Watching his Russian clients party late recently at a karaoke bar in the eastern Chinese city of Wenzhou, Chinese factory manager Chen admired their endurance.
The Russians were happy because Chen's products - industrial valves mainly used in oil and mining - offered a cheaper alternative to the European brands they used before the war in Ukraine.
"They sang and danced until midnight and didn't want to leave," said Chen, who asked to be identified only by his last name for privacy.
With Western sanctions over Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 preventing them from using their traditional European suppliers, Russian companies have turned to China to fill the gap.
This week, when the Russian president met with Xi Jinping in Beijing, the much-vaunted "friendship" between the two leading leaders of the autocratic world was once again in the spotlight. Putin's state visit is his 43rd meeting with Xi.
Economic ties between the two sides are flourishing but under pressure from Western sanctions, which is expected to be an important topic of discussion. Bilateral trade was $240 billion last year, up 26 percent from the previous year, according to China Customs data. China supplied goods, from cars and industrial machinery to smartphones, and bought billions of dollars in Russian energy exports.
China claims it is not providing Russia with lethal weapons. But it has proven to be a key conduit for goods for Russia's defense industry, prompting US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to warn Beijing of the consequences if its companies support the Kremlin's war effort.
"China is now Russia's most important partner, buying its raw materials and supplying goods, including for the battlefield," says Elina Ribakova, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
The growing economic ties are one of the clearest indicators of China's desire to reshape global geopolitics to its advantage through trade - and to the detriment of the US, analysts say.
The second largest economy in the world claims to be the largest trading partner for 120 countries, doing business with most countries regardless of their politics. This gives it an increasing role as an economic driver for many countries, including those hostile to the US-led Western bloc, such as Russia, Belarus, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela.
China is "agnostic about the nature of the political regimes and human rights records of some of its partners in the Global South, such as Russia, Iran or Venezuela," says Philip Ivanov, founder of the China-Russia Program at the Center for China Analysis at the Asia Policy Institute. society. Beijing foresees long-term competition and confrontation with the West, he adds, and to neutralize this, China is investing in its economic relations with non-Western countries around the world.
"China's parallel order is now taking shape," says Richard McGregor, senior fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. "We used to say that they were building it. Now we can see the muscles”.
The growing economic ties are one of the clearest indicators of China's desire to reshape global geopolitics in its favor through trade - at the expense of the US.
In the city of Wenzhou, where gleaming Maybach luxury cars park in front of dusty factories - a testament to the prosperity of one of China's leading centers of light industry - it is difficult to meet a businessman who has not visited Russia since the war in Ukraine began.
A worker at an exhibition company says she has led several delegations of manufacturers to Russia, many of whom want to move away from Western markets after the pandemic and the trade war with the US. Governments on both sides are supporting this boom.
"Russian customs were not particularly friendly to China before, but after these crises, the interaction between the two sides is stronger," she said.
Economic ties between China and Russia have been growing since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and suffered the first Western sanctions, and Xi began pursuing a more assertive foreign policy, according to Ivanov.
However, after the total invasion of 2022, this process accelerated. Other countries have also supported the Russian economy, Ivanov says. India bought Russian oil, the United Arab Emirates helped with financial transactions, and Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkey provided hubs for Russia's parallel imports - goods shipped without permission through third countries.
But China was the most important, not only increasing exports to its neighbor until recently, but also buying Russian oil. Last year, Russia overtook Saudi Arabia to become China's largest supplier of oil.
"The support that Russia receives from China, combined with the pragmatic approach of many other countries ... has highlighted the limits" of Western economic power, said Temur Umarov, an expert on China and Central Asia and a fellow at the Carnegie Center for Russia and Eurasia.
China's parallel order is now taking shape. We used to say that they were building it. Now we can see the muscles
In 2023, 60 percent of Russia's high-tech dual-use imports, as defined by EU trade rules, came from China, according to an analysis of Russian trade data by the FT.
Telecommunications equipment, including smartphones, accounted for the bulk of this $26 billion flow at $3,9 billion, while computers came in second at $2,3 billion. Russia also bought $1,7 billion worth of microprocessors and $XNUMX billion worth of laboratory equipment.
Almost all the imported technology used in Russia's armaments is of Western origin, with Chinese companies producing only four percent. Russia has taken advantage of Western companies' lax compliance procedures to obtain Western-made components through China or procure them from Western subsidiaries and joint ventures in the country, says Ribakova of the Peterson Institute.
U.S. threats of secondary sanctions against Chinese banks and companies that aid the Russian war effort appear to have reduced the flow of goods since the Biden administration imposed measures against the trade late last year.
China's exports to Russia fell nearly 16 percent from a year earlier in March and 13,5 percent in April.
"China thinks that its relations with the US will deteriorate, whether Biden or Trump wins. They can't control that, but they can control the speed at which they deteriorate," says Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Center for Russia and Eurasia in Berlin. "That is why they are trying to support Russia as carefully as possible, keeping the volume of shipments low in an effort to show the Americans that trade is reduced."
Moscow's growing dependence on Beijing doesn't necessarily bother the Kremlin, says Andrea Kendall-Taylor, director of the transatlantic security program at the Center for a New American Security.
"It is a compromise they are willing to make in order to cooperate with a partner who does not threaten their domestic stability and who has a similar view of how the world should be governed."
In return, Beijing gains valuable access to natural resources and internal trade routes away from Indo-Pacific sea lanes that are more vulnerable to US pressure.
"Deliberately and through a combination of circumstances," China and Russia are striving to create a multipolar world in which power is dispersed, according to Ivanov. The most important "characteristic of this world is that the power of the USA is diluted".
During his visit to Europe this month, Xi's ideal version of bilateral relations was demonstrated. Standing next to Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister seen in the EU as pro-Russian and pro-Chinese, Xi awarded his hosts the highest level of bilateral relations Beijing could offer - "an all-weather, comprehensive and strategic partnership for a new era".
Analysts believe the Chinese leader is using a series of vaguely worded slogans and rhetoric as code for his plans for a future in which China will regain its historic imperial-era greatness, with the tacit support of countries opposed to "American hegemony."
Xi devised vague international frameworks, such as the "Global Security Initiative" (GSI) and the "Global Civilization Initiative" (GCI), whose basic vision is to promote non-interference in the political systems or affairs of other countries.
The financial mechanisms of cooperation between China and Russia are not yet well established, and there is a lack of tools to reduce market risk and regulatory mechanisms.
Analysts say trade and investment form the basis of China's efforts to gain greater influence. The main model is the trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, Xi's infrastructure-building program in friendly countries, although it has been replaced or supplemented by concepts like GSI and GCI and bilateral trade agreements.
For Chinese academics, the test for this new worldview is Russia and the war in Ukraine. If the US is seen as a "loser" in the war in Ukraine, it will further dilute its influence, say Chinese experts.
Wang Wen, professor and dean of the Chongyang Institute of Financial Studies at Renmin University, wrote a report titled: "Russia's Future Is Reshaping, (a) China Can Actively Guide It," based on cross-border research trips.
He says that Russia has made progress in resisting Western sanctions, but that the Achilles heel is the financial industry. Although China-Russia trade in local currencies has grown from 45 percent in 2022 to 95 percent now, China's average annual direct investment in Russia is less than a billion dollars, while Russia's investment in China is even less, he added.
The dollar's dominance in global trade remains the most difficult problem for China's current hopes of thwarting US influence, analysts say.
“You could say there is a parallel order. But I don't think this so-called new order has already prevailed," said Jun Sun, senior fellow and co-director of the East Asia Program and director of the China Program at the Stimson Center in Washington, citing the difficulties of creating an alternative global settlement system.
Since February, a number of Chinese banks have stepped up controls on payments to Russian companies, Chinese state media reported, citing concerns about sanctions.
"Beijing is unlikely to do business with sanctioned Russian entities again as long as the threat of sanctions remains," Kimberly Donovan and Maja Nikoladze of the Atlantic Council's Center for Geoeconomics wrote in March.
Nowhere is the growing trade between Russia and China more evident in the northeastern Chinese province of Heilongjiang than in the border town of Heihe.
Imports and exports in the Heihe Free Trade Zone increased by nearly 57 percent last year. Government signs around town offer rewards for reporting smugglers.
"The war in Ukraine has made many Chinese people relate more to the Russians, since both countries are under heavy Western sanctions," says an employee at Epinduo, a Chinese importer of Russian products such as candy and alcoholic beverages in the free trade zone.
Putin tried to capitalize on that sentiment by outlining plans for Russia to lead the "global majority" of countries fed up with US "total dominance" in the world.
"The more pressure the US puts on both Russia and China, the more valuable their relationship becomes in terms of easing Western pressure and demonstrating to the rest of the world, at least for Russia, that they are not isolated," says Kendall-Taylor.
However, Russia's ambitions may conflict with China's plans to use its economic power for global influence, said Hannah Note, director of the James Martin Center's Eurasia Program on Nonproliferation.
"Russia is far more revisionist when it comes to institutions that support the existing order," says Note. "China is still more cautious".
In a report on the "global majority" published late last year, two of Russia's most prominent international relations experts in Russia and a former commander of its Pacific Fleet wrote that China's integration into the global economy means it is more focused on shaping the status quo than tearing it down.
"The reasons are clear: China's social and internal stability depend on access to the US and EU markets; China is not self-sufficient when it comes to food," wrote authors Sergey Karaganov, Dmitry Trenin and Sergey Avakyants.
"In the long term, China may partially lose interest in relations with Russia after achieving strategic self-sufficiency," they added, which would force Russia to diversify ties with other countries in the 'global south' and normalize relations with the West as much as possible.
Note says another problem with Moscow's official discourse is that if Russia and China become a 'dominant tandem', it could offend the countries they are trying to attract into new multilateral alliances.
"Russia's vision is that all these countries are supposedly equal, it is about overcoming neo-colonialism, about overcoming hegemonic tendencies," she says.
While some analysts see a grand strategy in China's relations with Russia and other developing countries, some wonder whether the end result could be more chaos rather than a coherent geopolitical norm - multipolar or otherwise.
China generally "did not choose (trade partners) based on political systems," says Maria Repnikova, an associate professor of global communication at the University of Georgia and an expert on China-Russia relations.
"It does not set as many preconditions as the West. As a result, we have this economic empowerment of various regimes that otherwise would not have these kinds of benefits operating in the neoliberal world order."
China's vague geopolitical rhetoric allows it to cooperate with most countries, but potentially limits its real political influence outside Asia, she adds.
"I think more unevenness and more chaos will be a feature of the coming years," says Repnikova.
There is no such thing as eternal friendship between countries. There is only eternal self-interest
Chinese academics also agree that there will be more chaos, although they believe the cause will be the decline of US influence rather than the rise of China, which they call a "stabilizing factor".
"Given the lack of coordination among major powers and the end of hegemonic stability, regional powers will seize the opportunity to make trouble to pursue their interests," said Su Poling, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who studies the Russian economy.
In Jilin, another of China's three northeastern border provinces, whose trade with Russia grew nearly 72 percent last year, according to Chinese customs data, locals agree that the future is unpredictable despite today's boom.
Surrounded by racks of Russian liquor, sweets and spices, 50-year-old Viktor, who is Chinese but asked that we use his Russian name, says the surge in trade could reverse at any moment if bilateral relations suddenly sour from for any reason.
"There is no such thing as eternal friendship between countries. There is only eternal self-interest,” he says, citing a saying used in both China and the West.
Prepared by: A.Š.
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