How closely aligned are China and Russia? Measuring strategic cooperation in IR

Abstract Russia’s high-profile “turn to the East,” the deterioration of Russia–US relations after the Ukraine crisis, and China’s “new assertiveness” in the South and East China Seas have led to the perception that China and Russia are now “aligned” in opposition to US-led unipolarity. However, alignment remains an inchoate term that has not been systematically defined in the international relations literature. Thus, it is difficult to assess the degree to which China and Russia are aligned, as well as the extent to which their strategic cooperation has increased over time. This paper develops and applies an ordinal set of objective criteria for military alignment and applies these criteria to measure the degree of strategic cooperation in post-Cold War China–Russia relations. It also explores China–Russia cooperation across economic and diplomatic dimensions to assess the overall progress in the bilateral relationship over time. Drawing on multiple Chinese and Russian sources, it demonstrates that China and Russia have now developed strong military alignment, if not a full-fledged alliance, and that cooperation on each of the other two dimensions, while not yet as strong, has steadily increased since the end of the Cold War.