Hong Kong, October 13 (ANI): A quartet of countries — China, Iran, North Korea and Russia — is sometimes referred to as CRINK, and they enjoy distinctive alignment in many areas. Yet suspicion between the four remains deep, which explains why China is being careful to pick a cautious path that prevents it from being treated as an international pariah, yet still allows it to show solidarity with its fellow authoritarian states.
Examining the Iran and Ukraine wars, a report by the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) noted, “These two conflicts have demonstrated both the strengths and the limits of CRINK security ties. The war in Ukraine has shown how four countries can each bring to bear their distinctive strengths to support a common cause. North Korea has brought to the table manpower and huge quantities of less-advanced weaponry. Iran has offered large numbers of armed drones and missiles. China has harnessed its enormous economic and industrial might to backfill Russia’s wartime economy and defence industrial base, while not committing troops or lethal aid.”
The authors added, “In doing so, they have all demonstrated their capacity to collectively marshal resources and capabilities in ways that are hugely challenging for the United States and its allies and partners.”
CRINK cooperation is typically driven by a transactional and opportunistic calculus. Certainly, there is a mutual desire to unseat the US in regional and global affairs, but distrust remains rampant. The old adage that there is no honour among thieves causes each country to tread cautiously so that its own strategic ends are not sacrificed on behalf of another nation’s.
For example, with China’s economy dependent on global trade, Beijing cannot go overtly all out in supporting Tsar Vladimir Putin’s war machine in Ukraine, as Pyongyang has done with munitions, weapons and troops. To do so would invite stringent sanctions from Europe and the US, so China has exercised restraint to keep its materiel support for Russia below the radar.
However, China’s stealthy support for Russia has been vocal and unequivocal. As CSIS explained in another report published in May, “Russia is increasingly leaning on China’s massive manufacturing capacity to sustain its own defence industry. The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence reports that Chinese state-owned defence firms have been linked to shipping dual-use components and equipment, including semiconductors, drones, jet fighter parts and jamming technology, to Russian state-owned defence firms.”
Western sanctions against Russia forced its defence industry to turn to China for advanced machine tools, such as computer numerical control (CNC) machines, which are used in complex defence manufacturing. China supplied more than 62% of Russian CNC imports from 2023 to 2024.
CSIS added, “This growing dependence on China could provide Beijing with more bargaining power in acquiring certain advanced Russian military technologies, which Moscow has been reluctant to provide. This may be especially important for China’s development of advanced combat aircraft and helicopters, where Russian technologies remain important inputs.”
Looking at relations between the four “friends”, CSIS remarked, “These dynamics suggest that CRINK countries are not unified actors, and there will continue to be limits on their security alignment. Yet, as recent years have shown, Washington and its allies should not discount the capacity of these four countries to work together in opposition to US and allied interests. Particular attention should be paid to China and Russia as the most powerful and closely aligned bilateral actors, and China, Russia and North Korea as the trio most likely to support each other in times of need.”
Even as Russia continues to wage war against Ukraine for a fifth year, Moscow is enjoying constancy of support from China. While China and Russia have avoided a formal alliance, their military ties are deepening, and joint exercises continue. One example of this enduring friendship was Exercise Joint Sea-2026, during which Chinese and Russian submarines trained together.
Submarines are a nation’s trump card, and they typically protect their underwater capabilities with fierce paranoia. For submarines from China and Russia to train together demonstrates closeness. Such military exercises also permit Putin and Chairman Xi Jinping to send strategic signals to the US and others, and they contribute to deterrence against would-be adversaries.
As CSIS pointed out in its report, “China reaps many benefits from joint exercises with Russia. First and foremost, joint exercises have allowed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to gain valuable experience operating with the far more experienced Russian military and afforded the PLA opportunities to practise manoeuvring in a variety of geographies and climates far from China’s borders. These experiences are invaluable to the PLA, which has not engaged in large-scale military conflict in several decades.”
Especially as Russia throws its young men into the meat grinder that Putin’s “special military operation” has become, Sino-Russian joint exercises have focused less on scale and more on political posturing and strategic signalling.
Space is another domain of war where China and Russia can demonstrate alignment and opposition to the US. The US’s recent announcement that it would deploy weapons in space met with a predictable response from both competitors. They pointed accusing fingers at Washington, DC, even though they have long been guilty of this very thing. With this announcement, what the US has essentially done is simply remove the strategic ambiguity that it once nurtured.
Dr Malcom Davis, Senior Analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), pointed out, “Let’s be clear, both China and Russia have had similar capabilities for years, and have demonstrated both direct-ascent anti-satellites and practised co-orbital counter-space operations. So the US is responding to a very clear threat here.”
Davis added, “Space control as a means towards deterrence in space is important for the US and for its allies, including Australia, with its National Defence Strategy clearly stating that space control is an important capability to develop. But Beijing and Moscow will exploit this admission to accelerate their own counter-space capability development. In other words, space weaponisation is set to expand and accelerate,” the Australian academic warned.
Just as Davis feared, China was quick to get on its soapbox. Mouthpieces such as Hu Xijin, the former editor of the Global Times tabloid, claimed, “The United States has opened Pandora’s box in space. China has consistently opposed the militarisation of outer space; however, if the US persists in its course and continues to deploy in-orbit weapons, it would be nearly impossible for China and Russia to avoid taking reciprocal actions.”
China and Russia have both been developing offensive counter-space capabilities against US and allied satellites for years, giving them the potential to conduct a “Pearl Harbor” surprise attack in space. Russia, for instance, has been testing and deploying kamikaze satellites that ram targets at orbital speeds. Likewise, China has been trialling manoeuvrable “kidnapper” satellites that can pluck objects from orbit.
Davis warned, “Too many people…will believe the line from Beijing and Moscow and accuse the US of initiating space weaponisation, when in fact it’s quite the reverse. And China and Russia will now use the US statement to justify faster development and deployment of space weapons. The US is responding to a clear threat from China and Russia to vital US space capabilities.”
China gains benefits from Putin’s war in Ukraine. It is tying up Western bandwidth and helping diminish the West’s stocks of weapons. China has also had a valuable opportunity to observe what does and does not work in modern warfare’s constant evolution.
For instance, the PLA has observed the effectiveness of long-range fires from weapons such as the US-manufactured M142 HIMARS rocket launcher system. Taiwan is inducting the very same artillery system built by Lockheed Martin, and it would pose a serious threat to any PLA invasion of Taiwan.
Subsequently, a PLA-affiliated periodical discussed how HIMARS should be countered. The authors stated, “To destroy HIMARS, active attacks are one method. Air supremacy is to be promptly established and, based on the strategy of active attack, we will strike them with multiple rounds of firepower.” Russia failed signally to gain air superiority over Ukraine, so the PLA would learn that lesson well. Its large drone fleet could contribute to the wiping out of Taiwanese combat aircraft and air defences.
The same Chinese report added, “Observation and perception of the battlefield situation are crucial. It is necessary to first achieve air supremacy, prioritise obtaining intelligence and rely on information superiority to support an active mode of combat so that the opponent will fall into a passive position.” Taiwan is just one-seventeenth the size of Ukraine, so China must surely have mapped every square inch of the “renegade province” it wants to conquer by hook or by crook.
Returning to the growing convergence of Chinese, Russian, Iranian and North Korean interests, the leaders of all four CRINK countries attended Xi’s blue-ribbon military parade in Beijing in September 2025. Interestingly, this was the first time in history that all four authoritarian leaders are known to have been present together.
North Korea is extremely xenophobic, and it typically shuns any opportunity to train militarily with others. However, Pyongyang turned this on its head when it joined the Russian-led, China-participating Ocean-2024 exercise as an observer. Of course, CRINK is nowhere close to achieving the degree of interoperability that the US and NATO achieve.
Davis of ASPI noted this tightening CRINK friendship. Referring to his home country, Australia, Davis said, “We need to be prepared for a much greater threat in what is clear is an emerging, competitive, multipolar world order, where Beijing and Moscow seek to overturn the rules-based international order and impose their own domination.”
Davis accused the US of being naive and taking the wrong path in its strategic direction. “Simply withdrawing into the Western Hemisphere, perhaps under the assumed cover of a Golden Dome, and thinking competition with China can be managed through trade and economic policy isn’t what either Beijing or Moscow are envisaging. It’s important to emphasise — they want the United States broken, defeated and finished as a superpower, and they want to dominate through economic, political and military means their respective regions — Europe for Russia; the Indo-Pacific for China.”
Xi talks a lot about the Chinese dream, and while it may be camouflaged in flowery language, Davis discerned that Beijing wants “a China rejuvenated and powerful such that its neighbours, from Japan and Korea in the north to Australia in the south, know their place, pay tribute and bend the knee to Beijing, to be vassals to the new Middle Kingdom. China controls all the trade and takes what it wants. That’s the world in front of us.”
Before the latest round of the Iran war, Chinese manufacturers had delivered an estimated 1,000 tonnes of sodium perchlorate, a critical precursor for solid rocket propellant, to Iran in early 2025. In June 2025, there were also media reports asserting that Iran had ordered thousands of tonnes of additional missile fuels from China. Accusations have also been levelled at Chinese firm Chang Guang Satellite Technology for supplying satellite imagery to Houthi rebels to assist them in attacking American warships and other international vessels in the Red Sea.
It is important to note that China’s support for Iran — limited to modest rhetoric since the US attacked in February 2026 — does not come even close to the succour it has lent to Putin. Another reason China has been less vocal over the Iranian conflict is that the US is militarily involved, and Beijing does not want to be dragged unwittingly into a conflict there.
Meanwhile, North Korea shares a land border with China. Therefore, its relative importance is higher than that of Tehran, since Beijing does not want instability on its doorstep. Of course, neither of these relationships for China comes even close to its ties with Russia. (ANI)
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