China’s Role in the Axis of Autocracy

I. Introduction

Commissioner Friedberg, Commissioner Stivers, distinguished members of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, thank you for inviting me to speak today about China and its role in what I call the axis of upheaval, a term my colleague Richard Fontaine and I coined to describe the growing partnership between China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.^1,2 Some people bristle at the term “axis,” but in my view it is the most appropriate way to describe the dynamics among these four countries that we see today. Benito Mussolini’s first use of the term “axis” was in a speech he gave in Milan in 1936. Back then, he described Italy’s relationship with Germany as “an axis around which all European States animated by a desire for peace may collaborate on troubles.”³ This well describes what China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are doing—they are collaborating on their troubles. Their shared aim of weakening the United States and its power and influence provides such strong motivation for their actions. This new axis of upheaval, then, is best thought of as a collection of dissatisfied states converging on a shared purpose of overturning U.S. leadership, along with the principles, rules, and institutions that underlie the prevailing international system.

My overarching argument today is that the cooperation among these four countries is likely to be deeper, more durable, and more consequential than many policymakers and analysts currently assume, making the axis of upheaval one of the most significant national security challenges facing the United States and its allies. My goal now is to unpack that argument. To do that, I will make two broad points. I will argue that the axis of upheaval matters because it: 1) amplifies the military capabilities of America’s adversaries and 2) dilutes the foreign policy tools we have to confront them.

II. Amplifying the Military Capabilities of America’s Adversaries

Analysts understand well the challenges that China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea individually pose to the United States, but little thought has been given to how their actions combine. When these four countries cooperate, their actions have far greater effect than the sum of their individual efforts.

China, along with Iran and North Korea, are critical enablers of Russia’s war machine in Ukraine, allowing Moscow to sustain and prosecute its war in a way that would not have been possible without their backing.

Since the start of the war, Moscow has fired more than 8,000 drones at Ukraine—most of them Shaheed drones provided by Tehran. As the war has continued, relations between Russia and Iran have only deepened. Russian drone strikes against Ukraine increased tenfold from 2023 to 2024, in large part because Moscow and Tehran signed a deal in early 2023 for Russia to start production of the Iranian drones in Russia’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone, about 600 miles east of Moscow.⁴ That factory produced more than 2,500 drones in 2023 and is on track to more than double that figure in 2025 to 6,000 attack drones per year.

North Korea is sending ballistic missiles to Russia and has provided Moscow with more than 2.5 million rounds of ammunition in a war in which ammunition is a highly coveted commodity. Russia has received more ammunition from North Korea than Ukraine did from the United States and NATO combined. And even if some of that ammunition is faulty and low quality, the sheer volume of it has helped Russia in the war. Likewise, by 2024, North Korea’s missiles made up nearly a third of Russia’s ballistic missile launches at Ukraine⁵—a key factor allowing the Kremlin to bombard Ukrainian cities while its own missile production was hobbled by Western sanctions. Then, in a turn that no one saw coming, North Korea sent 12,000 soldiers to fight on Russia’s behalf—the first time in more than a century that Russia has invited foreign troops onto its soil.

Beijing, for its part, has emerged as Russia’s most critical lifeline. China has increased its purchase of Russian oil and gas, putting billions of dollars into Moscow’s coffers, and just as critically, is sending vast amounts of technology. China has provided machine tools for tanks, propellants for missiles, intermediary goods used in producing gunpower and explosives, turbojet engines, and geospatial intelligence, including satellite imagery which the Russian military uses to support military operations in Ukraine.⁶ China has also allowed Russia to circumvent the sanctions and export controls put in place by the West. Russian customs data shows, for example, that despite Western sanctions, Moscow’s imports of computer chips and chip components—parts that are needed to sustain Moscow’s defense industrial production—are back to pre-war levels, with China sourcing more than half of these imports.

Just as important as what Russia has received from its backers is what it is having to give away in return, increasing the military capabilities and brazenness of America’s adversaries.

Military cooperation between Russia and China was already problematic before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. From 2018 to 2022, Russia supplied 83 percent of China’s arms imports.⁷ Moscow has played a meaningful role in the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) efforts to augment its air defense, anti-ship, and submarine capabilities, which make a possible U.S. intervention in a Taiwan contingency more difficult. Joint military exercises between Russia and China have grown in scope and frequency and give Chinese officers valuable operational experience alongside their Russian counterparts who have now seen combat in Ukraine and Syria—helping offset one of the PLA’s most significant weaknesses relative to the United States.

China’s own military modernization makes defense cooperation with Russia less pressing, but the two countries are likely to step up cooperation on joint development, licensed production, and transfers of technology. In February, Russian officials confirmed that the two countries are consulting on military applications of artificial intelligence. Yet while China is narrowing the technological gap, Chinese industry remains behind in certain key areas, including submarine technology, remote sensing space satellites, and aircraft engines. If China can pressure a more dependent Russia to provide support in these areas, it would erode America’s military position relative to China in the Indo-Pacific.

I would like to highlight one notable announcement that underscores how rapidly the defense relationship between China and Russia is evolving. In September 2024, U.S. officials announced that Russia had provided China with sophisticated technology that will make Chinese submarines quieter and more difficult to track.⁸ Such an agreement was hard to imagine just a few years ago, given the sensitive nature of the technology.

This same dynamic is now playing out in Iran and North Korea. In Iran, Moscow is advancing Iranian weapons capabilities. Russia has provided Iran with multi-role aircraft, air defense, cyber, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that would complicate any U.S. or Israeli military operation against Iran, whether to take out Iranian nuclear infrastructure or other reasons. Likewise, in return for its support, North Korea is reportedly seeking advanced space, missile, and submarine technology from Moscow. If Russia were to comply with those requests, North Korea would be able to improve the accuracy and survivability of its nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles and use Russian nuclear propulsion technology to boost the range and capability of its submarines. Already, Russia’s testing of North Korean weapons on Ukraine’s battlefields has supplied Pyongyang with information it can use to refine its missile program, and Russian assistance may have helped North Korea launch a military satellite in November 2024 after two previous failures.⁹

Even beyond the weapons and technology, deepening relations with Moscow are emboldening the leadership in Tehran and Pyongyang, spurring more antagonistic and destabilizing actions. Kim Jong Un, who now enjoys strong backing from both China and Russia, abandoned North Korea’s decades-old policy of peaceful unification with South Korea and stepped up its threats against Seoul, and indulged in nuclear blackmail and missile tests.¹⁰ And although there does not appear to be a direct connection between their deepening partnership and Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, growing support from Russia likely made Iran more willing to activate its regional proxies in the aftermath.

Finally, this military cooperation will deepen, producing new challenges for the United States and its allies.

As defense cooperation among China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea grows, it will enable these countries to offset vulnerabilities relative to the United States. Each of these countries will use their relationships to fill key gaps and shortcomings, making them more formidable and resilient adversaries.

Their cooperation will also move into new areas. Already, Russia and China have stepped up their cooperation in the Arctic, including between their coast guards—cooperation that paved the way for a Chinese coast guard fleet to enter the Arctic Sea for the first time for a joint patrol with Russia in 2024.¹¹ Likewise, Russia and China may be increasing cooperation in the hybrid domain. Although it is difficult to assess the extent of cooperation and/or coordination, in October 2023 the Chinese container ship the Newnew Polar Bear—sailing near a Russian vessel—damaged the Balticconnector pipeline in the Gulf of Finland.

Their convergence complicates net assessments. Contemplating a war between NATO and Russia, policymakers and defense planners will now have to consider what military assistance China, Iran, and North Korea could provide in addition to what they have given Russia for its war in Ukraine. A war between Russia and NATO would likely illicit greater military cooperation between the four countries.

The cooperation among members of the axis of upheaval will also lead these countries to increase their power projection by allowing each other basing and overflight rights. This is, to an extent, already a reality. In July 2024, Russian and Chinese nuclear-capable bombers flew together into the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). This incident was the first of its kind for the two countries. Beijing and Moscow coordinated their strategic nuclear forces and together signaled their willingness to stand up to Washington by taking a joint action near the U.S. homeland. This joint flight was only possible because of their deeper cooperation; it was the first time that Chinese and Russian aircraft have taken off from the same (Russian) air base. That new power projection, in turn, will force U.S. strategists to account for new scenarios.