Taiwan Fellow at Harvard University's Fairbank Center for China Studies and an international relations scholar, told BBC Chinese that the key to the problem is not whether Beijing has leverage against Moscow, but what factors will prompt Beijing to use this leverage to promote a ceasefire in Ukraine.
He said: "A Russia that can survive, continue to rely on China, and continue to contain the resources of the United States and Europe, as long as the conflict does not get out of control, actually serves Beijing's many strategic interests." In the end, Beijing is not happy to see Russia lose the war. Wang Zheqian described that China hopes that Russia will be "strong enough not to be defeated, but also want Moscow to be so dependent on it that it cannot leave."
Against this backdrop, Beijing’s repeated calls for resumption of negotiations on the war in Ukraine are in themselves a low-cost diplomatic gesture. "There is almost no cost to calling for peace," Wang Zheqian said.
庫爾特則指出，共同對抗兩國所反感的西方「自由秩序」，是中俄團結的核心。她舉例，兩國以亞太聯合巡邏威懾美日韓盟友，提醒美國兩線作戰的壓力，而伊朗問題亦牽制美國資源；俄羅斯支持中國對台灣的主權主張，並呼應北京反對四方安全對話（QUAD）與澳英美聯盟（AUKUS）的措辭。
"China needs Russian energy, and Russia can meet some of China's needs to extend its power to the Arctic," she said.
image copyrightHKU Business School
APEC talks about ceasefire: U.S. election and three-party game
Over the years, the export controls and sanctions imposed by the West on China and Russia have been the key external pressure for the two countries to maintain "selective support." For its part, Beijing has shown restraint in supporting Russia’s high-priority list projects, reflecting China’s need for U.S. and Western markets, capital, and technology far outweighing its strategic sympathy for Russia. Taiwan added mainland Chinese entities to its export control list at the end of October, further highlighting the sensitive position of the Taiwan Strait supply chain in this game.
The outside world is paying attention to whether this multi-layered control network will force Beijing to make fine trade-offs between supporting Moscow and protecting its own high-tech industries; and on the eve of APEC, whether Beijing is willing to call for dialogue and show flexibility in non-sensitive areas to create an image of a "responsible major power."
Joel Cheung, Asia analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), told BBC Chinese that US domestic politics must be taken into consideration. He analyzed that the outside world expects the Democratic Party to gain control of Congress in the mid-term elections, which will constrain Trump's domestic legislative agenda next year and may also increase his incentives to strive for diplomatic results overseas. However, further US-Russia talks will still be difficult to achieve substantial progress on the Ukrainian peace issue.
This article contains content provided by Google YouTube. Because this content uses technology such as cookies or cookies, we will seek your consent before loading any content. You may wish to read the Google YouTube Cookie Policy and Privacy Policy before giving your permission. If you wish to read the above, please click "Accept and Continue".
Ending YouTube post
Wang Zheqian pointed out that the challenge facing Washington is that the increasingly close ties between the Chinese and Russian defense industries mostly occur in factories, laboratories and supply chains, rather than at the summit.
He also reminded that Trump only exempted the large-scale sanctions and tariffs on Russian energy revenue that had just been signed into effect in mid-October. This shows that the United States is trying to curb the Sino-Russian strategic partnership on the one hand, and on the other hand it is relaxing economic pressure on Moscow. “The growing asymmetry is an interesting part of the trilateral relationship. It gives Beijing greater influence over Russia, but it doesn’t necessarily create any incentive for Beijing to exercise that influence in a way that Washington or Kyiv would prefer.”
However, there are also voices that believe that the informal nature of APEC itself creates space for discussion. Mari Pangestu, the Special Envoy of the President of Indonesia for International Trade and Multilateral Cooperation and former Executive Vice President of the World Bank, recently pointed out at a symposium at the University of Hong Kong that precisely because APEC is an informal summit that does not require the signing of a treaty, it allows sensitive issues to be put on the table for discussion.
Despite this, experts interviewed generally believe that it will be difficult to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine at APEC. Zhang Zhiwei said that despite the recent partial humanitarian ceasefire, Russia and Ukraine still have fundamental differences in their negotiating positions, especially regarding territorial concessions and security guarantees. He added that Ukraine is not a member of APEC and cannot participate in the summit, which itself limits the possibility of breakthroughs in relevant negotiations.
Explore more
More short films
More short films end
