Chinese President Xi Jinping has resisted crossing Washington’s red lines over arming Russia’s war machine in Ukraine. But that hasn’t stopped China edging closer to Moscow’s military in another way: direct engagement.
China and the armed forces of Russian President Vladimir Putin conducted six joint military exercises together last year, the most in data going back two decades.
That accounted for two-thirds of all China’s drills with foreign militaries in 2022, according to data compiled by the U.S. National Defense University’s Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs.
