Partnership on the high seas: China and Russia's joint naval manoeuvres

Michael Paul

No 26/2019, SWP Comments from Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), German Institute for International and Security Affairs

Abstract: On the occasion of the 70th founding anniversary of China's national navy, a big naval parade with more than 30 Chinese ships sailed off the coast of Qingdao. A few days later, on 29 April 2019, the 'Joint Sea 2019' Russian-Chinese bilateral naval exercise began. In numbers, China's navy now has the world's biggest fleet - also thanks to decades of Russian naval armament. From Beijing's point of view, however, the Chi­nese armed forces have a serious shortcoming: a lack of operational experience. Here, too, Moscow fills some gaps. Since the first joint manoeuvre in 2005, cooperation has increased at many levels. Sino-Russian sea manoeuvres now also serve as a menacing signal of support for China's claims in the South China Sea or in the Sino-Japanese disputes in the East China Sea. Moscow and Beijing use the joint naval exercises to set geopolitical signals. Despite all historic mistrust, Sino-Russian cooperation seems to rest on a relatively stable foundation of partnership. But maritime cooperation and coordinated partnership must not lead to an alliance.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/256568/1/2019C26.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:swpcom:262019

DOI: 10.18449/2019C26

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SWP Comments from Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), German Institute for International and Security Affairs
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().