The analysis below explores China–Russia economic and diplomatic cooperation. When assessing economic cooperation, it uses quantitative indicators, such as the volume of bilateral trade and its share in each country's total external trade. It also looks at the composition of China–Russia trade and how it has changed since the end of the Cold War. Particular emphasis is placed on the model of economic cooperation, the roles China's and Russia's economies play in it, and the geopolitical implications it generates from the standpoint of strategic alignment. The below analysis also assesses the degree of diplomatic cooperation by exploring China–Russia voting behavior in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the agendas of China–Russia cooperation in regional formats.

Economic cooperation: trade, unequal interdependence, and new Initiatives

Since the beginning of the Policy of Reforms and Opening in 1978, China has been much more successful economically than post-Soviet Russia. The difference between China's and Russia's economic transition experiences manifests itself most remarkably in the growing gap between the size of the countries’ economies as expressed by GDP. In 2013 the ratio of China's to Russia's total GDP was 4.3:1, calculated in current dollars based on the market exchange rate, and 4.5:1, based on purchasing power parity (PPP)-adjusted estimates. By 2016, these ratios became 8.7:1 and 5.6:1, respectively. Meanwhile, Russia's to China's per capita GDP ratio in 2013 was 2.2:1. However, in 2016 it became 1.1:1, which means that China's per capita GDP is almost on par with Russia's – a rather devastating outcome for Russia, given the two countries’ demographic parameters.