Story here. Just a little fascinating thing that caught my attention. Not sure if the Big Media talked about it...
A dispute over the attack on and sinking of a Chinese commercial ship near the Russian Far East (RFE) port of Vladivostok in mid-February is dramatic evidence of long-term developments in the area producing friction between Moscow and Beijing.
(Got to read the whole thing yourself for the context, big picture and relevant history of the region)
In a nutshell, it appears that the developing problem is one of a declining Slavic/rising legal & illegal Sino population in the Russian Far East, and, due to the economic hard times today, this is causing political and stability problems for Moscow and certainly for (Darth) Vladimir Putin.
What Russia does about it, if anything, will contribute to the shaping of future relations between Russia and China. Will Russia's xenophobia increase against Chinese illegals and affect legal immigrants as well? And if this does, would Beijing get mad, or would Beijing, being ruled by evil Communists who don't care about human life, just brush aside the issue of fellow Chinese being persecuted in Russia? Would the SinoCommunists abandon their brothers and sisters and allow them to be persecuted by Putin's minions? That may well depend on matters of convenience at whatever time any decision is made.
Boring stuff, eh? But it does go to show that, despite forward appearances, the Axis of Evil power group does have festering, growing issues beneath the surface which could potentially destabilize their friendship of convenience. Of course, according to the law of karma, as those countries are run by inherently infinitely flawed evildoers, sooner or later their agendas against the Free World will slump when they fight one another over stuff, perhaps commiting fraticide.
If the Russians and Chinese go at it, I say we should stay out of it. Let them duke it out. MiG vs MiG; Sukhoi vs. Sukhoi... damn, these guys have the same warplanes... how will they know which is friend and which is foe? Didn't see that coming, didya, eh, boys?
