This week, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken suggested China may be preparing to provide lethal assistance to Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.
This, added to Chinese President Xi Jinping's peace initiative and the Chinese Foreign Minister's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, will cause concern among Western strategists as well as leaders in Ukraine, NATO and the United States.
Any large-scale assistance from China to Russia would result in a significant shift in the war. But why would Xi consider such a move now, a year after this war began?
Of course, the China-Russia "no limits" relationship formalised just before the war will be part of the purpose of such a Chinese move, but a minor one. Three more important reasons stand out.
Three reasons China wants to help Russia
First, the reaction to possible Chinese support for Russia will inform Chinese plans for aggression against its neighbours, including Taiwan.
It is highly likely that the Chinese government is stimulating a response from the United States and NATO to gauge their reaction to such moves. And while these are different contingencies, China wants to have some level of confidence in how the West might respond in the wake of any future aggression, including a move on Taiwan.
What would war with China look like for Australia?Second, China has no interest in the war in Ukraine being over anytime soon.
Indeed, just as Iraq and Afghanistan distracted the US from the Pacific in the past two decades, China would prefer the US and Europe to continue providing their best weapons to Ukraine and remain preoccupied in Europe.
Such a long war, a disaster for the Ukrainian people, would be a win-win in the brutal calculus of the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Liberation Army.
Finally, it is not in China's interest for Russia to lose. As a fellow traveller in the small but powerful techno-authoritarian club, a defeat for Russia would be seen as a severe challenge to Xi's narrative about a West in decline.
It might also impact on the willingness of many in the "global south" to forge closer links to China and move away from Western nations.
How might China assist Russia?
It is highly likely that the Chinese have been providing Russia with strategic intelligence in the past year.
While the People's Liberation Army will have limited battlefield intelligence to share, they will have been collecting intelligence on decision making in Western capitals as well as intelligence on Western weapons and levels of production. Much of this would have been provided to Russia.
China has also been providing economic assistance to Russia through the purchase of oil and other energy supplies. Since the beginning of the war, China has imported oil, gas and coal worth over 60 billion euros (about $94 billion). These funds have helped keep the Russian economy afloat and allowed Putin to fund his vicious war against Ukraine.
Additional aid might include munitions and precision weapons including drones. Both sides in the Ukraine war have been consuming munitions at a rate that neither can sustain with indigenous production. Ukraine has been able to draw on Western stocks. But with the exception of some low quality North Korean ammunition, Russia has been denied options.
If China were to step into this gap, it could have a significant impact on the battlefield. It would allow the Russians to return to their artillery-led offensives that killed so many Ukrainians in the Donbas in the middle of 2022, and which still does around Bakhmut and other eastern objectives.
China might also, if it decided to go all in with assisting Russia, provide armoured vehicles and tanks to replace the huge losses the Russians have suffered, and which Russian domestic arms industry will take years to replace.
Helping Russia also has a downside for China
Of course, Chinese strategists would also be balancing these potential gains with the possible negative impacts.
Such assistance would reinforce the negative trend in US-China relations. It would also provide an invaluable opportunity for the West to collect and exploit knowledge of Chinese weapons and munitions. China would want to avoid this, especially if it has been bluffing on the quality of its new weapons.
Finally, the economic sanctions regime that China may face by assisting Russia would be extensive. Given that one of the few bipartisan themes in the current US Congress is being tough on China, there would be immense pressure on the US President to impose sanctions on China for helping Russia.
This would be enormously disruptive to global trade. It would be a situation that both China and the US would want to avoid.
While China has much to gain by the war continuing to absorb Western attention and arms, it has far more to lose by intervening now.
There is little doubt that such an intervention would cause a major breach in relations between the US and Europe on one side, and China on the other. At the moment, it is not clear that the Chinese leadership would be willing to risk the massive diplomatic and economic costs of helping Russia.
If at some point China changes its position, we may have cause to be very worried. Because a China that has decided to weather the massive reaction from the West may have decided that it is time for a wider showdown with the West. And this could lead to many terrible outcomes, including in our region.
Mick Ryan is a strategist and recently retired Australian Army major general. He served in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, and as a strategist on the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff. His first book, War Transformed, is about 21st century warfare.