Despite its fairly close relations with Russia, China has never officially recognized either the annexation of the Russian Federation’s Crimea, the quasi-entities of the “LPR”/”DPR” created by Moscow, or the further occupation of parts of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions. However, unofficially, the PRC is “penetrating” deeper and deeper and establishing itself in the occupied territories of our state – at the level of business, trade, finance and political ties.
This penetration and cooperation with the aggressor in the occupied territories is still happening covertly, but it is gaining momentum. The Insider writes about how exactly and to what extent China is present in the TOT. The PromPolitInform portal reports with reference to OBOZ.UA.
China is gaining a foothold in Ukraine’s TOT
The Insider lists: already now in the occupied territory of Ukraine, 6,000 mobile communication base stations are operating on Chinese equipment. At least, such data is contained in the March report of the Eastern Human Rights Group.
About 80 bank branches in Donbas trade in cash yuan.
With the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia, whose inclusion by Moscow into the Russian Federation has never been officially recognized by Beijing, there is an active exchange of delegations at the grassroots level and cooperation with Chinese corporations on the basis of “import substitution”. For example, enterprises of the occupied Luhansk region are preparing for the May fair in Harbin, and in January a delegation from the Kherson region visited China – with the aim of “establishing long-term cooperation”.
“China is gradually and purposefully stealthily penetrating and gaining a foothold in occupied Ukraine,” The Insider describes the situation.
Chinese Investment in Crimea
Chinese business was interested in the Crimean peninsula even before its occupation by Russia. In December 2013, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, headed by Mykola Azarov, signed a memorandum of economic cooperation with the private Chinese company Beijing Interoceanic Canal Investment Management Co. Ltd, owned by multimillionaire Wang Jin. It is this company that owns an ambitious project to build a shipping canal in Nicaragua, which was supposed to compete with the Panama Canal and serve to promote Chinese geopolitical interests in the region.
The Ukrainian-Chinese project provided for the construction of a deep-sea port in Crimea and the participation of the Chinese side in the reconstruction of the fishing port in Sevastopol. It was planned that the first stage of investment would amount to $3 billion. And the owner of Beijing Interoceanic Canal Investment Management Co. Ltd. Wang Jin stated that the project would turn Crimea “into an economic and transport hub of the Maritime Silk Road”.
The ambitious plans of the Chinese alarmed part of the Ukrainian expert community. Analysts feared that after the port in Crimea, China would move on to leasing agricultural land in southern Ukraine – and the quiet “expansion” would end with the country turning into an agricultural appendage of the “Celestial Empire”.
Crimean environmentalists were also sounding the alarm.
The Revolution of Dignity, the flight of the then President Viktor Yanukovych to the Russian Federation and the annexation of the peninsula by Russia prevented the implementation of the plan. In June 2014, Beijing Interoceanic Canal Investment Management Co. Ltd. announced that it was no longer conducting any projects in Crimea.
Attempts to attract Chinese investors to build the Kerch Bridge also failed. Against the backdrop of non-recognition by the world community, including China, as well as sanctions against the aggressor, Chinese business was in no hurry to enter the occupied territories – despite periodic reports to the contrary.
Everything began to change after 2022, when relations between Moscow and Beijing reached a new level.
For example, in November 2023, The Washington Post wrote that Russia and China were negotiating the construction of a transport tunnel under the Kerch Strait after the successful attack of the Defense Forces on July 17, 2023, although both the Russian Federation and the PRC denied these reports.
However, publications about the likelihood of Chinese companies participating in infrastructure projects in the occupied Crimea began to appear more and more often. In 2025, Ukrainian intelligence reported that the occupation authorities of Crimea wanted to attract Chinese investment in the construction of the Kerch seaport and the expansion of the infrastructure of the military base on Lake Donuzlav.
In the same year, the Panamanian-flagged Heng Yang 9, owned by Guangxi Changhai Shipping, repeatedly entered the port of Sevastopol with its transponder turned off. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has expressed its protest to China on this issue.
Fears of falling under secondary sanctions are deterring China from open investment in the peninsula. But there are also reports of covert cooperation between China and Russia in the Black Sea.
“China’s interest in the Black and Azov Seas goes beyond simple support for Russia in Crimea, fitting into the broader strategy of the Belt and Road Initiative and opening up potential dual-use opportunities… Any infrastructure development in these regions, even if nominally commercial or civilian in nature, inherently supports and strengthens Russia’s military and logistical capabilities. This is consistent with China’s strategic partnership with Russia, especially given Russia’s growing dependence on China for critical military technologies and components after Western sanctions,” the Extrema Ratio initiative, which tracks China’s global expansion, noted in a report.
What interested China in the Donetsk region
The Insider noted that since the summer of 2022, the “DPR” authorities began to show interest in the abandoned Karansky quarry near the village of Mirne, Volnovakha district, Donetsk region, which was controlled by Ukraine before the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation. Crushed stone was previously mined there for construction, but work has been suspended since 2008.
In August 2022, the processing plant began to be restored, and in October the new launch of the Karansky quarry was officially announced.
In November 2023, the head of the occupation “government of the DPR”, Russian official Yevgeny Solntsev, reported that the Karansky quarry had signed cooperation agreements with two Chinese enterprises — Amma construction Machinery Co. Ltd (a factory for the production of equipment for crushing rocks) and Zhongxin Heavy Industry Machinery Co., Ltd (a factory for the production of crushing and sorting equipment), the signing took place at the “representative office of the “DPR” in Moscow.
As of March 2025, locals were already calling the Karansky quarry “Chinese”. According to The Insider, the crushed stone extracted from the quarry is used for construction throughout the occupied territory of Ukraine, where the Russian authorities have announced large-scale projects for the “restoration” of settlements that have suffered enormous destruction from Russian shelling and assaults.
According to the Ukrainian “Realnaya Gazeta”, the companies named by Solntsev, Amma construction Machinery Co. Ltd and Zhongxin Heavy Industry Machinery Co., Ltd are active in Russia, including with the Kamensk Crushed Stone Plant in the Rostov Region.
The alleged intermediary was Zhang Jingwei, a graduate student at the Southern Federal University who is developing defense technologies for the Russian army. For example, it was reported that he created an improved neural network model for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which allows for faster detection of small objects in real time. Zhang Jingwei won the “Leaders of Russia” competition, which is supervised by the First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation Sergei Kiriyenko.
The editor-in-chief of Realnaya Gazeta, Andrey Dikhtyarenko, believes that the example of such mediation can be seen in the technology of Chinese penetration into the occupied territories.
“Zhang Jingwei studies and works at Rostov University, he is also the head of the local Chinese community, and he also acts as an intermediary between the “DPR” and Chinese companies from his native province. While the official state structures of the PRC seem to stay away, large state-owned concerns do not want to fall under sanctions, medium-sized private businesses are given the go-ahead to organize joint projects in the occupied territories of Ukraine,” he says.
Chinese companies participate in infrastructure projects, supply equipment, etc. According to Dikhtyarenko, the story with the Donetsk quarry is far from the only example of such cooperation.
For example, Chinese mining equipment is supplied to the “Belorichenska” mine in the Luhansk region, one of the few that bring profit in the occupied territory.
“The restoration of industry in the occupation is already being carried out with Chinese money, without China, Russia has no opportunity to quickly restore all this,” Dikhtyarenko believes.
He also emphasizes the political component of such cooperation.
“There is an exchange of experience of propagandists, for example, employees of Luhansk propaganda media are actively invited to study trips to China, where they are given excursions to drone production plants,” the journalist said.
It also works the other way around. Dikhtyarenko recalled the visit of the Chinese blogger and singer Wang Fan in 2023 as an example. She sang “Katyusha” in the ruins of the Mariupol Drama Theater, destroyed by a Russian air strike. The trip caused a protest from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.
“At the same time, her husband, an official, did not go to Mariupol, he was waiting for his wife in Rostov, and then they gave a joint press conference,” Dikhtyarenko said.
At the aforementioned press conference, the Chinese woman said that “Ukrainian Nazis are killing the children of Donbas.” Her husband Zhou Xiaoping, a member of the People’s Political Consultative Council, then accused Ukraine, not Russia, of destroying the drama theater, and also talked about “protecting local residents from NATO attacks.”
For the occupation authorities of the “DPR”, cooperation with China is an important element of strengthening its own weight within the bureaucratic hierarchy through contacts with the authorities of the PRC, business ties, and participation in business forums. In April 2024, the “Prime Minister” of the “DPR” Solntsev visited the 1st Russian-Chinese Construction Forum in Harbin, organized by the All-Russian Center for National Construction Policy and the Harbin regional government.
“We discussed with colleagues the possibilities of launching and modernizing our metallurgical enterprises capacities,” said Solntsev.
He also announced cooperation with two Chinese construction companies: Genertec International Co Ltd and China Xinxing Group Co Ltd in the “restoration of Donbas”. No official contracts were concluded.
China tried to enter the Zaporizhzhia TOT
The occupation government of the Zaporizhzhia region also built its plans for cooperation with China.
In particular, the Gauleiter intended to sell stolen Ukrainian grain to the PRC.
“The Zaporizhzhia region, as a new region of the Russian Federation, plans to actively cooperate with the business of the Celestial Empire. Our grain is of the highest quality, and Chinese consumers will definitely appreciate it. We will actively use people’s diplomacy to promote our products,” said the acting “Minister of Economic Development” Yuriy Guskov.
This story, as far as we know, did not continue. Unlike the other: in Melitopol, a Chinese businessman was almost “squeezed” a cherry processing plant.
The company “Eurofruit” was founded in 2015 by an investor from Shanghai, Zheng Feng. However, after the occupation of the region, a local businessman, Sergey Zhelev, who collaborated with the Russian authorities, set his sights on the plant. The Chinese owner had to urgently get to Melitopol to protect his investments.
Curiosities of Chinese “business” in TOT
In July 2025, the authorities of the “LPR” reported on the visit of a delegation of Chinese investors. However, it soon became clear that they were not Chinese, but entrepreneurs from Voronezh – of Vietnamese and Azerbaijani origin.
In the same month, the Russian Promsvyazbank (PSB) organized a trip to China for representatives of ten companies from the occupied territories of Ukraine (winners of the all-Russian competition of domestic manufacturers “Know Ours”). Promsvyazbank is an important element of the occupation structure. It was the first of the major Russian banks to open its representative offices in the annexed Ukrainian regions – first in Crimea, and then in the “LPR-DPR” and the occupied parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
In 2018, PSB was nationalized and has since been the main creditor of the Russian defense industry, servicing up to 70% of state defense orders. The bank is headed by Petro Fradkov, the son of the former prime minister and former head of foreign intelligence Mikhail Fradkov. Since 2022, the bank has been under sanctions from all leading Western countries.
Medvedchuk’s role
The Chinese penetration into the occupied part of Ukraine is facilitated by the traitor and godfather of Vladimir Putin, Viktor Medvedchuk, writes The Insider.
He actively participated in joint business projects with China while still a Ukrainian deputy: companies associated with him and his business partner Taras Kozak have been building a cable car on the Russian-Chinese border in the Blagoveshchensk and Heihe regions since 2020.
Viktor Medvedchuk actively participated in the coal trade in the territory of the “LPR-DPR” through the company “Donskoye Ugol” controlled by him, which since 2021 has become one of the key beneficiaries of the local coal industry. After the start of the full-scale war, “Donskoye Ugol” began to expand rapidly, taking control of mines in the occupied territory of Donbas and supplying coal to China under the guise of “Russian” products. However, due to the reduction in purchases of Russian coal by China and the general inefficiency of Medvedchuk’s company, it owed about 2 billion rubles in 2026.
Medvedchuk’s business is not only engaged in exports to China, but also imports – his structures supplied trucks from China to the occupied Donbas (products of the Chinese branch of the German concern Daimler Truck).
One Belt, One Road
The processes of Chinese expansion into the Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia are not yet large-scale.
“China is watching,” – one representative of the “authorities” of the “LPR” characterized the situation.
However, this expansion is gradually becoming more and more systematic: more and more Chinese companies are entering the occupied territories, “feeding” local elites. For China, this is also a test of the strength of sanctions, private companies are “reconnaissance” the territory for the arrival of private-state giants of the PRC.
In addition to purely economic considerations, geopolitics is also important.
Crimea plays a key role in the Black Sea region, and the southeastern territories of Ukraine serve as a strategic springboard for expansion into Eastern Europe. For China, this penetration is part of a global strategy to create a Eurasian logistics corridor.
This logic fits into Russia’s construction of the Rostov-Mariupol-Melitopol-Crimea highway (the so-called Novorossiya highway), which can be connected to the international transport corridor “Europe-Western China” – a joint project of the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China and Kazakhstan. By the way, crushed stone from a “Chinese” quarry in the Donetsk region is used in its construction.
Another important motive for China is access to resources, primarily to deposits of rare earth elements. According to the Ukrainian side, half of Ukraine’s rare earth metal deposits are located in the occupied territories.
For example, the Donetsk region has deposits of lithium and titanium, as well as the only complex source of zirconium in Ukraine. All of this may eventually end up in the hands of Chinese developers. obniki, since Russia lacks its own technologies and resources for their full-fledged extraction.
“The same can be said in general about the entire economy of the occupied part of Ukraine. As long as all the resources of the occupiers are spent on waging war and maintaining the stability of the regime, the Chinese presence on these lands will become more and more,” The Insider summarized.
