1 On the Verge of an Alliance: Contemporary China-Russia Military Cooperation Alexander Korolev, Ph.D. Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales Sydney, NSW 2025, Australia. This is a pre-print version. The final publication is available from Taylor & Francis Group link at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14799855.2018.1463991 To cite this article: Alexander Korolev, “On the Verge of an Alliance: Contemporary China- Russia Military Cooperation,” Asian Security, DOI: 10.1080/14799855.2018.1463991 Abstract: The deterioration of Russia-US relations as a consequence of the Ukraine crisis and growing tensions in US-China relations have given rise to the perception that China- Russia relations are an actual or incipient alliance. However, the alliance elements in China- Russia relations have never been systematically defined and empirically assessed, which makes assessing alliance dynamics in these important bilateral relations difficult. This paper develops and applies a set of empirical criteria for an alliance to define how closely the post- Cold War China-Russia military relations have approached the alliance condition. It demonstrates that China and Russia have created strong institutional foundations for an alliance, and now only minor steps are necessary for a formal and functioning military alliance to materialize. However, the occurrence of such steps is not yet guaranteed. Introduction China and Russia have steadily increased their military-to-military contacts and cooperation, which in the context of deteriorating Russia-US relations after the Ukraine crisis and China’s “new assertiveness” in the South and East China Seas has revived the “alliance” rhetoric in China-Russia bilateral relations. In October 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia and China were “natural partners and natural allies,” using the word “ally” that Moscow had previously eschewed with respect to China. 1 Russia’s leading foreign policy experts increasingly use “de facto alliance” to characterize China-Russia relations 2 or call for upgrading China-Russia collaboration to the level of a full-fledged political-military alliance. 3 In China, despite the official “non-alignment” doctrine, some news outlets have deemed that Beijing and Moscow are “allies without an alliance treaty,” 4 whereas prominent international relations (IR) experts have argued that China will be unable to shift the US- dominated unipolar world order “unless it forms a formal alliance with Russia.” 5 A report jointly written by Chinese and Russian experts registers “elements of a military alliance” emerging between the two countries and argues that “if needed, the ties can be converted into an alliance relationship without long preparation.” 6 Most remarkably, China’s first national security blue book, commissioned by the government and written by experts from the Institute of Contemporary International Relations, postulates that China should consider forming an “alliance with Russia.” 7