Chinese Raise the Arms Stakes With $500-Million Destroyer

WASHINGTON —  At one level, the arrival of China’s first Russian-built guided-missile destroyer in East Asian waters in recent days is a troubling reminder of the budding military relationship between two nuclear giants increasingly wary of U.S. intentions.

The $500-million Sovremenny-class destroyer and its sophisticated anti-ship missiles, which passed through the Taiwan Strait on Friday, provide a new dimension to China’s modest navy: the ability to confront U.S. aircraft carriers.

But the presence of the new warship also reflects a deepening political cooperation between China and Russia that is driven by a single overriding imperative: the determination to counter U.S. power.

While neither the Sino-Russian military link nor the two countries’ shared political objectives appear to pose an immediate threat to America’s status as the lone remaining superpower, analysts warn that they have the potential to be troublesome.

“This is not the end of the world, but we have to take notice that it’s happening,” said former White House foreign policy advisor Peter Rodman, now at the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom, a Washington think tank. “There is certainly potential for trouble in all this.”

Sino-Russian ties have warmed in part because of the shared conviction that the United States’ global dominance must be checked. Russia and China, for example, oppose U.S. efforts to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and to develop theater missile defense systems.

Both are wary of any developments that would diminish the primacy of the U.N. Security Council, where each has a veto. Both abhor any expansion of the precedent established in last spring’s Kosovo campaign--and heralded by President Clinton--that well-meaning nations can ignore a country’s sovereignty so that they can halt a humanitarian crisis. Because of this, Beijing has backed Russia’s efforts to crush the separatist movement in the republic of Chechnya.

Two other factors also have helped bring Moscow and Beijing closer:

* Both have stabilized their oft-disputed common frontier, agreeing not only on the border itself but also on the deployment and movement of military forces along it. The achievement is seen as a significant confidence-building measure for both sides.

* Both have experienced bitter disappointments in their relations with the United States in recent years. For Moscow, NATO enlargement, the war in Kosovo and the social catastrophe produced by U.S.-inspired economic reforms in Russia have soured the ties with the West that began with such promise in the early 1990s.

Meanwhile, China’s relations with Washington were rocked by the U.S. bombing of its embassy in Yugoslavia last May and strained by tensions over Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province. Since Clinton’s heady visit to China in the summer of 1998 amid talk of a “constructive strategic partnership,” relations have gradually declined.

China and Russia “have no conflicting security interests, there is no mutual threat, and they share similar positions on international issues,” said Chu Shulong, a senior fellow at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, a government think tank in Beijing. “Both are opposed to U.S. attempts at achieving what they call . . . hegemonic status.”

Added Rodman, the Nixon Center analyst: “They have a strategic convergence of interests to reduce American influence everywhere. President Clinton throws around this phrase that the United States is the strategic partner of both the Russians and the Chinese. We’re deluding ourselves if we think these guys are our partners.”

Increasingly, Moscow and Beijing have begun addressing each other’s concerns in their diplomacy. Russia, for example, now argues against U.S. military sales to Taiwan, while Chinese emissaries have added NATO expansion to their lists of complaints.

“It’s clear that between Russia and China there’s more to recent discussions than just a tactical embrace,” a senior Pentagon official noted in the wake of last month’s visit to Washington by Lt. Gen. Xiong Guangkai of the People’s Liberation Army. “There appears to be a clear sharing of global anti-American rhetoric.”

It is within this expanded political relationship that military ties have developed. Aside from the sale of big-ticket items such as two Sovremenny-class destroyers, four Kilo-class submarines and sophisticated armaments to go with them, Western military analysts also worry about the transfer of advanced military technology from Russia to China.

“The technology transfer, the use of Russian technicians, Russia laboratories, is something of potentially greater concern than simple acquisition of off-the-shelf items,” said Michael Swaine, who tracks China’s military relations for the Rand Corp. think tank in Santa Monica. “It’s a significant development, and one we should keep our eyes on but also be cautious not to jump to too many conclusions.”

There are limits to the Sino-Russian partnership that tend to muffle alarm bells in Washington.

In pure military terms, the hardware Moscow has sold to China is said to be well below the level of America’s best. The anti-ship missiles fitted on the Sovremenny-class destroyers have a range of 65 miles, while U.S. aircraft carriers deployed in Asian waters, through their own aircraft and escort vessels, can “see” attack targets from as far away as 1,000 miles.

Politically, too, analysts believe that formidable barriers--from historical mistrust to economic needs that neither can help the other satisfy--preclude the development of a deep-seated anti-American axis between Beijing and Moscow.

With Russia desperate for technology and Western capital, and China tethered to the United States by an $80-billion trade relationship, senior Clinton administration officials say they are convinced that both countries need the U.S. more than they need each other.

Even analysts in Beijing agree on that.

“Russia can’t give China the markets, capital and the technology it needs, nor can China give Russia the markets, capital and technology it needs,” Chu acknowledged. “There is no mutual reliance the way there is between China and the United States.”

Still, U.S. analysts warn that it would be dangerous to ignore the fruits of the Sino-Russian relationship, however modest they might be.

“The question isn’t whether China can defeat us in a nuclear war but whether we could be deterred from intervening in a regional crisis because we know the Chinese could inflict casualties on us,” Rodman said. “The administration shouldn’t minimize what’s happening here.”

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Times staff writer Henry Chu and special correspondent Anthony Kuhn in Beijing and Times staff writer Richard C. Paddock in Moscow contributed to this report.