There has long been a fallacy at the heart of much analysis of Chinese security policy in Central Asia that China is focused on economics in the region, and Russia on security. This is built on the odd assumption that Beijing is willing to simply delegate its security concerns to others: something that clashes with the increasingly strong China that President Xi Jinping has been projecting. In fact, China has long had a security footprint in Central Asia. What is new, however, is Beijing’s increased willingness to demonstratively flex its muscle in the region.
I love it when a plan comes together:
China is splitting its resources between efforts to secure sea imports and land imports for their energy needs. They will end up having insufficient resources to protect both sources.
As background, I'm upset that Russia has successfully pointed China south at America by selling arms useful for a naval war over Taiwan. China also sees this naval power as a way to secure their oil imports by sea.
I argued that we need to point China inland to avoid a fight with China over Taiwan rather than prepare to beat China over Taiwan. In part, I wanted China to import energy via overland pipelines to get China looking to the interior of Asia instead of the sea.
In that post I noted that China was building a mechanized corps in their west.
Russia really needs to take advantage of the next five years to address military imbalances in favor of China.
