allow u.s ships carrying nuclear weapons through the strait which would otherwise be against japan's prohibition against nuclear weapons in its territory known as the atomic energy basic law which the u.s forced japan to sign up to after world war ii japan hoped the prospect of u.s nuclear warships would act as a deterrent against china and discourage them from attacking japan in the future but while japan might be comfortable with an ally like the us sailing through those waters they were less keen on the chinese and russian passage which was widely perceived as antagonistic both russia and china have territorial disputes with japan over the kuril and senkaku islands respectively which is why this passage caused some anxiety in japan the japanese defense ministry announced that they'd analyzed the purpose of the passage and in response the chinese defense ministry insisted that their activities were in line with international law and accused japan of holding ulterior motives with its accusations and hyping up of the situation you get the point for the first time ever china and russia teamed up to antagonize japan who they both have ongoing disputes with so how did we get here with russia and china being best mates this was a symptom of a NUMBER_TOKEN-year trend that's accelerated recently russia and china's ever-improving military alliance from basically the NUMBER_TOKENs until NUMBER_TOKEN russia and china weren't best mates at all they were the two big communist superpowers and they both wanted to be number one they had a brief border war in NUMBER_TOKEN but tensions were permanently high until NUMBER_TOKEN when they made up and signed the NUMBER_TOKEN sino-soviet border agreement from then on things have only got cozier in NUMBER_TOKEN they declared they were pursuing a constructive partnership in NUMBER_TOKEN they said it had become a strategic partnership and in NUMBER_TOKEN they signed the treaty of good neighborliness and friendly cooperation which is maybe the most chubby named treaty in the history of international affairs the relationship has been accelerated by a good personal relationship between putin and xi ji has described putin as his best friend and colleague and putin said in may that sino-russian relations were at their best level in history so how did this happen well the relationship began as predominantly an economic one russia basically sold two things to china oil and military hardware russia had a lot of oil and china which was growing super fast needed more and more energy in NUMBER_TOKEN russia exported about NUMBER_TOKEN billion dollars worth of goods to china mostly oil in NUMBER_TOKEN that figure had quadrupled to NUMBER_TOKEN billion dollars russia overtook saudi arabia to become china's largest oil supplier and china overtook germany to become russia's largest trading partner the other thing that russia sold to china was military equipment china was developing so fast that its military didn't really have time to keep up which meant that it had to rely on russian arms and tech to keep its military up china still relies on russian military imports today about NUMBER_TOKEN percent of its arms imports come from putin but it's been able to basically copy all of russia's military tech to the point that well they don't really need russia anymore according to russia's own defense review from NUMBER_TOKEN is expected to have fully weaned itself off russian tech by NUMBER_TOKEN but for now things are still going strong it's worth noting that part of
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