By BlueShift | 2025-09-01

During Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to Moscow in May, China and Russia reaffirmed their "no limits" comprehensive strategic partnership, which includes their much-vaunted space cooperation.

But experts say that despite the public rhetoric, the two powers are not in lockstep, and that amid Russia's failures in space, global isolation over Ukraine and position on the use of nuclear weapons, China has taken a quiet step back.

"Although overall security coordination and military cooperation between China and Russia have strengthened in recent years, significant boundaries remain," the Center for European Policy Analysis noted in an August 26 report.

"Beijing is concerned about Moscow’s use of nuclear coercion in the war in Ukraine. It reflects limits in the Sino-Russian alignment​,​ especially regarding ​​the role of nuclear weapons in state coercion," it said.

"Underlying asymmetries, geopolitical caution, and competing interests ... may constrain how far this convergence extends beyond coordinated rhetoric," the Jamestown Foundation noted in a May 14 report.

The closer Beijing and Moscow move toward each other’s strategic redlines, it added, "the more likely constraints are to appear, most notably in Central Asia and, for Russia, the Arctic."

"While the People's Republic of China and Russia remain committed to long-term alignment, they are still constrained by strategic caution, regional rivalry, and the need to manage external economic blowback," it added.

There are signs of asymmetry between the two allies, Ladislav Charouz wrote for The Diplomat in a May 21, 2024 article titled, "As Moscow Eyes Mars, Beijing Wants Beans."

"Given Russia’s high-tech aspirations, it is hardly surprising that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s imagination was captured by the prospect of cooperating with China on space exploration," she wrote.

"According to the state-run newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Putin said he liked the idea of Russia and China jointly unfurling their flags on Mars when he was shown a rover with automatic flag deployment technology."

"Meanwhile, Chinese coverage of Putin’s visit made it clear that Beijing’s expectations of cooperation with Moscow mostly revolve around the primary sector. Writing of relations between the two countries, CCTV reduced Russia-China trade to 'Russian gas in Chinese households, and Chinese electronics and cars on Russian roads'."

Russia has become a liability

In June 2021, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and Russia's Roscosmos jointly announced the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) --a project aimed at establishing a lunar base by 2035.

Since then, Russia's repeated space program failures have diminished its role in the project, and its declining space capabilities have made it an unreliable partner for China.

In April 2022, then-director of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin told Russia's state news agency TASS that key missions Luna-26 and Luna-27 would be delayed due to difficulties in replacing embargoed electronic components.

Russia's much-anticipated Luna-25 probe crashed during its landing attempt in August 2023, dealing a major blow to Moscow's credibility.

Then Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 made it a pariah on the international stage.

"The Russians have created a lot of ill-will," Secure World Foundation director of program planning Brian Weeden told Space.com.

Faced with growing isolation, he said, "Russia's options are to either work with China or go it alone."

"Russia's space program suffers from a deficit of financial resources, limited access to advanced machine tools and space-grade electronics, a shrinking workforce, and low workforce productivity," international relations specialist Pavel Luzin wrote for the Foreign Policy Research Institute in July 2024.

China's quiet distancing

Meanwhile, China has subtly distanced itself from Russia in official ILRS materials.

While early documents explicitly described the ILRS as a China-Russia joint initiative, more recent publications have downplayed Russia's role.

A 2021 CNSA promotional video featured both Chinese and Russian space agencies as equal collaborators.

In January 2022, China's official "White Paper on Space Strategy" still clearly stated that the ILRS was launched "together with Russia."

But by May 2023, CNSA's updated presentation did not mention Russia at all, describing the ILRS as a project "proposed by China and built in partnership with several countries."

Russian Luna missions were entirely omitted, and the first phase, originally called "Reconnaissance," was renamed "Basic Model" -- focusing solely on China's lunar missions.