Still, both countries will be looking to prove their military might during the eight days of war games on the Shandong peninsula.
The US Defense Department said last month that China's military was increasingly seeking to modernize and could become a threat in the Asia-Pacific region as it looked to spread its influence.
The Russian military is also eager to show it still has muscle despite much-publicized woes. Its weaknesses were highlighted again earlier this month when Russia had to call for outside help to rescue seven men stranded in a mini-submarine off its Pacific coast.
The exercises come amid warming ties between the countries since the end of the Cold War, driven by mutual concerns about the United States' dominance in world affairs and a shared interest in combating extremism in Central Asia.
The two are the dominant countries in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes four former Soviet republics in Central Asia and added Iran, India, and Pakistan this year as observers. Representatives from the organization's countries have been invited to watch the exercises.
At a July summit, the organization called on Washington to set a date for withdrawal from Central Asia, where its forces have been deployed since after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to help support operations in neighboring Afghanistan.
The United States had said it would withdraw from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan once combat operations in Afghanistan were finished. Last month, however, Uzbekistan ordered US troops to leave the country within 180 days.
Kyrgyzstan's new administration called for a re-evaluation of the US base in that country, but Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld later won assurances that American troops can stay for as long as they are needed to bring stability to Afghanistan.
The United States said it has been advised of the exercises by both China and Russia, but isn't sending observers.
''We expect that whatever activities take place would be ones that would further what we believe is everybody's shared goal of stability and peace in the region," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington. ''We would hope that anything that they do is not something that would be disruptive to the current atmosphere in the region."
