The last two-and-a-half decades of Russo-Chinese relations have been marked by tension: between the two countries’ growing friendship, and their diverging trajectories. China has successfully integrated into the world economy, grown stronger and more affluent, and subsequently begun to act either more confidently or, according to some observers, more assertively. Meanwhile, Russia has struggled economically, quarreled with the West, and become an undeclared revisionist power. Their close relations now face the challenges of growing asymmetry and a potential clash of interests, particularly in one region whose post-Cold War fate they have come to shape: Central Asia. There, for over a decade, the two seemed to have developed an understanding and an informal “division of labor.” Each side focused on providing what they were better positioned to do: security from Russia and investments from China.
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