The relationship between Russia and China has often been framed as an alliance of convenience, a pragmatic marriage between two authoritarian powers. But to describe it solely as such misses the deeper, more structural forces at play. As a climate and energy correspondent who has tracked carbon flows and geopolitical tectonics for two decades, I see a partnership forged not merely in shared opposition to the West, but in the hard physics of energy interdependence and the narrowing biosphere of options available to both nations. The binding agent is not ideology but thermodynamics: the inescapable logic of resource flows and the gravitational pull of a shared adversary whose primary weapon is economic isolation.
Look first at the energy numbers. Russia, once Europe’s largest gas supplier, has pivoted east with remarkable speed following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In 2023, pipeline gas deliveries to China via the Power of Siberia reached 22.7 billion cubic metres, a 47% increase year on year. The proposed Power of Siberia 2 mega-project, if built, would tie Siberian gas fields to China’s industrial heartland for decades. This is not a marriage of love but of geological necessity. For Russia, the loss of the European market means its hydrocarbon wealth must find new outlets or face stranded assets. For China, now importing over 70% of its crude oil, Russian hydrocarbons offer a discount priced in yuan, bypassing the dollar system. The carbon lock-in is mutual: both countries possess vast coal reserves and the world’s fourth and sixth largest proven oil reserves (Russia) alongside the world’s largest manufacturing sector (China). Their combined CO2 emissions account for 38% of global total. They are, in a literal sense, burning together.
Beyond fossil fuels, the partnership is reinforced by a shared technological dependency. Western sanctions have created a vacuum that China is filling. Russian defence industries require advanced microelectronics; Chinese firms need raw materials like nickel and palladium for batteries and catalysts. The trade flow is self-reinforcing. In 2023, bilateral trade hit $240 billion, up 26% from 2022. Most of this expansion is in energy and machinery, not ideology. The Communist Party of China and United Russia party hold annual forums, but these are ceremonial. The real glue is the SWIFT alternative: China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) now handles over $1 trillion monthly, offering Russia a survival line as its dollar reserves are frozen.
What of the West as the “shared enemy”? The term is too simplistic. Rather, the NATO-led security architecture and the dollar-denominated financial system have become the common obstacle to both nations’ visions of multipolarity. For Moscow, the West’s expansion of NATO and weaponisation of sanctions threaten regime survival. For Beijing, the US pivot to Asia and technology restrictions threaten its pathway to advanced manufacturing and green tech leadership. Yet the framing of a “new Cold War” is misleading. The original Cold War was an ideological battle between capitalism and communism. Today, both Russia and China are hybrid systems: state capitalism with authoritarian governance. Their alliance is post-ideological. It is a coalition of the structurally disadvantaged, those who see the current international order as rigged against them.
But let us not ignore the internal fissures. Russia is a declining demographic and economic power; its GDP is smaller than Italy’s. China’s economy is ten times larger but faces its own demographic cliff and slowing growth. The relationship is asymmetric: China is the senior partner. Russia provides energy and military hardware, but depends on Chinese manufactured goods and finance. Any prolonged conflict in Ukraine or the South China Sea could test this balance. Moreover, climate change imposes a timeline. Both countries have net-zero pledges but have not peaked emissions. A global carbon border tariff, as proposed by the EU, would hit their exports hardest. Their alliance may fray when the costs of decarbonisation become unavoidable, but for now, the thermostatic control of their partnership remains set on a shared resistance to Western norms.
In sum, what binds Russia and China is not a love of Leninist ideology or a shared hatred of liberal democracy. It is the cold equation of energy security, economic survival, and the recalcitrant physics of a planet warming due to fossil fuels they both depend on. They are two nations locked together by the very forces they seek to exploit. The West would do well to understand this not as a moral failing but as a structural reality. The question is not whether this partnership will dissolve, but how it will evolve as the biosphere’s limits press harder on all parties. That is a question with no comfortable answer.
