This looks friendly enough:
China said on Wednesday it would conduct joint naval drills with Russia in the East China Sea off Shanghai in late May, in what it called a bid to deepen military cooperation.
But the exercises paper over the potential for Chinese-Russian friction from Central Asia where China could seek energy sources away from their vulnerable sea imports of energy, to the Far East where China's claims to Russia's relatively weakly held territory (taken from China when China was weak) are perhaps only dormant rather than forgotten.
As we draw down from Central Asia where we supported the Afghanistan campaign, why not encourage China to fill in to challenge Russian ambitions to recreate the Russian Empire in Central Asia? China would be able to be more aggressive--since this would be seeking influence in independent countries at Russian expense rather than pushing against actual Russian territory--at this western portion of their long border with Russia.
We should want that.
Heck, we should want Russia to aim for Central Asia, too, away from the main European threat as much as we want China to aim for Central Asia, away from the main front in the first island chain.
I'm not saying it would be easy diplomacy. But it would be smart.
