The China-Russia Alliance is Cracking

There are no permanent allies — only permanent interests

(Life Expectancy in Europe, 2021. Lady3minm, based on World Bank. Wikimedia Commons)

China has concluded that its “unlimited partnership” with Russia is no longer in its interest, and Russia is being cut off from Chinese resupply.

China and Russia have traditionally been adversaries. China still holds Russia responsible for its role in the “century of humiliation,” when great powers addicted the Chinese people to opium, mounted armed interventions, imposed unfair treaties, and grabbed its land. Russia’s role was particularly heinous — conquering outer Manchuria, attempting to “Russify” a native Chinese population, and blocking China from its access to the Sea of Japan.

(Europe and the Russian “octopus” from the perspective of Japan, 1904. Public Domain.)

China has never forgotten this humiliation. Even after it signed a series of treaties to temporarily resolve the situation on its border after the Sino-Soviet Border War of 1969, it has continued to press the issue.

(The border dispute, before the agreements of 2004 and 2008. Public Domain.)

The intensity of mistrust motivated the rapprochement with the United States…