A former Western intelligence official told Reuters that approximately 200 Chinese soldiers are fighting for Russia in Ukraine. Two current U.S. officials, speaking anonymously, confirm that there are more than a hundred of them. 

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky put the number at 155. His forces have recently captured two of them.

Reuters reports that the U.S. government believes these soldiers are mercenaries and apparently have no “direct link” with the Chinese government. Whether this view is correct or not, Washington and other governments should impose severe costs upon China for permitting its nationals to enter the battle against Ukraine.

As an initial matter, China’s regime is in fact sending soldiers to that Eastern European country. Reuters reports that “Chinese military officers have, with Beijing’s approval, been touring close to Russia’s frontlines to draw lessons and tactics from the war.” The former Western intelligence official told the news service that these officers “are absolutely there under approval.” 

“The Communist Party craves first-hand experience of the battlefield in Ukraine to inform its People’s Liberation Army for its future wars,” Richard Fisher of the Washington, D.C. area-based International Assessment and Strategy Center told me late last week. “For the PLA, the Ukraine battlefield offers the most livid and brutal evolution of the revolutionary and see-saw battle between unmanned weapons and electronic warfare defenses arrayed against them.” 

“If the PLA can grasp and expand on the lessons of the Ukraine battlefield, it can vastly increase its chances of a rapid blitzkrieg victory in Taiwan,” says Fisher.   

It is also likely that the Chinese officers are doing more than observing and reporting back to China. They may also be giving advice to their Russian counterparts. China, after all, has been backing Russia’s war effort from the beginning. 

China almost certainly greenlighted the invasion with its 5,300-word joint statement issued by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in Beijing on Feb. 4, 2022, just 20 days before the Russian attack. Putin might have invaded earlier, but he evidently acceded to Chinese wishes and waited until after the end of the Beijing Winter Olympics to hit the former Soviet republic. 

China has during the war supported Putin almost across the board. For instance, Beijing has purchased Russian oil sanctioned by the United Kingdom, U.S. and the European Union, opened its financial and banking systems to Russia’s institutions under sanction, provided military intelligence and diplomatic and propaganda support and sold both dual-use items and, according to some sources, weapons.  

Given Beijing’s support to both Moscow and Pyongyang, it is unlikely that North Korea could have joined the war on Russia’s side without China’s approval. 

With regard to the mercenaries, Beijing probably both knew and approved of their participation in the war. 

“It is unlikely that these soldiers would have been permitted to travel to Russia without the full consent of the Xi regime,” Charles Burton of the Sinopsis think tank told me.  

“Xi runs a near-total surveillance state and pays special attention to the interactions of its nationals with close partners such as Russia,” Burton, also a former Canadian diplomat stationed in Beijing, said. “A couple hundred military-age Chinese men leaving the country to fight in a foreign war is certainly something Beijing would know about.” 

There are, for instance, bound to be Ministry of State Security agents monitoring visa applications for Russia. 

The presence of Chinese soldiers in Ukraine is reminiscent of the “Chinese People’s Volunteers” who went to fight United Nations troops in North Korea beginning in 1950. 

“China sending in an initial small cohort to join the Russians is consistent with Chinese Communist strategy to initially create plausible deniability and then a veneer of legitimacy for a gradual build-up of those at the front lines,” says Burton. “This will almost certainly be accompanied by the gradual introduction of sophisticated Chinese offensive weaponry,” he added.  

Burton is also concerned that Russia, indebted to China because of the support in Ukraine, will not be able to say no when China demands that Moscow send forces to help it invade Taiwan or another neighbor. 

The Chinese and Russian militaries regularly hold joint drills in East Asia. Therefore, the Pentagon should assume that these two powers, along with North Korea, will fight together during the next war. 

So China probably sees great advantage in Chinese troops, even if just mercenaries, fighting in Ukraine.  

The U.S. and other countries have imposed almost no costs on China for its extensive support for the Russian war effort. We should not be surprised, therefore, that Beijing now thinks it can, with impunity, send soldiers to fight in Europe.  

Gordon G. Chang is the author of “Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America” and “The Coming Collapse of China.”