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 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.
