The larger Chinese goal is to dominate Eurasia, which means relegating Russia to a second-tier power.
China and Russia share a land border of more than 2,600 miles, an interminable stretch of birch forest separating mainly the Russian Far East from Chinese Manchuria, whose particulars were formally agreed upon only in the last decade. In 1969, the dispatch of about 30 Soviet divisions to this border, and China’s deployment of 59 divisions in response, deepened the Chinese-Soviet split and allowed for President Richard Nixon’s opening to China and his détente with the Soviet Union.
In few areas is the Russian state so feeble as in its far east. The ethnic Russian population is only an estimated 6 million. Chinese migrants are moving steadily north into this vastly underpopulated Siberian back-of-beyond, rich in the natural gas, oil, timber, diamonds and gold that China covets. China lost part of this region to Russia only in the 19th century, when the Qing dynasty was in its death throes, and the rest in the 20th century.
Russia needs to end their appeasement of China that confrontation with NATO was designed to disguise and look east to the real threat to Russia.
Maybe Russia's declaration of mission accomplished in the west is part of a dawning realization that 2021 isn't far off.
Even if Russia and China renew that 20-year territorial dispute suspension, one day China won't renew it.
And that's when China will try to break Russian power for good.
Why Russians can sleep at night is beyond me.
