But the distance between Russia and China is more than just the vast swaths of desert and mountains between the major population centers. Russia's most important strategic issue is re-establishing its traditional buffer zones in Europe. China has relatively little, if any, interest in Russia's European buffer. China is much more concerned with developing capabilities that would make it harder for the U.S. to assert its naval dominance in the various seas to the east over which the U.S. currently maintains control. There is not a great deal that China and Russia can do for each other, and neither side is interested in provoking hostility from the U.S. right now. Russia is looking for a temporary accommodation in Ukraine, and the moves China makes in the South China Sea are more smoke than fire, meant for domestic political consumption in a period of transformative restructuring in the country.
The downturn in oil prices and sanctions have encouraged Russia to look east, but the costs of building the infrastructure necessary to supply China have historically outweighed the benefits. Despite the various niceties between Moscow and Beijing since 1991 and the myriad deals that have been signed between the two countries, there is still no gas pipeline that connects Russia to China, and according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, less than 1 percent of Russian liquefied natural gas exports went to China in 2014. Oil is a different story - China is a significant destination for Russian crude exports, making up about 14 percent of all Russian crude exports in 2014. But China is not about to replace Europe as the most important export market for Russia's natural resources. In fact, using equations developed by Dr. George Friedman to establish export dependence of raw materials, we find that China is actually more dependent on Russian oil imports than Russia is dependent on exporting oil to China.
A History of Mistrust
Besides geography - and perhaps because of it - there is also a history of mutual distrust between Russia and China. The Slavic and Sino civilizations are considerably different. This is not the United States' border with Canada, where there is similar culture and intelligible language on both sides. In fact, direct contact along the border is fairly limited and the border areas are mostly home to various Turkic and Mongolian groups.
This is also a border that Russia and China have been arguing over and fighting about for centuries, and despite the treaties of the 1990s and 2000s, there is still a great deal of suspicion on both sides. Russians worry that Chinese immigrants are pouring over the border and changing the demographics of Russian territory. The Chinese still talk about the 400,000 square miles of "lost territories" it was forced to cede to Russia by treaty after the Opium Wars of the 19th century.
Today, the border between Russia and China largely follows the Amur River, and the two sides have been fighting over that particular demarcation since the 1600s. In 1685, the Qing Emperor Kangxi assaulted the Russian outpost of Albazin on the Amur River - and in 1689 Russia and Manchu-led China signed a treaty that fixed the general placement of the northern border. But there have still been numerous clashes on the Amur River throughout the years, most recently in 1969, when a seven-month Sino-Soviet border conflict resulted in both countries massing large numbers of troops on the border and roughly 900 combined casualties. That conflict was defused in large measure because the U.S. threatened to intervene on China's side should Russia throw its full weight into the conflict.
