As mentioned in the previous chapters, there has been a good deal of ambiguity in the assessments of post-Cold-War China–Russia cooperation. While most of the official “names” of the relationship indicate an upward trend, how close are the two countries based on the ordinal framework and indicators of alignment developed in Chapter 2? Figure 3.1 displays the trajectory of post-Cold War China–Russia military cooperation. While there are chronological overlaps between the indicators, the transition into higher-level cooperation at each stage happens after the previous stage of cooperation has become high.

China–Russia cooperation treaty

As elaborated in Chapter 2, a formal treaty cannot be an exhaustive indicator of interstate alignment. It is even more so in the case of China–Russia relations. For example, Fomin et al. (2019) has systematically studied the correlation between Russia's formal alliance obligations and the patterns of its actual military and political cooperation and discovered no significant association between the level of formal alliance commitments and the actual military cooperation. Instead, the formal obligations that Russia enters into with other countries have been shown to do more with diplomatic gesturing and support within international institutions (Fomin et al., 2019). At the same time, the formal treaties cannot be dismissed altogether as they do carry some information and can be a first step in understanding strategic cooperation.