ABSTRACT
Military-technical cooperation between Russia and China in the first years of the Putin presidency was characterized by the continuation and deepening of trends laid down in the Yeltsin era. What the Russians and Chinese preferred to label as military-technical cooperation in essence referred, less euphemistically, to the Russian sale of weaponry and its related technologies to China. But bilateral discussions dealt with forms of military-technical cooperation, with Samsonov confirming Russian decision to provide China with previously contracted armaments, specifically the delivery to China of twenty-six Su-27 fighter jets. However, the Russian and Chinese ministers of defense signed an updated Russian-Chinese Memorandum on Military-Technical Cooperation. Nonetheless, the Russian-Chinese military-technical relationship differed from most forms of economic interaction between the two states insofar as it did little to foster economic linkages, but rather contributed to China's eventual ability to attain self-sufficiency in arms production. Nonetheless, in the 1990s Russia and China established a series of military interactions of a more conventional variety.
