I agree with Leon Aron’s assessment at Foreign Affairs. Concerns about an alliance between Russia and China are highly premature:
History and geography militate against an entente cordiale between the two Eurasian giants. Authoritarian states sharing a 2,600-mile border, with much of that boundary first imposed by imperial Russia on a weaker neighbor, are hardly ideally set up to build mutual trust.
Reinforcing that barrier are very significant structural differences between the two countries’ economies, which result in their holding divergent stakes in the present world economic order. Confined largely to exporting oil and gas, Russia’s integration in the world economy is at once quite secure and quite limited. Moscow can afford to rock the boat and to seek from Beijing a pointedly anti-Western, active, and committed military-political partnership.
Unmentioned in Mr. Aron’s account is both countries’ history of xenophobia. The factor most likely to encourage Russia to seek common cause with China is heightened irrational conduct by the U. S.
I don’t think the two countries are contemplating or need an alliance.
Just the two (Russia and China) favoring each other vis a vis the US is a lot. It means they don’t have to spend resources on their common border. China has a source for its energy needs that does not go through the straits of Malacca and vulnerable to pressure from the US navy. Russia has a customer for its natural resources that doesn’t have sympathies for Ukraine.
It isn’t enough to overthrow the US, but it may well be enough to prevent the US from succeeding in regime change in either country.