China–Russia–Iran–North Korea Ties: Weaker and Less Economically Significant Than They Seem

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The media has made much of the growing cooperation between China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Sometimes called the “axis of upheaval” or CRINK after the initials of these nations, this group may well present a diplomatic, geopolitical, or even military challenge to the United States and existing international relations.

Economically and financially, however, the combination is neither as cohesive nor as significant as it seems on the surface, and certainly not enough to present much of a challenge to existing arrangements, not least because China, the only sizable economy in the group, has become increasingly cautious.

To be sure, trade among these four economies has increased markedly during the last few years. Statistics, admittedly, are spotty. These authoritative regimes instinctively eschew transparency. What data exist show about a 50 percent increase in trade among the four economies between 2021 and 2023, the most recent period for which even spotty data are available.

What is more, trade among these economies is highly uneven. Indeed, patterns of trade among the four make them look less like a bloc of economies and more like China and three dependents. Within the group, Russia–China trade dominates. Before Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine brought Western sanctions on Russia, that country was heavily oriented toward the West. Trade between Russia and China amounted to the equivalent of barely $150 billion.

Since the Western sanctions against Moscow have gone into effect, Russian exports to China have risen 70 percent, mostly energy, and Chinese exports to Russia have increased 60 percent, mostly what are called dual-purpose products that have both civil and military uses, such as semiconductors, ball bearings, transportation equipment, chemicals, and textiles.

Whereas the shift made China essential to Russia, the extent of engagement is not reciprocated. At last measure, China accounts for about a third of Russia’s total exports and more than half of its imports, whereas Russia amounts to barely 6 percent of China’s imports and 3 percent of China’s exports.

What is more, most of the trade shift reflected a one-time shift in Russia’s focus from the West to China. As of 2025, the trade relationship has actually shrunk, falling, according to Beijing’s General Administration of Customs, some 9 percent so far this year. Russia has even lost ground as an energy supplier to China, falling behind Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Data on the rest of the CRINK group is limited. Beijing and Tehran have a 25-year agreement under which China will take just under half of Iran’s oil production. Aside from this, China–Iran trade is so small that, even with the oil agreement, total trade between the two has declined by some 20 percent since 2022.

Since both Russia and Iran are primarily energy producers, they have little trade with each other. Russia sells Iran forest products and machinery, while Iran sells Russia textiles, drones, and rockets for its war effort in Ukraine.

China’s trade with North Korea is insignificant from a global perspective, largely because Beijing supported the 2017 U.N. sanctions over Pyongyang’s nuclear program. And though Russia has trade links with North Korea, the levels hardly count in the global picture.

Also detracting from the power of this bloc, Beijing has shown growing caution in trade and in cooperation with Moscow, Tehran, and North Pyongyang. That caution is most evident in cross-border investing. To be sure, the January 2025 agreement with Tehran mentioned above also commits China to investing in Iranian energy infrastructure, but beyond that, Beijing has kept its purse closed. Notably, it has failed thus far to support a second Power of Siberia (PoS-2) natural gas pipeline and has also shown a similar reluctance to invest in Russia generally.

The four countries have worked to keep their payments away from dollar-based systems. Russia has, for instance, increased its use of the Chinese yuan for cross-border payments by some 17 percent in the past couple of years. Though often billed as an effort to supplant the dollar as the premier international currency—what bankers and economists refer to as the global reserve—this preference for yuan-based payments is as yet no real challenge to the dollar’s dominance and is primarily a way to avoid the various established dollar-based arrangements such as the SWIFT system (Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications), where the transactions can be monitored and where Russia has largely lost access since the war in Ukraine started.

The relations within this “axis of upheaval” could pose serious geopolitical, diplomatic, and possibly military challenges of global significance. Still, as should be clear, the “axis” poses much less of a worldwide economic and financial threat. The group commands neither sufficient goods-and-services trade nor sufficient currency flows to seriously unsettle established arrangements.