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China’s naval drills with Russia are aimed at testing the U.S. and its allies in the Pacific region, analysts say.
A Chinese guided-missile destroyer that was part of the joint flotilla conducted a live-fire machine gun drill on Sunday about 100 miles southwest of Japan’s southernmost island, Okinotori, and within the country’s exclusive economic zone, Japanese Prime Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said during his visit to the United Kingdom.
It was the first reported live-fire exercise by the flotilla, which included three other Chinese warships and a Russian frigate.
Tokyo has lodged a diplomatic protest with Beijing over the exercise, Japanese government spokesperson Minoru Kihara confirmed Tuesday, saying it posed a potential danger to nearby ships. He said China had warned vessels operating in the area immediately before the drill.
The recent exercises are the latest in a trend of Russian and Chinese military activity, including in the Sea of Japan, that has Tokyo concerned. China and Russia have expanded military cooperation in both scale and sophistication since 2022, the year Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While last year’s six joint exercises marked a decrease from 14 the previous year, they included the two countries’ first-ever joint submarine patrol.
Beijing dismissed Japan’s concerns as “completely unfounded.”
“Japan smears and hypes other countries’ legitimate actions, hypes up ‘external threats,'” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told reporters Tuesday. He accused Japan of seeking excuses to accelerate its own “remilitarization.”
Newsweek reached out to the Chinese and Russian foreign ministries via email with requests for comment. The Pentagon declined to comment.
A Challenge to the Pacific Allies
While the recent drills, including the live-fire exercise inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, were permitted under international law, analysts say the way they were conducted appears intended to send a message to Japan, a key U.S. ally that hosts roughly 55,000 American troops.
“China is increasingly engaging in behavior that could be considered risky, and it is clearly sending a message,” Raji Rajagopalan, resident senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told Newsweek.
“Prime Minister Ishiba has maintained a solid relationship with Washington and has also strengthened ties with countries such as Australia and India. Japan is taking on a greater security role in the Indo-Pacific—and that is something China has noticed.”
The increasingly ambitious Russian-Chinese exercises continue a trend aimed at testing the limits of U.S.-aligned countries in the region, she said.
The latest drills follow a high-profile incident in February 2025, when the People’s Liberation Army Navy held a pair of live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand, giving little notice and forcing them to divert commercial flights.
“The two countries are normalizing their military presence in international waters and regions that, for many decades, were largely dominated by the United States and its allies,” Rajagopalan said.
Even if nothing else, the exercises make it harder for Washington and its partners to calculate how Moscow and Beijing might respond in a crisis, such as a conflict over Taiwan, she added.
China and Russia do not share a formal military alliance, but strategically they have common cause in opposing the U.S.-led system of alliances and security blocs. Their military cooperation also offers practical benefits to both sides, analysts say.
China, which has not fought a major war since its brief conflict with Vietnam in 1979, can benefit from Russia’s battlefield experience in Ukraine. Russia, meanwhile, can benefit from China’s industrial strengths, such as drone technology.
China, “Decisive Enabler”
China is Russia’s key partner but has presented itself as a neutral party since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It says it has not provided Russia with weapons or direct military assistance.
Yet China has been a lifeline for sanctions-strapped Russia—not only by serving as Moscow’s largest energy customer but also through exports of dual-use goods with military applications.
Between 2024 and 2025, firms from mainland China accounted for about 61 percent of identified dual-use products, including drone batteries, controllers and electronic components recovered from Russian weapons systems, according to a report released in March by The Insider.
In a joint statement issued after the NATO summit in Turkiye earlier this month, the 32-member bloc again accused China of being a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Koizumi earlier this month stressed that security in Europe and the Indo-Pacific is increasingly connected, citing increased cooperation among China, Russia, and North Korea.
“I conveyed the need for NATO-IP4 cooperation has never been greater considering the trilateral cooperation among China, Russia, and North Korea,” he said. The IP4 refers to NATO’s four partners in the Indo-Pacific region: Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea—”has never been greater, the defense chief said following IP4 talks earlier this month.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Francis Mao and Gray R. Thomas
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