China and Russia are engaging in joint military exercises in northwestern China in a sign of growing military ties between Moscow and Beijing.
The exercises involving ground troops and combat aircraft will continue through to Aug. 13 in the Ningxia Region.
The United States has declared China’s detention of the Uyghurs an act of genocide, while China said it was a response to “terrorist activities” in the region.
Beijing has said the joint exercises would be a chance for China and Russian to mitigate concerns in the region about any potential overspill of violence from the increasing conflict occurring in Afghanistan following the pullout of U.S. allied forces.
China shares a 46 mile (76 kilometer) border with Afghanistan.
Stopping short of a formal alliance, China and Russia have increasingly coordinated their military and foreign policies.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that the training event was to strengthen “the level of military cooperation and friendship between the armed forces of the two countries” and the two countries’ relations.
China has stated it has overlapping territorial claims with U.S. allies—Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. The countries have been locked in increasingly tense territorial standoffs due to the CCP’s increasingly belligerent actions in the region, like building seven disputed reefs into missile-protected island bases.
Although an international arbitration ruling in 2016 invalidated Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea, Beijing has refused to leave things as they are in the region.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has responded to China’s increasingly aggressive claims to the region by warning that any conflict there or in any ocean “would have serious global consequences for security and for commerce.”
The area has seen “dangerous encounters between vessels at sea and provocative actions to advance unlawful maritime claims” that seek to “intimidate and bully other states lawfully accessing their maritime resources,” Blinken said.