The heads of the U.S. intelligence community and of the CIA say that Russia and China are growing closer, but that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine may be creating concerns for the Chinese Communist Party.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and CIA Director William Burns both said the Kremlin and the Chinese Communist Party are continuing to strengthen their partnership, but they told the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that the war in Ukraine could affect their alliance.
Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley pointed to the 2019 annual threats assessment, produced under then-DNI Dan Coates, which contended that “China and Russia are more aligned than at any point since the mid-1950s.” He asked if that was still the case.
“I think that Director Coates was exactly right. I think it continues to be the case that they are getting closer together,” Haines said. “We see that across a range of sectors, economic, political, security, and expect it to continue. I think there’s a limit to which it will go, but nevertheless, that remains a concern. … But I think in general, I think it does continue — the two countries get closer together.”
Haines added: “And in terms of the impact of the current crisis, I’d say that it’s not yet clear to me exactly how it will affect the trajectory of their relationship. I think it’s clear that China has not come out and criticized Russia for their actions, clearly, and yet at the same time, they did abstain, for example, in the context of the U.N. Security Council resolution and in other scenarios, and it does seem as if they are potentially paying a price for not criticizing Russia, and that may have an impact on how this trajectory moves forward.”
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The 2022 annual threats assessment, released on Tuesday, said that “China will continue deepening diplomatic, defense, and technology cooperation with Russia to challenge the United States” and that “Beijing probably is reviewing publicly disclosed Russian influence operations and gaining experience from operations that use social media and other technologies against societies in Asia and elsewhere.”
Burns said Tuesday, “If anything, that relationship, the partnership between Russia and China, has strengthened since 2019.”
But the CIA director added, “I think President Xi and the Chinese leadership are a little unsettled by what they’re seeing in Ukraine.”
“They did not anticipate the significant difficulties that the Russians were going to run into,” Burns said. “I think they’re unsettled by the reputational damage that can come by their close association with President Putin, and … by the economic consequences at a moment when they are experiencing lower annual growth rates than they’ve experienced for more than three decades. I think they’re a little unsettled about the impact on the global economy.”
He added: “I think they’re a little unsettled by the way in which Vladimir Putin has driven Europeans and Americans much closer together. I think they’ve valued their relationship with Europe and valued what they believed to be their capacity to try to drive wedges between us and the Europeans. So I think that’s unsettling for them as well.”
While the Pentagon accuses China of “at least tacit approval” of Putin’s invasion, China has repeatedly sought to lay blame at the feet of the United States, calling it one of the “culprits of the crisis.”
China is Russia’s most powerful ally, and the China-Russia partnership is known as the “Dragonbear” in some foreign policy circles. Putin and Xi met at the start of the Olympics in February to announce a broad strategic partnership amid Russia’s military buildup on Ukraine’s border. Since the full-scale invasion was launched, China has carefully avoided condemning Russia as Russia seeks to shift blame for the Ukraine invasion to the U.S. and the West.
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China abstained from a U.N. General Assembly vote that called for Russia to “immediately, completely, and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry claimed the resolution didn’t “take into consideration the history and the complexity of the current crisis.”
