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asia.nikkei.com

Russia up in arms over Chinese

theft of military technology
DIMITRI SIMES, Contributing writer
6-7 minutes

MOSCOW -- In a rare public display of frustration between

Moscow and Beijing, Russian state defense conglomerate
Rostec accused China of illegally copying a broad range of
Russian weaponry and other military hardware.

"Unauthorized copying of our equipment abroad is a huge

problem. There have been 500 such cases over the past 17
years," said Yevgeny Livadny, Rostec's chief of intellectual
property projects on Dec. 14. "China alone has copied aircraft
engines, Sukhoi planes, deck jets, air defense systems,
portable air defense missiles, and analogs of the Pantsir
medium-range surface-to-air systems."

Rostec's complaint about Chinese reverse engineering comes

at a time when the arms trade between the two countries is
thriving. According to the Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute, Russia was by far China's largest weapons
supplier between 2014 and 2018, accounting for 70% of
Beijing's arms imports during that period.

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Even Russia's most advanced weaponry is not off-limits.

Russia sold six of its S-400 anti-aircraft systems and 24 of its
Su-35 fighter jets to China in 2015 for $5 billion.

Despite Moscow's ire over Beijing's theft of technology, it is

unlikely to cut back arms exports to China anytime soon.
Geopolitical and economic interests provide Russia with a
strong incentive to downplay Chinese reverse engineering,
experts say.

"It's always bad when someone copies your weapons without

permission," said Andrei Frolov, editor-in-chief of Arms
Exports journal. "But I think it's fair to say that since Russia
continues to cooperate militarily with China, this is not very
critical [for Russia]."

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Chinese President

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Xi Jinping: Russia was by far China's largest weapons supplier

between 2014 and 2018, accounting for 70% of Beijing's arms
imports during that period. © Getty Images

China has long copied Russian weaponry. During the 1990s,

China purchased Russia's elite Su-27 fighter jets and S-300
missile systems. Beijing later used these as templates for
developing its own J-11 fighter jet and HQ-9 surface-to-air
missiles.

Such blatant reverse engineering alarmed many in the

Russian arms industry, prompting Moscow to push back
against the theft, explained Vadim Kozyulin, director of the
Asian Security Project at the PIR Center.

Russia adopted several measures to stop the practice. For

example, it insisted that China purchase arms in bulk instead
of buying just a few samples -- a sign that the arms were likely
to be reverse engineered. Russia also pressed for assurances
against theft in its contracts, and even tried to obtain royalties
from Chinese copies of Russian arms.

But Kozyulin admitted that the measures were far from

effective. "We tried combating this problem in a variety of
ways, but without much success," he said.

Russian concern over China's reverse engineering contributed

to a rapid decline in arms sales between the two countries in
the mid-2000s. Whereas China accounted for 60% of Russian
arms exports in 2005, the figure fell to 8.7% by 2012.

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It was only after the Ukraine crisis in 2014 -- when Russia

began courting China following its estrangement from the
West -- that the arms trade and military cooperation between
Moscow and Beijing picked up again.

Today Russia has come to accept China's technology theft as

the inevitable price of doing business with its southern
neighbor, explained Vasily Kashin, a senior fellow at the
Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of
Sciences.

"[Technology theft] is a shared problem for all companies who

do business in China, but there haven't been any cases of
reverse engineering causing anyone turning away from the
Chinese market -- the most valuable market in the world," he
said.

Closer ties between Moscow and Beijing on the geopolitical

front has helped ease Russian concerns about arming China.

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© AP

Kashin added that Russia now feels Chinese reverse

engineering is not all that threatening. He argued that even if
Beijing successfully copies the arms, Russia will still retain its
technological edge.

"It's impossible to copy some technologies in a reasonable

amount of time," Kashin said. "Copying old technology takes
the same amount of time as developing new technology. It's
much easier to take China's money, invest it in our own
development, and let the Chinese do whatever they want."

The burgeoning Moscow-Beijing geopolitical partnership has

also helped ease Russian fears about the risks of arming
China.

"If we look at how the Chinese are building up their military, we

see that they are constantly cutting ground forces while
strengthening their navy. That tells us something about their
intentions; that their growing military power is aimed at
America and its allies," Kashin said.

But there are other concerns. China's emergence as a major

arms exporter in its own right, fueled by decades of high
military spending and reverse engineering of foreign
technologies, represents both "a crisis and an opportunity" for
Russia, contends Arms Exports' Frolov.

"On one hand, Russia is concerned that China will gradually

squeeze Russia out of its traditional arms markets," he said.

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"But on the other hand, China has money and a desire to

cooperate, so this might be an opportunity for Russia to
advance with the help of Chinese money and technology."

Another challenge for Moscow will be keeping China

interested as an arms partner, Kozyulin said. He noted that
China's military industrial complex has already surpassed
Russia's in a number of areas.

"It's becoming increasingly difficult to offer China anything

new, so Russian policy is to move away from arms sales to
joint development," he said. "I don't know to what extent this
new model will interest China, since it prefers to make
everything on its own and only imports technologies from
abroad. But Russia will try to find mutual interests and
understanding."

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