The revelation that North Korean troops have been gathering in Russia, ostensibly to assist President Vladimir Putin in his brutal invasion of Ukraine, has stoked Western fears of autocratic states banding together to undermine the interests of democracies. There is an authoritarian coalition, but it’s rickety—and it depends on China’s tolerance for chaos.
The war in Ukraine has been a showcase for cooperation among four states—Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea—that share an antipathy toward the United States and the international order it represents. Since invading its neighbor in 2022, Russia has sourced drones and missiles from Iran. In October, Washington sanctioned Chinese companies for working with Russian firms to produce drones. According to U.S. officials, China has also been supplying Russia with vital components that help sustain its war machine. And now North Korean troops have come to Russia, where, Ukrainian officials believe, they are preparing to join the invading forces. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that if the troops did participate in the war, it would be a “very, very serious issue” with potential implications in both Europe and Asia.
Yet this cooperation masks divisions among the world’s major autocracies. Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran don’t necessarily agree on how to achieve their shared goal of countering American domination. Putin has chosen an expansionist war. North Korea and Iran—impoverished, isolated from the West, and zealously anti-American—have little to lose, and something material to gain, from assisting Russia. But China’s calculus is more complicated, because its desire to change the current world order is tempered by its reliance upon that very same order. The Chinese economy remains too dependent on the United States and its partners to risk being heavily sanctioned for shipping arms to Putin.
Constrained by these competing interests, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has taken a generally cautious approach to his global ambitions. He apparently aims to preserve a measure of global stability to protect the Chinese economy while he steadily expands China’s power. At the same time, however, he has deepened his relationships with Russia and Iran, even as their leaders foment chaos in Europe and the Middle East.
Washington is pressing Beijing to intervene and curb North Korea’s cooperation with Russia, but Xi has not shown much interest in leveraging his influence to rein in his autocratic friends. He met with Putin just the day before the Biden administration revealed the presence of North Korean troops in Russia. What passed between the two isn’t known, but the troops remained.
A case can be made that China is not only allowing but indirectly bankrolling all this disruption. The U.S. has sanctioned Russia, Iran, and North Korea, leading all three countries to become heavily dependent on China. Trade between China and Russia reached a record $240 billion last year. Russian business is even turning to the Chinese currency, the yuan, to replace the U.S. dollar. China buys nearly all of Iran’s oil exports, and accounts for 90 percent of North Korea’s foreign trade. These three countries might have pursued their wars, nuclear programs, and terror campaigns without economic ties to China. But Beijing’s support is undoubtedly helping, and Xi is apparently willing to accept the result.
[Read: China might be the Ukraine war’s big winner]
The destabilizing activities of other autocracies might seem like a win for China, because they effectively drain the West’s resources and undercut its standing in the world. But they are also risky, because the turmoil they create could backfire on China. For instance, a wider war in the Middle East could puncture energy markets and hurt China’s economy. Xi isn’t in a diplomatic or military position in the Middle East to contain the damage. Meanwhile, the North Korean deployment to Russia is threatening to escalate the war in Ukraine: South Korea’s president has warned that Seoul may respond by supplying Ukraine with offensive weapons. China’s leadership has little to gain from concentrating the efforts of America’s European and Asian allies against Russia. In the event that the war widens, American and European leaders could step up sanctions on China to get it to curtail its support for Moscow.
The conundrum of China’s foreign policy is that it seeks at once to completely upend the international order in the long term and to preserve it in the short term. Xi’s solution to this problem is to reduce China’s reliance on the United States and the global system it dominates in the medium term. He is pursuing “self-sufficiency” and encouraging tighter ties of trade and investment with the global South to wean the Chinese economy off Western technology and consumer markets. Then China would have greater freedom to support autocracies such as Russia, Iran, and North Korea in their destabilizing activities.
But that’s the future. For now, Xi is willing to tolerate a world in flames, in the hope that China won’t get burned. By feeding tensions with the West, he stands to damage China’s economy and complicate its geopolitical ambitions. What will the Chinese leader do if this gamble doesn’t go his way? With friends like Xi’s, he may not need enemies.
