Mr Shapps said in his speech that the world needed to “wake up” to the growing threats to the West.
He later added that “lethal aid is now, or will be, flowing from China to Russia and into Ukraine, I think it is a significant development”.
He did not provide further evidence to support his assertion.
The US has previously accused China of helping Russia with technology that has been used on the battlefield in Ukraine, but stopped short of saying that Beijing was directly supplying arms.
Provide critical components
Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, said on a visit to China last month that there was no evidence of China selling weapons.
“What China is doing, or what some of its enterprises are doing, is to provide critical components for Russia’s defence industrial base, things like machine tools, microelectronics and optics,” he said.
Mr Shapps added that he would make the “unambiguous case” for all Nato countries to boost their defence expenditure to 2.5 per cent at the bloc’s summit in Washington DC in July.
The current Nato standard stands at two per cent, but only 11 of the alliance’s 32 members reached that target last year.
However, last month the UK committed to boosting its defence spending to 2.5 per cent by 2030.
The Chinese embassy in London did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.