RELATIONSHIP GOING SOUR?

RELATIONSHIP GOING SOUR? There was a good Defense News article a couple weeks ago about the slow souring of the military export relationship between China and Russia. For the past ten years or so, Russia has sold extensively to China in various upper end military hardware, including fighter aircraft, warships, and missiles. This has been a bit controversial in Russia, as there's been some nervousness about the export of such high tech goods to a neighbor that was very recently quite hostile. Liberal elements in Russia also worried about the dependence of the Russian defense tech sector on the Chinese export market. Nevertheless, the defense industry pursued a full tilt export policy, selling equipment to the Chinese that was often more advanced than the weapons the Russian military was receiving. Oddly enough, as Paradorn Rangsimaporn noted in a recent Asian Survey article (sub required) the deals often weren't all that profitable to Russia, but the expectation of long term sales of spare parts, upgrades, and accessory equipment, along with the opportunity to innovate, drove Russian behavior.Sales have begun to drop off, in large part because the Chinese defense sector has begun to catch up with the Russian. Much of the equipment that China once bought from Russia is now produced through licensing agreements in China. Chinese naval architects and fighter aircraft designers have closed the gap considerably with their Russian contemporaries, if not caught up entirely. The expectations of big future profits for the Russian defense sector, thus, probably won't be met. From Defense News (sub also required):

Reuben Johnson, a Ukraine-based aerospace and technology analyst and consultant, views Moscow's open arms policy toward Beijing as a comic tragedy."China has sent legions of its own specialists to Russia and Ukraine to study the entire design process of all manner of weapon systems," he said. "In several cases, Russian design bureaus have developed a piece of kit that is an analogue — an analogue and not a copy — of an existing Russian system, and presented the blueprints, design documentation and a handful of working models to their Chinese customer. Now Russia is getting nervous over Beijing's earlier promises to buy more Su-27s and Su-30s from Moscow."A source at Sukhoi told me that as of Feb. 2007, the contract for the production of additional Su-27SK/J-11 fighters has not been signed," [Andrei] Chang said. "The contract on the import of a new batch of Su-30MK2 fighters has not been confirmed either. The formulation of the new defense budget in China has already been completed, and there is no action on additional Su fighters. The overall plan now is only to import 180 AL31F engines from Russia this year."

The Russian defense industry still has large export prospects, especially in India, but the decline of China as a customer will hurt considerably. Some of the gap will probably be made up through modernization of the Russian military, although the ability of the Russians to pay depends on the stability of the Russian energy sector. In any case, various outsized fears of Russian-Chinese cooperation against the United States appear to be just that. China and Russia have both been pursuing their interests independently, and will continue to do so even when those interests conflict.

--Robert Farley