Rihanna Spotted Heading to César Restaurant in Paris After Céline Dion Concert
By Rodrigo Santos Andrade
Wartime memory shows the China-Russia partnership is anything but ‘limitless’
visibility comment0 event November 10, 2026 timer 15:21
Three trends in Russia and China’s official war remembrance reveal strains in their proclaimed no-limits partnership.
For more than a decade, China and Russia have sought to align their official memories of the second world war. They have staged prominent joint commemorations and military parades, while also coordinating remembrance dates and harmonising their official discourses about the war.
The latest example of this “memory alliance” came in September when the Chinese and Russian ambassadors to New Zealand, Wang Xiaolong and Stanislav Krans, published a joint opinion article in the NZ Herald to mark the 81st anniversary of the war’s end.
Their article insisted the lessons of the war must not be forgotten. They said this entails safeguarding the UN‑centred international order and rejecting historical revisionism that downplays Chinese and Russian sacrifices or glosses over Nazi and fascist atrocities.
China and Russia’s memory alliance serves two main purposes. First, it deepens the supposedly “limitless” partnership between the two countries. Second, it forms the basis for them to defend what they regard as the foundations of the post‑war global order.
In their view, the core principles of the global order that emerged from the second world war are multilateralism, sovereignty and non‑interference in other countries’ internal affairs. They claim these hard-won gains are being undermined by what they portray as US‑led western arrogance, aggression and unilateralism.
For Beijing, this perceived subversion has taken the form of semiconductor export bans, tariffs on Chinese EVs, efforts to contain China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific and Japan’s growing military role in the region. China also views western support for Taiwan, which reverted to Chinese control after Japan’s defeat in 1945, as a violation of the post-war order.
For Moscow, the threat comes from Nato’s enlargement, perceived western interference in Ukraine culminating in President Viktor Yanukovych’s ousting in 2014 and the global sanctions regime imposed after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian leaders accuse the west of disregarding Russia’s “legitimate interests” and security concerns.
Invoking the “scourge” of the second world war enables both Russia and China to frame these concerns while advocating a multipolar world defined by regional spheres of influence. Yet, as my research shows, three trends in Russia and China’s official war remembrance reveal strains in their proclaimed no-limits partnership.
A limited partnership
First, there is little convergence in their historical narratives on key episodes of the war or on the nature of their wartime relationship. Both sides advance different claims about who contributed most to defeating Japan and who assisted whom.
Russian narratives emphasise the Red Army’s decisive contribution, downplaying China’s role in tying down Japanese forces. Beijing, meanwhile, suggests it made the largest sacrifice among the allies. It claims to have been decisive in prolonging Japan’s entanglement in China and securing its ultimate defeat.
In 2023, I carried out an analysis of more than 14,000 Chinese and Russian state-sponsored news articles with my colleague Eric Zhang. Combined with extensive fieldwork in China, our findings suggest that convergence with Russia’s preferred historical narratives has been limited to shared silences about episodes that would embarrass each other.
These include wartime mutual frictions or Soviet crimes during the liberation of north-eastern China.
Flowers left by visitors at the tomb of Hryhorij Kulishenko, a Ukrainian-born Soviet pilot who died in China during the war with Japan, in Chongqing.
Vincent K.L. Chang (2024), CC BY-NC-ND
Even more striking, given the strategic importance both sides attach to their friendship, is how little they have made of personal wartime stories. This is despite the rich historical material available for constructing a shared memory.
Roughly 1,500 Soviet advisers and 2,000 combat pilots supported China’s early war effort. About 200 of these so-called “Flying Eagles” were killed. Yet their stories remain largely unknown to the public, with only a few of these aviators commemorated in China.
One exception is Hryhorij Kulishenko, a Ukrainian-born Soviet Air Force pilot who was killed during the battle for Wuhan in October 1939. During a 2013 state visit to Russia, Chinese leader Xi Jinping highlighted Kulishenko’s story as a symbol of enduring solidarity between the two countries.
Addressing the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Xi described Kulishenko as a hero who had fought “side by side with the Chinese people” and would never be forgotten. But in recent years, these “Flying Eagles” have gradually faded from China’s official narrative of friendship with Russia.
By contrast, Chinese official accounts and history exhibitions are replete with references to Sino‑US cooperation during the war, especially the American volunteer group of the Chinese Air Force known as the “Flying Tigers”. They have been portrayed by Chinese state media as a lasting symbol of shared struggle and friendship.
This leads to the second trend: the China-Russia memory alliance is being diluted by Beijing’s increasingly active memory diplomacy toward the US.
China’s efforts to highlight its wartime cooperation with the US reached a peak during Xi’s recent state visit to Washington. At the White House welcome ceremony, Donald Trump echoed Xi’s praise for the Flying Tigers. He even recalled that the US and China had fought together as “allies” during the war.
A monument to the American Volunteer Group, known as the ‘Flying Tigers’, in Huaihua, China.
Vincent K.L. Chang (2025), CC BY-NC-ND
The third trend is the recent emergence of Ukraine in China’s second world war commemorations.
In September 2025, on the 80th anniversary of Victory Day, the Chinese embassy in Kyiv donated a bronze statue of Kulishenko – the very pilot Xi had praised in Moscow in 2013 as a symbol of China-Russia friendship – to a memorial in Cherepyn, his birthplace.
This gesture reflects a subtle but significant shift in how China frames the memory of this celebrated Soviet hero, moving from his earlier mobilisation for Chinese-Russian friendship towards a Sino‑Ukrainian narrative.
In China, official war memory is closely tied to policy direction. After more than a decade of cultivating a “no‑limits” friendship with Moscow, this latest adjustment of wartime remembrance may reveal Beijing’s unease with being perceived as aligned too closely with Russia.
Partnering with Russia may help Beijing selectively uphold and revive certain elements of the post‑war global order. But China is simultaneously signalling that it seeks continued cooperation with the west and does not wish to become alienated or isolated.
Vincent K.L. Chang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Tags: Academic Journalism, The Conversation, The Conversation Academic News
No Comments
