Under pressure from China, Russia shared a little more technology with China. How long will China consider it worth it to squeeze Russia?
Why the Russians can sleep at night is beyond me:
In early 2021 China and Russia agreed, after more than a year of negotiations, to develop a joint BMEW (Ballistic Missile Early Warning) system. This involves Russia providing the tech needed to bring Chinese BMEW equipment up to Russian standards. As an incentive for Russia to cooperate, and provide the needed tech, Chinese Internet censors were ordered to allow open discussion about Chinese claims on a quarter of the Russian Far East and most of the prime coastal areas. China never cancelled these claims, even in the 1940s and 50s when China was very dependent on Russia. Once China got what it wanted, censors were ordered to block any talk of regaining border areas that are now Russian blamed by China.
I noted the extension of a 2001 treaty set to expire this year and the technology transfer:
The missile defense technology transfer really hurts Russia, which relies on nukes for territorial integrity. Especially in the weakly held Far East.
And Russia will need to treat NATO like an enemy for five more years. So Moscow's moment of clarity is put off.
I wonder what the treaty "modifications" were? I assumed Russia would have to pay a price for an extension of China's silence on the border.
Clearly Russia did not reach economic and military benchmarks by 2020 that would have allowed Russia to end their policy of appeasement. One more 5-year plan will do the trick, eh?
Luckily for Russia, China isn't ready to move beyond that treaty and declare Russia's Far East a core Chinese interest. Yet.
China's technology has advanced a lot. Russia's advantages have to be dwindling to nothing as China absorbs Russia's remaining advanced work by agreement, purchase, reverse engineering, and theft.
What will the relationship look like when Russia has no more technology of value to China yet Russia still holds vast stretches of territory that it took from China? As I wrote in that post of mine above, "Does China seem like the kind of country that just lets old territorial claims die? And for China, how old is the 19th century, really?"
