Key Takeaways:
Following a heated exchange with NATO about China’s role in international security, and responsibility for ‘enabling’ the Ukraine War, naval drills with Russia were immediately commenced.
“Exercise Joint Sea – 2024”, being held across the South China Sea and North Pacific, is a shift towards greater interoperability between China and Russia. The drills’ focus on anti-missile, sea strike, and air defence exercises promotes readiness for conventional maritime conflict in the Indo-Pacific.
China’s stated goals of addressing “maritime security threats” through enhanced cooperation with Russia indicates China’s interests in governing maritime peace, security, and navigability. Such governance is likely to be Chinese-led, given Russian naval constraints.
On Sunday, 14th July 2024, China and Russia’s naval forces began the first of multiple joint naval drills in the Indo-Pacific. Starting off the coast of the Southern Province of Guangdong, the joint naval forces conducted on-map military simulations, and tactical coordination exercises, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
Called “Exercise Joint Sea - 2024”, the joint drills seek to demonstrate the navies’ capabilities in addressing “maritime security threats and preserving global and regional peace and stability”, through enhanced collaboration. Operationally, the exercise will have three phases: the concentration of forces, harborside planning, and maritime drills.
Exercise Joint Sea was reported to include “anchorage defence, joint reconnaissance and early warning, joint search and rescue, and joint air defence and missile defence”. On the latter two, specific references to “anti-missile exercises, sea strikes and air defence” were also reported, constituting a shift towards military readiness and interoperability between Chinese and Russian naval forces at the conventional level in the Indo-Pacific.
On Thursday, 11th July 2024, the 32 Member States of NATO approved a communique declaring China a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war in Ukraine, alongside criticising China’s no-limits partnership as a source of geopolitical instability. China rapidly rebuked this criticism, calling for NATO not to “bring instability to the Asia-Pacific after it has done so to Europe”.
Perhaps in an effort to avert NATO’s “chaos” from destabilising East Asia, Exercise Joint Sea has interesting motives. According to Zhang Xiaogang, a Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson, the goal of Exercise Joint Sea is to highlight the “resolve and capabilities of the two sides in jointly addressing maritime security threats”. While China sees itself as a force for maritime stabilisation, it is yet to be shown whether the two sides can effectively ‘jointly address’ Indo-Pacific security threats, given Russia’s maritime resource constraints, and military entanglement in Ukraine.
Looking forward:
Both NATO and China are increasingly highlighting the linkages in European and East Asian security, sparking last week’s NATO 2024 communique to go further on 'China as threat' rhetoric than the 2023 communique, China’s response, and the Sino-Russian naval exercises. KSG assesses that increased entanglement of European and Asian security issues could contribute to military instability, which will inevitably increase defence contracting revenues.
It is unlikely that Russia will be “jointly addressing maritime security threats” with China in the Indo-Pacific, but Russian resources will likely embolden China’s resolve and capabilities in exercising influence over the Indo-Pacific’s supply chains, their security, and their navigability. Contested maritime governance can undermine the peace and stability of the region, and can worsen the investment in regional shipping corporations and logistics companies.
The growing Sino-Russian presence in the Indo-Pacific is likely to disrupt potential future extraction projects, if clashes occur between regional coastal authorities, and efforts to ‘jointly address maritime security threats’. This presents a risk to new ventures gaining investment given the increasing geopolitical uncertainty. It is also likely that the inherent risk of increasing insurance premiums will follow, given extraction projects' assets face a region with growing potential for hostility.
By Joaquin Magno, Indo-Pacific Analyst.