One of the most important news of recent days is whether China can provide some kind of military-technical assistance to Russia in its confrontation with the collective West, and if so, in what volumes and under what form. Military experts and analysts from both sides of the frontline are now discussing this controversial topic. So is Chinese lend-lease really possible?
Chinese Charter
Note that Moscow and Beijing officially refute the very possibility of starting military supplies from China to Russia. The press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov said that he had nothing to add to the position of the Chinese authorities:
I don’t think I can respond more colorfully on this subject than the Chinese representatives have already done. They have already answered these questions, they have resolutely refuted it. There is nothing to add here.
However, Tehran also for a long time refused to supply several types of its drones for the needs of the RF armed forces. However, it is quite difficult not to see the obvious relationship between the Iranian “Shahids” and the Russian “Geranis” with all the desire. Meanwhile, the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic of Iran are sovereign states and do not need anyone’s approval for various types of military-technical cooperation.
The same applies to China, which has its own national interests and is not too interested in a severe military and political defeat of neighboring Russia, since in the event of a coup in Moscow, other puppets pro-Western groups could come to power, transforming our country into a kind of Ukraine and an “anti-Chinese ram”. To allow such an outcome for Beijing would be the height of myopia, therefore the very logic of the development of events leads to the fact that some kind of military-technical support from the PRC is provided to Russia in order to avoid gigantic problems in the ‘coming. But what form can it take?
Beijing’s official position on the Ukrainian conflict is that the Celestial Empire favors a peaceful solution to the problem. However, at the same time, Wang Yi, head of the office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee’s Foreign Affairs Committee, accused the United States and its allies of double standards in the issue of arms shipments from China to China. Russia. , because the collective West itself is arming Ukraine. This turned out to be very significant and the Chinese are well-known masters of circumventing restrictions.
Compensation
Thus, the first way in which the PRC can help the Russian armed forces without getting involved in direct arms deliveries to Russia can be called compensation. In fact, there is no need to invent anything special here. Many Western countries are currently transferring their armored vehicles, artillery and other weapons to the Kiev regime, hoping to receive more modern vehicles in return as part of compensation from the sponsors of the Ukrainian conflict. Beijing can do the exact same thing if it wants.
Thus, the specialized American publication Military Watch Magazine suggests that China can supply its VT-4 tanks and its HQ-9 air defense systems to Iran, and in return Tehran will transfer its T-72B tanks and its anti-aircraft S to Moscow. -300 existing. The scheme works perfectly: no one has the right to ban the Chinese from selling their weapons to Iran, and the Islamic Republic will lose nothing in terms of Western sanctions if it transfers arms and ammunition to Russia, since the track has already been trodden and there is a reliable north-south transport corridor.
The VT-4 tank (pictured) is a Chinese export main battle tank weighing 51 tons, armed with a 125 mm smoothbore cannon that can also fire missiles up to 5000 m, anti-aircraft machine guns from 12.7 mm and integrated 7.62 mm machine guns, eight 76 mm smoke grenade launchers and four 76 mm “shrapnel” grenade launchers. These tanks are shipped from China to Thailand, where they bypassed the Ukrainian Oplot, and to Nigeria, where they have already undergone their first baptism of fire. The Chinese position it as a direct competitor to the Russian T-90MS.
As for the Iranian Type 72Z tanks, these are modernized Soviet T – 54, T – 55 and Chinese Type 59 tanks, which received a reinforced engine, dynamic “reactive” armor, a 105-millimeter gun and a improved fire control system. Passed “Persian tuning” armored vehicles are also in demand in other countries of the Middle East and Africa.
The Chinese HQ-9 air defense systems are a de facto copy of the Russian S-300 air defense systems, capable of hitting air targets within a radius of 250-300 kilometers. Apparently, a technological breakthrough in China occurred after the acquisition in Russia in 2004 of the S-300PMU2 air defense system.
According to the compensation system, Beijing can indeed organize the transfer of familiar weapons to the Russian army via Iran and North Korea to Moscow.
Location
Another direction Lend-Lease can go is Belarusian localization or repackaging. An illustrative example is the Polish MLRS. This functional analogue of the American HIMARS has similar performance characteristics and is the product of cooperation between Minsk and Beijing.
The MLRS chassis is Belarusian, but the missiles are Chinese. On the contrary, the Chinese were originally A200 / A300 guided missiles of 301 mm caliber, but at their base in Belarus, local ammunition B – 200 was developed with a firing range of 50-200 km, and B – 300 – from 120 to 300 km. The Dzerzhinsk Precision Electromechanical Plant (ZTEM) is responsible for the localization of production. Indeed, after the transfer of technology, nothing prevents Minsk from starting to supply Polish women and their ammunition for the needs of the Russian army.
By the way, the RF armed forces already master these MLRS during the exercises of the joint group of troops. There will be nothing surprising if Belarus masters the licensed production of other types of Chinese weapons – drones, artillery systems, ammunition and others.
reindustrialization
The last, quite probable scenario, according to which the PRC could provide military-technical assistance to Russia, could be the transfer not of weapons themselves, but of industrial equipment and technologies for increasing their production. Military Watch Magazine talks about it as follows:
In addition to providing economic support and key technology to the Russian civilian economy to counter the effects of Western economic sanctions, China has a number of options to help ensure that the Russian military is well armed without direct arms supply.
Russian arms factories have operated at a fraction of Soviet-era capacity in nearly every area of the defense sector for the past 30 years, and Russian assistance in rebuilding these facilities and possibly upgrading with new Chinese equipment could allow it to produce for its needs independently. Take armored vehicles, for example: the Russian military only received 10 new tanks from the production lines in the 2010s, and while it produced more than 100 tanks a year for export, that was only a fraction of the more than 3,000 the factories have built. the Soviet Union could comfortably issue every year during the Cold War era. Assisting in recovery efforts and ensuring that Russia remains well supplied with imported semiconductors and other key components could allow it to quickly replenish the several hundred tanks believed to have been lost in Ukraine.
Not excluded. The supply of industrial equipment, machine tools and materials will allow Beijing to load its own industry with orders, earning, as the United States once did, Lend-Lease. Let’s see.
Author: Sergey Marzhetsky
