China supplies critical technology fueling Russia's hypersonic missile production

The Telegraph reported the information.

China has sent more than $10 billion worth of advanced technology and manufacturing equipment to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine began, allowing Moscow to dramatically expand weapons production despite Western sanctions, according to trade data analysis and intelligence reports.

Among the most critical shipments are specialized CNC machines, including carousel lathes manufactured in China that have been identified at Russia's state-owned Votkinsk plant—the country's primary missile production facility. The plant produces the Oreshnik hypersonic missile, which travels at 8,000 mph and can deploy six independently targeted warheads mid-flight. Russian forces recently fired the weapon at Lviv, a western Ukrainian city just 40 miles from Poland's border.

"The area Russia has been most vulnerable is in precision machine tools," said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment. "China is able to make machine tools that are good enough for many of Russia's purposes today."

Beyond machine tools, China has supplied at least $4.9 billion in microchips and memory boards essential for precision-guided weapons and Sukhoi fighter jets, according to Import Genius, a U.S. trade data aggregator. Additional shipments include $130 million in ball bearings critical for aircraft construction, $97 million in mounted piezoelectric crystals used in radar systems, and $42 million worth of telescopic weapon sights.

"It is very clear that without access to the Chinese economy, Chinese market and China as a pass-through for a lot of these goods and technology, Russia would have very much struggled to sustain this war," Kofman added.

The Chinese equipment represents a more significant long-term threat than ammunition supplies from countries like Iran, which deplete quickly. Chinese CNC machines have been deployed across Russian defense facilities, including the Alabuga special economic zone producing domestic versions of Iranian Shahed drones.

"The Chinese manufacturing ecosystem is leaps and bounds ahead of the Russian manufacturing sector," said Nick Reynolds, research fellow for land warfare at RUSI, a British defense think tank.

China has also provided crucial testing instruments including multimeters and oscilloscopes that ensure weapons systems function properly—from electronic warfare equipment to drone microchips.

All of these components appear on a list of 50 high-priority goods that 39 countries, including the U.S. and Britain, have agreed to block from export to Russia. However, China never joined Western sanctions against Moscow.

"Russia has become much more dependent on China over the past couple of years," said Gary Somerville, a senior analyst at the Open Source Centre, a British conflict research organization.

Experts acknowledge these figures likely underestimate the true scale of Chinese support, as neither Beijing nor Moscow accurately report trade data, and increasing numbers of shipments transit through third countries to mask the purchasing chain and evade sanctions detection.