Asia Nikkei reported on December 20 that Russian state defense conglomerate Rostec accused China of illegally copying a broad range of Russian weaponry and other military hardware. Yevgeny Livadny, Rostec's chief of intellectual property projects said on December 14 that "Unauthorized copying of our equipment abroad is a huge problem. There have been 500 such cases over the past 17 years. China alone has copied aircraft engines, Sukhoi planes, deck jets, air defense systems, portable air defense missiles, and analogs of the Pantsir medium-range surface-to-air systems." The Asia Nikkei report added that Rostec's complaint about Chinese reverse engineering comes at a time when the arms trade between the two countries is thriving. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russia was by far China's largest weapons supplier between 2014 and 2018, accounting for 70% of Beijing's arms imports during that period. Even Russia's most advanced weaponry is not off-limits. Russia sold six of its S-400 anti-aircraft systems and 24 of its Su-35 fighter jets to China in 2015 for $5 billion. Despite Moscow's ire over Beijing's theft of technology, it is unlikely to cut back arms exports to China anytime soon. Geopolitical and economic interests provide Russia with a strong incentive to downplay Chinese reverse engineering, experts say. "It's always bad when someone copies your weapons without permission," said Andrei Frolov, editor-in-chief of Arms Exports journal. "But I think it's fair to say that since Russia continues to cooperate militarily with China, this is not very critical [for Russia]." China has long copied Russian weaponry. During the 1990s, China purchased Russia's elite Su-27 fighter jets and S-300 missile systems. Beijing later used these as templates for developing its own J-11 fighter jet and HQ-9 surface-to-air missiles. Such blatant reverse engineering alarmed many in the Russian arms industry, prompting Moscow to push back against the theft, explained Vadim Kozyulin, director of the Asian Security Project at the PIR Center. Russia adopted several measures to stop the practice. For example, it insisted that China purchase arms in bulk instead of buying just a few samples -- a sign that the arms were likely to be reverse engineered. Russia also pressed for assurances against theft in its contracts, and even tried to obtain royalties from Chinese copies of Russian arms. But Kozyulin admitted that the measures were far from effective.
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