Chinese state-owned conglomerates trade in sensitive technologies with Russia’s defense sector, including companies involved in Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, C4ADS, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the data-driven analysis and evidence-based reporting of conflict and security issues worldwide, wrote.

“At a time when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has become the subject of heightened vigilance and new trade sanctions, evidence suggests that patterns of data censorship and convoluted corporate networks serve to obscure trade in defense-applicable technology,” the organization pointed out.

“Whether or not the PRC’s trade data environment is opaque by design, it ultimately conceals the networks of people and companies involved in the trade of military equipment and undermines global nonproliferation efforts,” it added.

C2ADS wrote that it managed to identify 281 “previously unreported shipments of sensitive goods by China Poly Group Corporation (hereafter Poly Group) subsidiaries to Russian defense organizations between 2014 to 2022” using its reproducible methods.

“For example, in January 2022, Poly Group’s subsidiary Poly Technologies Inc. reportedly exported one shipment containing anti-aircraft missile radar parts to the sanctioned Russian state-owned defense company Almaz Antey, which reportedly supports Russia’s war in Ukraine,” it wrote.

The full report by C2ADS can be found here.